Difficult Instrument To Play Well

I’ve written lots of articles about the saxophone haters of the first half of the 20th century. Well this morning I happened across an article from the 1930s in which the reporter clearly gets it: the sax is a difficult instrument to play well.

I know this firsthand, since I’ve played saxophone for more decades than I care to admit. If you’re reading this article there’s a good chance you know it too, since you likely play horn.

If you’re a parent of a saxophone student, you most likely have figured out by now that the sax is a difficult instrument to play well. BTW, it literally does take years to develop the sound that you hear performers have live and in recordings. Sorry ’bout that.

So why did people in the 1920s and 30s think it was so easy to just pick up a saxophone and play along with the piano, ukulele, and whatever else their friends and neighbours had in their front parlours? Because of ads like these by Buescher and Conn, who were looking for ways to sell more and more of their fine saxophones.

Easy to play. My ass. The sax is a difficult instrument to play well

Buescher promised you riches like the Brown Brothers had, and since their True Tone saxophones were so “easy to play”, they felt the need to double down on the message. 😉

Source: swager375 on eBay.com

Conn too offered easy playing horns. Their saxophones were undoubtedly going to be so simple, that in just over a month little Johnny here was going to be asked to perform at Carnegie Hall. Sure he will…

Source: eauctionmanagement on eBay.com

Given that the saxophone was as popular as it was in the 1920s, and that amateur players were undoubtedly as common as bed bugs in used mattresses—if you doubt that, just take a look at how many C melody saxophones appear for sale on a regular basis, oh, and I don’t suppose all the vintage 20s and 30s transposing horns belonged to pros either, but I digress—it’s not surprising that all that squeaking and squawking would drive people mad. Hell, it would make me suicidal if I wasn’t medicated so well thanks to my neurologist.         (Yes, the nerve pain in my head in really that bad. Without meds, I can’t function, let alone play horn.)

With all this advertising by the big saxophone manufacturers stating that the saxophone was easy to play, it’s easy to see how more fuel would be added to the saxophone haters fire.

You’ve got dance bands springing up all over the place playing that offensive music. Then to top that off, you got hacks on saxophone who think that because they’ve been playing for more than 6 weeks, that they’re one promoter away from becoming super stars.

Finally, a reporter who didn’t want to burn us at the stake

As I stated at the top, this morning I actually found a sax-positive article in the archives of the Ottawa Citizen. The date is June 19, 1939. This piece was originally published in Washington, D.C.’s The Evening Star, and was written by Charles E. Tracewell.

OK, sure, Mr. Tracewell got a pretty significant fact wrong. Adolphe Sax was not French, he was Belgian—although he does mention Belgium at the very end. However, that doesn’t take away from Tracewell’s important message:

It seems that the saxophone is not really an easy instrument, after all, that is, not easy if it is played correctly.

Thank you Mr. Tracewell, thank you. Finally, a voice of reason in the chaotic frenzy that was seemingly ready to swoop in and roundup sax players for public floggings. 

Whatever else we might feel about Mr. Tracewell’s opinions or fact-checking abilities, at least we gotta’ give the man credit for getting this important fact right: the saxophone is a difficult instrument to play well. That’s a fact that many people today don’t know, or haven’t bothered to check.