The Bassic Sax Blog

I happened to come across this really interesting vintage photo depicting a contrabass saxophone.

    Source: http://blog.modernmechanix.com

What’s really interesting is that the source of this photo wasn’t a music magazine, or trade journal, but rather an article the September 1930 edition of Modern Mechanics.

    Source: http://blog.modernmechanix.com

As a sax player, my frame of reference is very different than that of the average reader of Modern Mechanics. My interest is in the horn: I am curious who the maker of this contrabass was. Was it an Evette-Schaeffer? Perhaps a Kohlert?

Looking at the photo now, I wonder what happened to the sax. Is it one of the less than a dozen vintage contras that is known to have survived to the present day?

If I step back and try to see the photo as a non-sax player would, I am struck by the sheer awkwardness of the woman’s posture as she plays the horn. Her right hand seems to have to strain to reach the keys.  Because this is 1930, proper “lady-like” etiquette still has to be followed. Hence she is sitting in a very “lady-like” pose that certainly adds to the overall awkwardness of her posture. 

Yes, I can see the “mechanical” aspect that this photo captures. However, as a vintage bass sax player, I don’t usually think about mechanics very much. I just find work-arounds without thinking about it. 

Fast forward nearly 8 decades, and here is now an updated version of the world’s largest sax…

The following video features the world’s first, contrabass saxophone quartet, performing Dragon’s First Flight. The piece was written by Adam Gilberti, and performed at UCLA by Jay C. Easton, Grant Green, Blaise Garza, and Adam Gilberti. This saxophone quartet is made up of 2 Eb Contrabass Saxophones, 1 Eb Tubax and 1 Bb Subcontrabass Tubax.

One thing is for certain: I can take comfort that our beloved contrabass saxophone, while perhaps the least common of the saxophone family, certainly did fare better than Denmark’s amazing Submarine Plane. Not only were contras actually produced, but thanks to companies like Orsi, and more recently Eppelsheim, they are even enjoying a Renaissance of sorts.

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