Mr. Tuba

By Harvey Phillips

Indiana University Press

Copyright © 2012 Carol Phillips
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-253-00724-7

Contents

Foreword by David N. Baker,
Acknowledgments,
1 Growing Up in Missouri,
2 King Bros. Circus Band,
3 Traveling with the Greatest Show on Earth,
4 Juilliard, Studying with William J. Bell,
5 Freelancing 101,
6 Carol,
7 Chamber Music, New York Brass Quintet,
8 A New York Professional,
9 On Tour with the New York Brass Quintet,
10 Family, Friends, and Summer Activities,
11 New England Conservatory of Music,
12 The Search for TubaRanch,
13 Institute for Advanced Musical Studies,
14 Bassed in Bloomington,
15 Carnegie Hall Recitals,
16 Indiana University Retirement,
17 Renaissance of the Tuba: A Summary,
18 On Being a Teacher,
19 Performance Tips,
20 Coda,
Friends and Colleagues,
Appendix,
Index,

CHAPTER 1

Growing Up in Missouri

NEWS SPREAD QUICKLY in our small town of Marionville, Missouri. In mid-June 1947, when the preacher of my church heard that I would be “running away with the circus,” he drove to our house and asked to speak with my mother and me. As always, Mom greeted the preacher cordially and invited him into our parlor, a room kept prim and proper for the visits of preachers and insurance salesmen, every doily in place and everything clean and orderly. Reverend Gilbert was assigned the most comfortable chair while Mom sat on the front edge of another chair holding a handkerchief in her lap. I sat on the piano bench, in front of our old upright piano.

After friendly exchanges about the weather, vegetable gardens, and everyone’s health, Reverend Gilbert took a big breath and extolled lavishly about what a fine young man I was, what a great job I was doing as junior superintendent of the church and as president of the Methodist Youth Fellowship. I enjoyed that part of his visit. But suddenly his manner changed; his voice became dark and ominous and he stated, “From what I hear, this young man is going into a life of sin!” He then continued to express, through combined lecture and sermon, his opinions and what he had heard about the decadent morals of show business people, circus people especially, and how, as an innocent seventeen-year-old youth, I could easily be corrupted by association and temptations.

I was mesmerized by his tirade, but out of the corner of my eye I saw Mom slowly stand and inch crab-like toward the door, so as not to turn her back on the preacher. Then, just as she reached the door and the preacher took another deep breath to continue, Mom suddenly turned, and with a voice and conviction I have heard neither before nor since, said, “Reverend Gilbert, you don’t seem to have much faith in Harvey, but I do, and I’d like you to leave now!” I was dumbfounded, as was the preacher, who said no more and left.

Wow, I thought, Mom just threw the preacher out of our house! I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. I was admiringly respectful of Mom, for although she was obviously deeply hurt by the preacher’s words and attitude, she handled the matter beautifully and firmly. I never spoke to her about it, but, throughout my life, I have often thought about my mother’s faith in me, expressed that day, and it has given me confidence and the courage to tackle the next thing that needed to be done.

PHILLIPS FAMILY LEGEND

In the summer of 1861, Miles and Mary Phillips (my great-grandfather and great-grandmother) were asked to a meeting at the Shelbyville, Tennessee, schoolhouse near their home. As the meeting was called to order by their member of the state House of Representatives, they noticed rather cool feelings from some of their neighbors. The representative advised the gathering that the nation was in deep trouble over slavery. He noted that two or three states had already withdrawn from the nation and there would likely be more. He wanted to know the opinions of his constituents.

Miles Phillips stated that Tennessee should stay with the union and solve any problems with slavery locally. Several in the gathering expressed different views.

