1897 Live Recording of Liberty Bell March by John Philip Sousa on Brown Wax

Описание: This is a rare piece of music history, a live recording of the Liberty Bell March, composed in April 1894 by the "March King" John Philip Sousa and performed under his baton by his Columbia Grand Concert Band in 1897, to be cut onto an early Columbia Brown Wax cylinder. The cylinder comes in its original first flag type 3 lidded box, together with the original piece of cotton batting. The title is hand-written on the box and announcement details on the lid. It is the box with the two spelling errors "Graphaphone" and "Chesnut Street". The cylinder has a few small fungus spots and no writings whatsoever on it. The sound quality and background noise are typical for Columbia's early brown wax cylinders, the spoken announcement is still waiting to be transcribed. The march was and is an ear-worm and used for many official ceremonies in Washington and around the White House, in particular when played by "The President's Own", Sousa's first and still existing original band, the United States Marine Band, as was the case for the inaugurations of presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, twice Barack Obama, and the 2017 inauguration of ex-president Donald Trump. Sousa hated recordings as "canned music", especially when having to do it over and over again, because one take was producing only a dozen or so records. This 1897 recording was performed by the Grand Concert Band, Sousa's own civilian orchestra from 1892 on, and therefore conducted by himself. A first recording reportedly had been made already in 1894 (see my comment at    • John Philip Sousa: The Liberty Bell (1894)...  ) by the US Marine Band, meaning that the conductor must have been Sousa's successor Prof. Francesco Fanciulli. Sousa is of course the composer of “Semper Fidelis” (1888), "The Washington Post March" (1889), "The Stars and Stripes Forever" (1897) and another 130 marches. Let's listen to the record, played on my Peerless 1906 Columbia BF 20th century graphophone. The record is for sale