Klarinet Archive - Posting 000013.txt from 2004/04

From: <dwh46@-----.net>
Subj: Re: Re: [kl] Baxter-Northrup C Clarinet?
Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2004 11:12:28 -0500

I worked several years for a family-owned music business. They have (and have had) one of the largest 'unknown' private instrument collections I have ever seen or am aware of. I say unknown because they only open it to a chosen few, which includes local school groups who often make special trips to see it by invitation only. It includes a very large asortment of all wind instruments, especially clarinets and flutes of very old vintage; personal instruments from the estates of Harry James, Tommy Dorsey, Sousa (a REALLLY large sousaphone) and HN White; and many other rarities and oddities; and stringed instruments and oddities from all over the world. (that doesn't mean strings are oddities) The collection probably numbers around 400-500 pieces by now, and takes up two very large areas in the family store.

My point in rambling is that they have several stencil instruments, which they have always felt to be an important part of American band instrument history, since most were made by major manufacturers of the day and some of which weren't bad at all. I've played some of their old Conn and other stencil saxes, and they were as nice as the actual Conn-branded horns. The elder member of the family who started the company in the forties, spent several years on the road as a salesman for HN White, and at 94 can still rattle off specs and info on instruments and makers many or most of us have never heard of, and their merits and faults. Without the cheaper stencil instruments way back when like York and Pan American and many others, I wonder that the American band heritage would have become what it is.

And one final note - there are many high-quality stencil saxes from the fifties and early sixties by SML, Dolnet, and other French makers that are every bit the same as thir 'namesakes', a good example being the Marigaux saxes made by SML for King.

Don Hatfield

>>I can't help wondering why a
museum would exhibit a stencil?<<

>>I can't help wondering why a
> museum would exhibit a stencil?<<

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