Miles and Mary discussed the safety of their family: Jesse, eighteen; Steve, almost sixteen; John, fourteen; James Anderson, twelve (my grandfather); and Wesley, nine. When they got home from the meeting, Jesse told them he was going to join the Union Army the next day. Early the next morning, Jesse saddled his horse and tied it to the hitching post near the porch. He said he would be leaving after breakfast and asked his mother to fix him a couple of ham sandwiches. Just before breakfast was over, several men on horseback came into the yard. Mary went out on the porch and asked the riders what they wanted. The leader told her he needed to talk to Jesse. Jesse said the man was Bully Smith, leader of a gang that had robbed farmers in the county and left several dead. Jesse, who had a ·38 revolver, said, “Mom. Let me kill him now and scatter his gang before they do something to us.” She said, “No, son. He just wants to talk to you. Don’t shoot anybody.”

Jesse went out. Bully Smith offered him a job with his gang, which Jesse declined. Then Bully Smith said, “Okay, Jesse, get on your horse and get out of here.” Jesse mounted his horse and started to leave. At that moment, Bully Smith said, “All right, boys, let’s give him a good sendoff.” The gang shot several times at Jesse. Two bullets hit him in his back and he fell off his horse. He got up to run toward the cedars but collapsed just as he got to the rail fence. The gang rode away at full speed. Miles and Mary ran to Jesse. He looked at his mother and said, “Mom, they got me,” and closed his eyes.

PARENTS MEETING

My parents met at a social (party) given by the students of the Marionville Methodist College in early May 1904. My father, Jesse Emmett Phillips (age twenty-two), happened to walk by where my mother, Lottie Amber Chapman (age fifteen), was sitting with some of her friends. Dressed in a suit and tie, he was a handsome young man. After he had passed by, she asked, “Who was tha-a-t?” He was making his own inquiries, asking, “Who is that attractive young lady?”

The following Saturday afternoon he visited her house, with a short buggy ride in mind. Lottie’s mother answered the knock on the door and Jesse courteously introduced himself. He told her of his interest in her daughter and said he would soon be going away to continue his studies at Springfield Business College, which would leave little time for him to court Lottie. Lottie’s mother was favorably impressed by Jesse, though his visit caught her by surprise. She agreed that he could take Lottie for a very short buggy ride. Thus, their courting was approved, thanks to the old adage about the importance of making a good first impression.

Emmett (Lottie’s favored name for him, which stuck) and Lottie’s actual first date came a week later. It was an eighteen-mile round-trip buggy ride to a Sunday morning church service at the McKinley Christian Church, attended by Emmett and his family every week. Activities of churches and schools, such as picnics, pie suppers, square dances, and cakewalks, were always good courtship opportunities. Courting at the turn of the century had charm.

While attending Mt. Vernon High School, Lottie dated another young man. One of Emmett’s friends wrote him and advised, “If you want to keep your girl Lottie, you had better do something about it.” Emmett recoiled like a fired cannon! He packed his belongings, left Springfield, and went directly to Lottie’s house. The first thing he said to her was, “Will you marry me?” Lottie replied, “Yes, I’ll marry you.” The courtship had lasted for eight months. Lottie left high school in the middle of her junior year and Emmett withdrew from Springfield Business College. They married on January 1, 1905, bought a farm with Mom’s inheritance from her grandfather, and started a family.

I was born December 2, 1929, at 4:30 AM in a little house on West Tyndall Street in Aurora, Lawrence County, Missouri, and named Harvey Gene. I was the tenth child of ten: six girls and four boys, including Jesse Emmett Phillips Jr. (1910–1928), a brother I never knew because he died from tuberculosis, seventeen months before my birth.

A MUSIC-LOVING FAMILY

Music first came to me from my mother’s humming and singing lullabies and church hymns. Music also came from my father, a good country fiddler who inspired occasional family “musicales” with uncles joining in playing guitars, mandolins, harmonicas, Jew’s harps, spoons, jugs, washboard, and piano. Refreshments for these gatherings always included apples and apple cider from the cellar, buttered popcorn, popcorn balls, and surprise pitch-in dishes from the womenfolk. A well-laden table of country cooking was enjoyed by everyone.

