“If you think you’ve seen it all, Stick around.”
— Song lyrics by Jason Mraz, American singer-songwriter, and guitarist.
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Friday night football is the best. The kids. The high school rivalries. The fans. Under the lights on Friday night.
But this is not a sports column. I’m just an old newspaper guy who walks the equivalent of a half mile or more of sidelines on fall Friday nights. Hoping to catch one more eye-popping shot of a high school athlete’s performance to publish for loyal readers and parents.
Been doing it off and on for 50 years, come next year. Since my days as a rookie reporter at The Naples Monitor. Covering the Paul Pewitt Brahmas.
Which sometimes fools me to think I’ve seen it all and heard it all.
Friday nights hold a personal attraction for me for reasons other than football. Athletic prowess was never my game. Scholastic gridiron time for me meant halftime with the band. The Mount Pleasant High School Tiger band and the Kilgore College Ranger band.
I played a bass horn. The biggest horn in the band. On the back row with the big round bell extending above the rest of the band. And it was bass horns last Friday night that reminded me again, if you think you’ve seen it all, stick around and watch this.
For the record, bass horn is the name by which the big instruments were known when I played them. A dozen presidents ago. These days however, I notice they are commonly called a tuba.
Research reveals instrument maker J. W. Pepper reinvented the concert tuba in the late 1800s creating an instrument easier to carry with the bell projecting the music forward instead of up like a traditional tuba. He named it the Sousaphone honoring John Phillip Sousa, American composer who reportedly pitched the concept to Pepper. Sousa was a conductor known primarily for American military marches.
Think “Stars and Stripes Forever.”
Most often played in marching bands, the Sousaphone became known as a “bass horn.'” It wraps around the body and is typically played standing or marching. The true tuba is commonly heard in orchestras, brass ensembles, and concert bands.
All semantics, I’m thinking. Depending on how one learned to play a tuba … bass horn. For me, that was from band directors who politely corrected students calling a bass horn a tuba.
Whatever you call it, last Friday’s game was a high school football game like any other. For me, however, tubas … ah, bass horns, stole the show where the Center Roughriders delivered a 76-48 defeat to the visiting Rusk Eagles. The Roughrider homecoming crowd was delighted.
Midway of the event, while enjoying halftime shows, I witnessed the bell fall off a tuba … ah, bass horn. Yes, the big brass oval piece that’s a target for pea shooters at Christmas parades. It parted company with the rest of the instrument and landed about mid-field. And the band marched on.
Rusk concluded its performance by coming my direction to the sideline. As the band director walked past, we made eye contact. I smiled, gave him a thumbs up, and said, “Good looking band. Great performance.”
He paused to say, ‘thank you’ and laughed. “Did you see the tuba lose its bell.”
I grimaced. Then said, “Yes sir,” I played a tuba … ah, bass horn, in high school and college, and that was a first for me to witness.”
“We sent it back to the manufacturer,” he added. “Thought it was fixed. Guess not.”
I’ve seen marching band students lose lots of things on the field in front of God and everybody. Music, mouthpieces, shoes, hats, their place in the routine. But never half of the largest instrument in the band.
The Center Roughrider band followed, displaying their precision military marching routine for the upcoming UIL contest. I couldn’t help but notice a young lady in a band uniform standing alone near me on the sideline. Holding a tuba … ah, bass horn. I wondered why she was not marching.
My question was answered when the drum major stopped at the sideline. The young lady with the tuba … ah, bass horn, met him. She took his baton, and he took the horn, and the music Center senior coaxed from his horn was nothing short of amazing.
I had never witnessed a tuba … ah, bass horn player perform a stand-alone solo at a football game. Or anywhere else. In fact, I had never heard anyone extort a solo tune from one of the big instruments like he did. Trumpets, woodwinds, drum solos … many times. But a lead part solo for a tuba … ah, bass horn. Nope. Never.
Richard Alexander performed the closest facsimile I can recall. His impromptu bluesy chromatic scale “riff” one spring afternoon during band practice at Mount Pleasant High School in about 1965 was cool. But it wasn’t written in the music.
Those four counts were supposed to be silent going into the trio, just like we had rehearsed it many times. But Richard surprised everyone. Most of all, band director Blanton McDonald. Several, especially the bass section, silently applauded. Even the usually very serious Mr. McDonald smiled and shook his head. And the band played on.
I still say football sidelines are one of my favorite parts of doing time at the hometown weekly. Where on any given night, the game is always the story. But where you just might also see or hear something. Just when you think you’ve seen it all.
And where you might be reminded that a bass horn by any other name might be called … a tuba.
—Leon Aldridge
(Photo at the top of the page: The 1965 Mount Pleasant Tiger Band. The tubas … ah, bass horns, are on the back row. Yours truly is the one on the far right.)
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Aldridge columns are published in these Texas newspapers: The Center Light and Champion, the Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche, The Fort Stockton Pioneer, and The Monitor in Naples.
© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2023. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.
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