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Updated: June 14, 2025
"And we're off, too," shouted Lieutenant Mackinson. "Hurrah!" cried the three boys from Brighton in the same breath, as they double-quicked it behind the lieutenant to the upper deck. The scene was one to inspire the most miserable slacker. Somewhere in the upper part of the yard a band was playing Sousa's "Stars and Stripes Forever."
"The band struck up one of Sousa's lively marches, a hoarse whistle sounded, the boat trembled all over, and we were off.
The same words might be applied to Sousa's marches with equal justice. They have served also for dance music, and the two-step, borne into vogue by Sousa's music, has driven the waltz almost into desuetude. There is probably no composer in the world with a popularity equal to that of Sousa.
"If," said the telephone maiden, adjusting her skirt at the hips and shaking her figure into greater conformity with the ideal she had set before it "If this gentleman is 2525 Gram., then the lady in 625 rang him up at seven-thirty and held the wire seven minutes talkin' to him and cryin' to beat Sousa's band. All about her uncle she was talkin'. I guess it was him, all right, all right.
The native hotel band, led by a wandering European, plays Sousa's marches and "Hiawatha," yes, even "Tammany," with accuracy; and the cooks prepare dishes with French names, make vin blanc and Hollandaise sauces worthy of Delmonico or Ritz, and this without permitting the palate to guide them. If they tasted food concocted for Christians a million kinds of perdition might be their punishment.
To approach Sousa's work in the right mood, the music critic must leave his stuffy concert hall and his sober black; he must flee from the press, don a uniform, and march. After his legs and spirits have grown aweary under the metronomic tunes of others, let him note the surge of blood in his heart and the rejuvenation of all his muscles when the brasses flare into a barbaric Sousa march.
"Sure!" exclaimed Denver, "I heard Sousa's band play it! I've got it on a record somewhere." "No, but in a real opera you'd be fine for that part. They have a row of anvils around the back of the stage and as the chorus sing the gypsy blacksmiths beat out the time by striking with their hammers.
"You must admit," said he, "that in the way of noise New York is far ahead of any other " "Back to the everglades!" said the man from Topaz City. "In 1900, when Sousa's band and the repeating candidate were in our town you couldn't " The rattle of an express wagon drowned the rest of the words.
This last has been the office of the march-tune, and it is as susceptible of structural logic or embellishments as the fugue, rondo, or what not. These architectural qualities Sousa's marches have in high degree, as any one will find that examines their scores or listens analytically. They have the further merit of distinct individuality, and the supreme merit of founding a school.
Sousa's father was a musician who forbade his son to devote himself to dance music. As Strauss' mother enabled him secretly to work out his own salvation, so did Sousa's mother help him. Sousa's father was a political exile from Spain, and earned a precarious livelihood by playing a trombone in the very band at Washington which later became his son's stepping-stone to fame.
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