Sometimes the entire family harmonized voices, with or without instruments. We sang, hummed, whistled, or tapped out rhythms. Inanimate objects could suddenly be transformed into musical instruments. Music heartened spirits and helped our family survive hardships, including the death of a family member and the loss of all property and savings in the Depression of the 1930s.

THE PHILLIPS DEPRESSION FAMILY—1933

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt began his presidency in 1933, we couldn’t have known that he would lead us for the duration of the Depression and a second world war. No one knew if his policies would be successful. But what a godsend he proved to be during the hard times experienced by the entire United States, especially by Midwest farmers.

In the Depression, we lost the farm. Like many Depression-era families, we moved frequently. By the age of ten, I had lived in nine houses, all in Lawrence County. We moved as Dad was hired by someone who had bought a foreclosed farm. Only one house had electricity and indoor water. We used outhouses and kerosene lamps, and pumped drinking water from an outdoor well, a bucket at a time.

How our old upright piano survived all those moves is a mystery. Also, since Mom seemed determined to preserve her reputation for having the cleanest house in the county, she scrubbed every square inch of every house we moved into or out of.

Household pets (two cats, two dogs) and our ever-changing collection of farm animals (twelve to sixteen chickens, two to four pigs, two to three dairy cows, one to two beef steers, two draft horses) moved with us.

It takes a farm family to appreciate the importance of homegrown vegetables, chicken, pork, and beef, plus wild nuts and berries, as the major part of the family’s diet, keeping us fed, healthy, and happy. Our shopping lists were very simple: flour, coffee, cornmeal, salt, and sugar. The rest we produced ourselves.

Mom and Dad were determined that family activities remain orderly regardless of the length of residency between moves. We were welded together by love and concern for one another, determined that in our moving the only things that changed were the houses, the schools, the teachers, and the neighbors.

1935–1936: ENTERING FIRST GRADE

In September 1935, at age five, I started first grade at the Elm Branch School, a one-room school for the first eight grades. It was a two-and-a-half-mile walk from home. Although I hadn’t met many of the other thirty or so students, I knew my sisters Virginia (grade four) and Georgia (grade seven).

On the first day of school, wanting to get better acquainted, the teacher asked the students what their favorite day of the year was. She got lots of Christmases, Thanksgivings, July Fourths, and a few birthdays. When she asked me what my favorite day was, I stood up and said Fool’s Day (April 1). The teacher and students laughed, but that was the day my family played tricks on each other. The teacher should have known right then that I was going to be trouble.

At home, I was used to competing in ciphering matches and spelling bees. Just being in school couldn’t stop me from competing. This was a problem. When the teacher was teaching the first grade students I felt it was my privilege to answer all the questions before anyone else could. That went on, right through the eighth grade lessons, no matter the subject. The teacher’s demeanor finally changed from courteous and patient to angry and annoyed. If she should ask the fourth grade class, “How much is thirteen plus seventeen?”, before anyone else could speak, I would shout, “Thirty!” Georgia later explained to Mom, “Old bigmouth Harvey jumped on every answer.”

When the teacher finally started whispering to each class, “Old Elephant Ears” (another description by sister Georgia), I heard her and replied to everything—even when she put me in the farthest corner facing the wall. One day the teacher finally lost her patience and spanked me, and I ran off, saying I was going home.

After about ten minutes of rational thinking, the teacher decided that maybe she should have kept me in school and dealt with me through my parents, so she instructed Georgia and another older girl to find me and bring me back to school. I saw them coming from a distance and knew they could outrun me, so I waded out into the creek, clothes and all, until the water was up to my chin.

After Georgia and Virginia related to Mom and Dad all the things I did at school, I got another spanking. For some time I seemed to average two spankings a day, one at school and one at home. There is an old saying, “Spare the rod and spoil the child.” Well, I can say without fear of contradiction that I was not spoiled!

