 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Philip Caron
Date: 2025-12-15 04:51
A few days ago, my town in southern Vermont had their yearly Christmas tree-lighting ceremony. As always, the local Community Band played traditional carols, with the townspeople singing along. This year it was 14-deg F at the start. I didn't attend, but a friend who's a trombonist emailed me this:
"The caroling was interesting in the cold. I put my trombone in the car and took about seven minutes to drive down. My tuning slides were frozen when I got there and my main slide barely movable. I got the main slide moving by force and blowing through it. I figured tuning would be awful but it wasn't. It was reasonably good until we had to wait a couple of minutes while Santa made a speech before lighting the tree. "Oh Christmas Tree" was pretty awful after that wait. Cindy on horn had to drop out about halfway through the gig when her valves froze up. Nick had icicles coming out of his soprano sax at the end of the gig. "
In the 1960's and early 70's I played with the band for those Christmas caroling events, and usually it was similarly cold. We'd play in the village square, and then the members would drive to the several local elder-care facilities and we'd play outside those. Sometimes we'd also drive to individual homes or neighborhoods and play there. I remember the band president cautioning people about drinking too much and driving, which, I believe he enjoyed his share.
Back then there were usually a handful of clarinetists at those gigs. I either played my grandfather's old wooden Buffet or later my Selmer Series-10. My high-school teacher played his Selmer, either a Series 9 or earlier. Mine never cracked, and I don't recall hearing about any other clarinets cracking. In my memory, oiling the bore wasn't really a thing then, at least for me - that came later.
Well, there's some data points. Happy Holidays!
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