Smith Music Sales

[Brad T.]

I recently picked up a Smith Music Sales piston/rotor Contra. I've seen other various Smith Music bugles all over ebay through the years. Does anyone have any information about the company? Where they were from, how long they were in business, etc? It seems like they may have been somewhat popular, but not up to snuff with the big guys like Olds and Getzen.

Thanks all!

[nukeme70]

I recently picked up a Smith Music Sales piston/rotor Contra. I've seen other various Smith Music bugles all over ebay through the years. Does anyone have any information about the company? Where they were from, how long they were in business, etc? It seems like they may have been somewhat popular, but not up to snuff with the big guys like Olds and Getzen.

Thanks all!

I don't have any information on the origins of the Smith horns, other than every one that I've run across has been pretty garbage-ey. There was a Smith FH that popped up on ebay a couple years ago - interesting wrap design...basically wrapped like a concert FH with the bell coming up and parallel to the ground, but the centerline of the bell was pretty much at eye level.

[Scooter Pirtle]

I recently picked up a Smith Music Sales piston/rotor Contra. I've seen other various Smith Music bugles all over ebay through the years. Does anyone have any information about the company? Where they were from, how long they were in business, etc? It seems like they may have been somewhat popular, but not up to snuff with the big guys like Olds and Getzen.

Thanks all!

Hey Brad! Here's a little bit of info that I've collected on Smith Music Sales. I'm hoping I'll be corrected by some of the other contributors to this forum if I’m in error.

It's my understanding that Glenn C. Smith initially worked with the Grenadiers of Chicago during the 50s and started a business to contract bugle fabrication through other firms (initially through T.J. Getzen) that resulted in the “Smith Music Sales” badging that can be encountered on a wide array of valve/rotor bugles.

Smith Music Sales eventually became a large dealer that boasted of international accounts and sales to 3,000 drum and bugle corps. I have a letter from Smith that indicates his company eventually purchased the Holton/Ludwig bugle line and Bill Ludwig declared Smith Music Sales as the “largest parade drum dealer in Ludwig history.”

Smith has suggested that he was responsible for the creation of the French horn bugle, a small bore soprano he called the “Angel horn,” the flugelhorn, the bass baritone, a double sized contrabass, and the mellophone. He contended he did this design work with the help of Bob Spevacek, John Gates, Bill Scarlett, and even Arnold Jacobs.

During the 50s, Smith Music Sales outsourced bugle construction to German-based firms and possibly other Euro-based fabricators.

Smith eventually entered the seminary and as of 1996 was a retired priest residing in Chandler, Arizona.

He had serious issues with the article I prepared for the Drum Corps History book, particularly the sections that addressed the evolution of the bugle from 1940 to 1970. In fact, he threatened to sue me over the article!!! How many people get lawsuit threats from a a priest?!? I felt horrible about the encounter and the incident prompted me to leave the activity "cold turkey" for over 10 years.

It’s very possible that I erred by not including much more information about Smith Music Sale’s contribution to the drum corps activity. However, it was very difficult to verify a lot of the information that I received from him.

Edited May 28, 2011 by Scooter Pirtle

[Howdy]

Smith had some really nice baritones, and some not so great contras.

[goalieguy]

I recall that MBI had Smith mellophones and contras back when I started in '72..maybe even some sops..mellos had a slip slide on the rotor to 'try' and keep them in tune..no easy task..I think we had them around until '75 when I think they bought some Getzens..I played the 1st MBI Olds piston/rotor mello in '79..what a difference!..

I seem to remember one of our sop players 'making' his own horn out of about 4 or 5 different horns, and I was almost positive the rotor and back end came from a Smith..

Pat

[HornsUp]

I seem to remember one of our sop players 'making' his own horn out of about 4 or 5 different horns, and I was almost positive the rotor and back end came from a Smith.

I remember, too.

Summer of '76, Middleton WI, I was showing a prototype of Zig's American Command 2-piston soprano. Minnesota guy with a big grin on his face hands me this Frankenhorn, wrapped quite oddly. Getzen bell and Bach trumpet leadpipe, and a variety of innards.

[goalieguy]

I remember, too.

Summer of '76, Middleton WI, I was showing a prototype of Zig's American Command 2-piston soprano. Minnesota guy with a big grin on his face hands me this Frankenhorn, wrapped quite oddly. Getzen bell and Bach trumpet leadpipe, and a variety of innards.

The guy I'm thinking about was Jim Thomas,(about your height BTW) who still lives in St. Cloud or thereabouts where he still does instrument repair..