CHORES BEFORE BREAKFAST

The winter of 1936–1937 was severe. Lots of wintry winds, sleet, and snow. No one knows what cold is until they’ve awakened with snow in their room and on their bed, and most especially the coldness of a linoleum floor on bare feet, which wakes you up fast. When we went to bed in such weather we treasured the warm flatirons and the multiple numbers of blankets and homemade quilts Mom put on each bed.

Although I awakened each morning at 4:30–5 AM, Mom would already be singing in the kitchen, making breakfast, which always included fresh, hot, homemade biscuits with fresh-churned butter, sorghum molasses, several kinds of jelly, and always some kind of gravy, depending on what meat she fried any particular day. The eggs were always fresh. I knew Dad was already contenting our two cows before milking by talking to them and giving them scoops of bran, which they ate while being milked. My oldest brother, Campbell, was busy chopping a hole in the frozen pond for the livestock, then feeding scratch to the chickens, including our precise “alarm clock” crowing roosters. He would then feed the pigs their slop, kept warm by the kitchen stove.

Meanwhile, I had six box rabbit traps to tend to before breakfast. The traps were placed in fence rows and rock piles and baited with kernels of field corn. When I caught a rabbit, I would prepare it for Mom to soak in salted milk overnight for the next morning’s breakfast. Mom would bread and fry the rabbit, which was delicious.

My sister Hazel would often visit with her children Bobby and Wilma Sue, who were near my age. One July day, inspired by Fourth of July fireworks, Bobby and I got Dad’s hammers and about twenty of his .22-caliber long-rifle shells. All the shells were smashed to the thinness of a penny. We loudly protested when none would fire. Mom and Hazel nearly fainted when they saw what we were doing. Dad couldn’t understand why they didn’t explode.

When Mom, Dad, and Campbell shopped for food in Mt. Vernon, Georgia, Virginia, Wilma Sue, Bobby, and I roamed the stores, deciding how to spend the nickel Campbell had given to each of us. One Saturday afternoon, we noticed men of varying ages in uniforms, with musical instruments, gathering on the Mt. Vernon Courthouse lawn. Chairs and music stands had been set up for them and the cacophony of woodwind and brass instruments warming up got ever more urgent until one of the players stood up and waved his hands for silence. One musician then sustained a single note while all the others tried to play the same note. When satisfied by their efforts, the standing player sat down and there was total silence.

ENTER MAJOR HOMER F. LEE

A tall man with dark sunken eyes and a huge smile then strode to the front of the band, waved a small white stick and, magically, the Freistatt Town Band started to play. I was captivated. It was the first live band I had ever heard. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. When the band finished a selection, people sitting in their parked cars surrounding the town square honked and tooted their horns, while those sitting or standing about applauded and whistled.

The band was from a town close to Monett, Missouri. Its conductor was Major Homer F. Lee, a renowned circus bandmaster and a proud native son of Verona, Missouri, where his family had a farm. Thus went my first band concert and my first experience with Homer Lee. I couldn’t have known what a prominent role he would later play in my life.

In the fall of 1939, in the midst of the annual apple harvest, we moved a final time, to Marionville, known as “The Apple Capital of Missouri” and “home of the white squirrels.” We had purchased a three-room house on two acres of land in Marionville for $500 down and mortgage payments of five dollars a month. Buying a house in Marionville was the right thing to do. It was time for Dad (fifty-eight) and Mom (fifty-two) to prepare for their senior years, and the location was terrific. The property was at the intersection of Youngblood and Lynn Streets, less than a mile from the town square, on the northwest side of town. Looking west there were no houses to block beautiful sunsets; looking north was a large open field of pasture running up to the edge of a forest some two miles distant. Looking northwest was a forty-acre peach and apple orchard, one of several owned by G. E. Jackson. Looking east or south, good neighbors were a full block away.

(Continues…)Excerpted from Mr. Tuba by Harvey Phillips. Copyright © 2012 Carol Phillips. Excerpted by permission of Indiana University Press.
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