[Dixielandjazz] Bechet and the sarrusophone

[Anton Crouch]

Hello all

A few additional points about this byway of jazz:

1. Just who invented the instrument is not clear-cut - The New Grove
Dictionary of Music tells us: 'The sarrusophone was developed by the
leading Paris workshop Gautrot aîné; the bass ‘sarrusophone chromatique’ in
B flat was patented in 1856 by Pierre Louis Gautrot, ten years after his
rival Adolphe Sax had patented his family of saxophones. Sax's apologist
Pontécoulant (Organographie, 1861) commented that ‘Gautrot, cherchant à
contrebalancer le succès et la vogue du “Saxophone”, imagina d'en produire
une grossière imitation sous le nom de “Sarrusophone”’. In his 1867
catalogue Gautrot claimed to have ‘invented them to replace par la nature
de leur timbre the discarded military band double reeds, and to have named
them after the bandmaster [Pierre Auguste Sarrus] who had given him the
idea’. Since Sarrus (1813–76) was himself an inventor and patentee, and
Gautrot, although nominally the titular owner of over 40 patents, was
primarily a businessman rather than a maker, the identity of the actual
inventor remains uncertain.'

2. The instrument is not quite as rare as some think - the New Grove
Dictionary of Jazz gives us: 'Sidney Bechet played one (the contrabass in E
flat) on Mandy, make up your mind (OK 40260), recorded in 1924 by Clarence
Williams’s Blue Five; John R. T. Davies may be heard on the bass instrument
(in B flat) on Don’t monkey with it (1963), a one-man-band recording on
which he also plays all the other instruments (issued on the anthology
Sounds of Surprise, 1927–63, Jazz Greats CD079); and Scott Robinson played
contrabass sarrusophone on his album Thinking Big (1996, Arbors 19179).'

3. John Chilton, in his book "Sidney Bechet, the wizard of jazz" (1987),
suggests that Bechet may have played both bass clarinet and sarrusophone
during his time in London (1919-22).

All the best
Anton