I still remember that show in Middleton - just about our only bus ride that year..That was Porkchop's very first drum corps trip..We still have pictures..He was 13..Joined the line the next year.

Pat

[bill]

Smith also offered a conversion kit to convert the G-D bugle to G-F.

[HornsUp]

Scooter did a bit of homework here, I can verify most of it and add some more goodies.

Smitty first gained notoriety as the DM of the Austin Grenadiers, whose hooliganism was legendary when I got into this activity. Then for a while he somehow became the bandmaster at a Catholic boys HS (Weber IIRC).

He was in the bugle sales business at least by 1959 when he brought his mobile shop to the AL Nationals. He took this operation to Miami for '61 VFW with two employees: Bob Spevacek former director and music man for the Madison Scouts, and nat'l champion snaredrummer Tony DeMarco.

Glenn had a storefront on W Fullerton Av for several years, then moved to one in Mount Prospect. He was the major source of Getzen bugles, while Tru Crawford set up shop across town and pushed the Holton-built Ludwig Classic line.

At the same time, Smith began putting his shield on bugles manufactured in Nuestadt-on-Aisch, West Germany. The factory was owned by Ernst Mödl, a family descendant of F.X. Hüller who had one of the many brass instrument factories in prewar Germany. It had been re-established after WWII through the Marshall Plan.

Mödl had previously built stencil bugles for Ludwig - the notorious "double-piston" models ~1961. The factory was essentially an assembly plant, with most components from other suppliers. The bells were spun in a bell-only factory in Gerhardsried, right across town from Meinl-Weston. Valve clusters and misc hardware were also sourced out, although the rotary valves were fabricated onsite. They had a crude drawbench, and could bend up all these components and then hold them together with baling wire while they soldered in a few random braces.

The none-too-great chromeplating was done in Nürnburg, but to keep things American the cases were manufactured in good old Elkhorn Wisconsin.

I was supposed to go to the factory in 1969 to do some QC and product development of a flügel model, but Uncle Sam had other ideas. So John Gates went over and mostly sat in the office while Fritz and Harald put together some concoctions. Nobody in the factory had ANY idea of how these instruments were being deployed.

Smith believed in the myth of Old World Craftsmanship, and didn't realize the level of brass playing in Germany was atrocious. So he never played them recordings of the corps.

Bill Scarlett, he once play-tested a couple of horns. Jake was a dinner guest of the Smith entourage one year when we found him wandering around the MidWest Band Clinic.

While all this was going on, Holton and Ludwig both decided to get out of the bugle business. With a personal loan from Bill Ludwig Jr., Glenn bought the remaining inventory of about 1000 Classic Sopranos. Truman closed his doors and went back into the military, and Larry McCormick was lurking.

The legalization of the G-F bugle had lured Olds into the business. With a superior product, they soon dominated the market. So Glenn Smith sold his business, a pig in a poke, to former employee Tony DeMarco.

Tony sent me to the factory for six weeks in the spring of 1972, to do QC and product development. But I realized the first time I walked through that facility that my assignment was hopeless. The facilities, the knowledge, and the craftsmanship just weren't there. I developed a set of prototypes, which were finished and shown at DCA that year. But it was too late, Herr Mödl passed away a month later and the factory closed.

Tony DeMarco had other successful business interests and didn't continue as Smithco.

Glenn Smith did enter the Catholic priesthood. I saw him much later at the 1992 DCI.

[Navillus WP]

When I joined the 27th Lancers in OCT 69 as a contra, we played 5 Smith contras and one King. All were converted with a G-F rotary kit - cobbled together, soldered & resoldered. Some of the baritones were Smith's. as well.

It was almost impossible to keep the Smith Bari's and contra's in tune from OTL to final fanfare. They often sounded tinny at triple fortissimo ("fff"), and tended to "blat" for the attack of a sforzando ("sff") unless you backed off, negating the intent that notation.

Other brass sections had a mish-mash of Smiths's as well as Getzen's, Whalley-Royce's, and King's. Many were part of the manager-to-manager "on loan" arrangements between Big Mike Mullan of the Majestic Knights of Charlestown (after they went inactive) and George Bonfiglio after the 'old' Reveries left the I.C. parish and restarted as Two-Seven.

In the winter of 1970-71 the Bonfilio's took out another 2nd mortagage on their home, - and among other things - started replacing horns with Olds Ultratone's. The Smith's were the first to go!

And, what a difference! Listen to any Two-Seven recording from 1969 or '70 and then compare them to 1971, or better still when the brass replacement program was complete for the start of the '72 season.

Edited June 6, 2011 by Navillus WP