From the Desk of Phil Woods
An Address to M. Adolph Sax In
Heaven
By DOUGLAS DUNN
Posterity will never forgive you,
Adolph Sax!
SATURDAY REVIEW OF LITERATURE
That solo in L’Arlesienne
Raised all the eyebrows. Music Hall
And the regiments of Europe
Took greatly to your saxophone.
No wonder Richard Wagner mused
Then called your brass cum
woodwind
Racenkreuzungslangwerkzeuge-
Hardly a German instrument.
Sir, I believe you were Belgian.
Yet it cannot be disrespectful
If I should say that a mouth
Natural to French was perfect
As that first embouchure
On your silver cosmopolitan.
Consider the clarinets of France!
Klose, Muller and Lefever!
At home now in the bands of Banff,
Sri-Lanka and the Soviet Union,
From red-coated Guards in the Mall
To marching High School orchestras
In North Dakota and Dar es Salaam,
In dancehalls in every city,
It no longer seems worth remembering
That your great gift to human ears
Should have been scorned right. Left, and
center,
On musical and moral grounds.
Cher maitre, take your place among
Bell, Edison and Baudelaire,
By the side of Darwin and Lister,
With Louis Paster and the poets,
With Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins,
Your oompah-oompah is tamenby art,
By the Count Basie Orchestra,
By Hodges, Zoot, Cohn and Charlie Parker,
By the frenetic breath of Sidney Bechet.
Allow me to re-introduce you
To the world. Ladies and Gentlemen!
I give you Adolph Sax,
The man who invented a noise!
This from the Internet by way of Mike
Melvoin.
When he was 2 years old he fell out of a
second story window and fractured his skull; when
the was 6 he mistakenly drank boric acid; when he was 9 he fell over a small cliff and broke
his
leg; when he was 11 he contracted measles and was in a coma for nine days;
when he was 14 he broke his arm when he caught it in a carriage door; when he was 19
he was struck
in the head by a falling brick; when he was 23 he almost died from the
effects of tainted wine; when he was 29 Adolph Sax invented the saxophone.
And this personal observation-
The
Belgian 200 franc note features a portrait of Adolph Sax on one side
and
Charlie Parker on the other.
It figures – they drink both beer and wine in Belgium.
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