Stars and Stripes Forever

Like most people, I get the urge to listen to marches every 40 years or so, and recently the urge struck. So here is the result! (Don't wait around for the urge to strike again - I will be over 100, and even more disagreeable. Besides I've exhausted my supply of Sousa records.)

Before the military music lobby comes down on me, let me explain that I am joking. I am sure I listened to Sousa compositions on at least one other occasion since 1970, and probably enjoyed the experience, as I did this time around.

What we have here is the soundtrack of a film biography of march king John Philip Sousa, as produced by 20th Century-Fox in 1952. Very few biographies of military bandmasters are being issued from Hollywood these days, and it may seem unlikely that they hit upon the idea even in the early 1950s. Sousa had been dead for 20 years, and his heyday was years before that. But for whatever reason they went ahead, and cast Clifton Webb in the lead. That's not the first name that leaps to mind when you think "military bandmaster," but the reviews on the Internet would have us believe that he did quite well in the role, and moreover, that the film is a good one.

Not having seen the movie, I can't comment on its quality, but I can tell you the soundtrack is a convincing recreation of the sound of Sousa's band. The liner notes make a big deal out of conductor Alfred Newman sending to the University of Illinois for the parts and all that, but presumably he had to send somewhere for the parts, no? To get the sound and tempos right, I suspect Newman listened to Sousa's own recordings, and for comparison purposes I've also uploaded an RCA Victor EP of 1925-28 Sousa recordings that was reissued at the time of the film (see below). This demonstrates that the brisk pace of the title march on the soundtrack is very much in line with Sousa's own rendition. I also hunted up an earlier acoustic recording of the same march and included it. The only real differences that I can discern are that the Newman version features the alternate triple-piccolo obbligato in the trio, and the acoustic recording includes a repeat.

The sound on all these records is pretty good, even though M-G-M didn't do its best work in transferring the recording from its rival studio. (This was the first time M-G-M had issued someone else's soundtrack.) Even the acoustic recording sounds good if you don't mind that the frequency response falls off a cliff at 4.5kHz.

The soundtrack includes several non-Sousa items, to vary the pace I'm sure. These include Hail to the Chief, the Light Cavalry Overture, and Turkey in the Straw, which I am sure you are looking forward to. The version of the Battle Hymn of the Republic features a choir, which is nameless on the record but identified on IMDB as the Stone Mountain Church Choir.

The soundtrack was transferred from the double-EP version of the 10-inch LP.