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MMD > Archives > April 2008 > 2008.04.07 > 04Prev  Next


Karl King Marches
By Stephen Kent Goodman

Band organ arranging, like other automatic music arranging, was done in
an almost assembly-line thinking, being commercially driven.  The ar-
rangers were used to working from, in most cases in America, a piano
score, which was the mainstay, bread-and-butter output of most popular
publishers of that era.  King's music was originally issued by Barn-
house in Iowa as band music.  In those days that meant no single master
score, but rather a Solo Bb Cornet part which had smaller cued notes
and significant events cued on it ... hardly what we would call a
score.

Automatic music arrangers were used to working from piano scores.  All
the big New York publishers, and even lesser publishers from Chicago
and St. Louis, issued songs and popular instrumentals this way.  Using
twenty-five or thirty individual band parts to lay out a tune on an
arranging table was out of the question and was inconsistent with the
high-speed, assembly-line manner in which arrangers worked.  Remember,
Wurlitzer paid their arrangers by the _foot_ of music roll they turned
out!  So, with the exception of the most popular marches by King or any
band composer, which were also issued as piano scores, pure band scores
went unused by the roll arrangers.

I have seen an 88-note player piano roll featuring several Henry Fill-
more trombone rags, but those rags appear in a piano score and trombone
duet arrangement that was offered by the Fillmore Music House. That is
to say, only the Fillmore numbers that were issued as piano scores
seemed to find their way on to paper roll, and the same seems true for
Sousa, Lincoln, Paull, and others.

The Sousa marches I have on Wurlitzer Mandolin Pian-Orchestra rolls are
identical (with some elaborate additions) to their piano score edi-
tions.  And I have yet to hear an orchestrion or band organ march with
the same drum part as that issued in the original concert band edition
by the publisher.

Incidentally, I was planning on doing an arranging project taking ori-
ginal circus side-show band numbers, like Harry Alford's "Roll 'Em Up,"
(a great drum solo one-step), and novelties such as "Ridin' de Goat,"
"Whistling Willie," and circus thrillers like Heed's "In Storm and
Sunshine," and arrange them for Artizan 61-key organs to recreate a
real old-time circus band, but haven't found enough interest to warrant
pursuing this project.  I have probably the world's largest library of
original period side-show concert band numbers, including some very
politically-incorrect titles, but nevertheless absolutely great Ameri-
can syncopated circus music and marches, that would make a band organ
sound like an old-time circus band.  Maybe someday, when the rebuilding
work slows down.

Stephen Kent Goodman


(Message sent Mon 7 Apr 2008, 17:38:46 GMT, from time zone GMT-0700.)

Key Words in Subject:  Karl, King, Marches

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