[Dixielandjazz] Question about 1920s instruments

[LARRY'S Signs and Large Format Printing]

In the 1920's clarinets were undergoing a dramatic change, which started
earlier and lasted about 50 years,  from the Albert system to the Boehm
system.  Albert system clarinets would have been more on the used market and
available to the street musician for not much money.  Saxophones on the
other hand had not been on the market for a lot of years and would have been
fairly expensive and so the street band guys and the New Orleans jazzers
probably didn't use them much.  I think that's why you don't hear the sax
used very often in traditional  Dixie.  The Soprano sax at the time was an
out of tune monster and took a real expert to play it. (Hint don't buy old
Soprano saxes on E-bay) The C melody sax, with it's unusual sound, was
something of a fad although there are still a lot of them around today.  You
hear the C in a lot of 1920's arranged music.  the C saxes ended up in a lot
of kids hands in the 40's and 50's as learner instruments.  My first
instrument was a C sax about 1950.  The C sax pretty much went with the
stock market crash in '29 and a lot of them probably hit the pawn shops in
the 30's.  When I was in college in the early 60's you could buy a playing
condition C for $15 which I did because I couldn't afford a Tenor.  No one
wanted them.  The country bands I played with didn't know the difference.
They thought it was a tenor.  I didn't tell them any different.

Albert system clarinets are more like a recorder flute with very few keys
but the Boehm system made certain passages much easier to play and
standardized the fingerings to be more like the sax and other woodwinds.
Boehm standardized the woodwinds by having music printed with the proper
transpositions so that a flute player could now play the clarinet, oboe and
sax without re learning all the fingerings.  Now G (also a lot of other
notes) was the same on all of them.  The clarinet is the only one that has
different fingerings for the same note in each octave.  This happened at the
same time that music could be printed cheaply which allowed a band director
to buy printed parts for each band instrument.  Because it was a win win
situation for woodwind players they made the switch and threw a lot of
Albert system clarinets on the market.

For those who aren't familiar with the sax and clarinet fingerings.....
Interestingly the fingerings in the low register of the clarinet sound the
same note on Alto sax whereas the fingerings of the upper register
correspond to the sound of the Tenor and Soprano sax.  To explain: G in the
upper register is fingered with three fingers down which produces a concert
F.  In the lower register the same fingering produces a concert B flat on
clarinet which corresponds to the Alto sax G which is also a concert B flat.
So the Boehm clarinet is a mix of the two saxes depending on the register
making the switch for the play by ear musician a fairly easy one.

Unlike brass instruments it's almost impossible to wear out a woodwind so I
would think that the quality of used brass instruments in that period was
poor given that there were probably few good affordable repair shops. A
small dent can destroy a brass instrument and it takes a good repairman with
the right tools to fix them where as a sax or clarinet can be repaired if
you have the pads with a screwdriver and a candle to melt the adhesive.
Saxes can survive some pretty bad dents.  Saxes are typically harder to
repair and keep working than clarinets.  My tenor has never met a shop it
didn't like, its always needing tweaked.  Bass saxes are actually quite
delicate and require a lot of maintenance.   It would be interesting to know
where and how these guys got their horns fixed.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: <Loerchen2 at aol.com>
To: <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Sent: Friday, February 11, 2005 9:09 AM
Subject: [Dixielandjazz] Question about 1920s instruments


> Hi everyone,
>
> I just got an inquiry from a woman who is working on a thesis on the
development of jazz.  She needs to know the cost and availability of typical
jazz band instruments during the 1920s.
>
> I would expect that a lot of young jazz musicians got their instruments
from pawnshops, but do any of you have access to instrument catalogs from
the 1920s or other sources that might help her?
>
> She's particularly interested in the cost of saxophones relative to
clarinets.
>
> Thanks very much!
> Sue
>
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