wiki person wrote:Sousa organized The Sousa Band the year that he left the Marine Band, it toured from 1892 to 1931, and performed at 15,623 concerts
My Dad (1916 - 1984) told me once that - when he was a boy (probably in Kansas City...as he grew up in Pittsburg, Kansas, and went on a couple of trips to Kansas City with my grandfather, who was a banker) saw the Sousa Band perform, once.
The thing that he seemed to remember the most, though, is how disappointed he was - afterward - when he and my grandfather went afterward to eat at a hotel restaurant nearby, and he saw a bunch of Sousa bandsmen in their shirtsleeves eating their meal, drinking beer, and smoking. (My grandmother was a staunch temperance movement person, because she had seen so many coal miners - et al - ruin their lives with alcohol addiction.)
My father - as a boy - had this image of those Sousa bandsmen as some sorts of living statues of "supermen", rather than as real people.
(The Sousa Band was a REALLY big deal.)
This is probably about the oldest my father (redheaded clarinet-playin' chubby kid) would have been, when he saw/heard the Sousa Band perform.
Oddly, I'd never seen this particular picture until a few months ago...It was just bobbing around as zeroes and ones - on the internet...
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