Thursday, March 19, 2009

Ringling Bros. #1


Scan11439, originally uploaded by bucklesw1.

So great was John Philip Sousa's fame that even the conductor in the clown bands wore a beard.

Posted by Buckles at 3/19/2009 06:20:00 AM

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

The sustained interest in "Clown Bands" came into existence on the Ringling show in 1897. There were several claimants to being the originator.

There was an earlier effort on Barnum & London in 1882, the comic Rajade troupe, which did a band skit on stilts of varying heights. It's the subject of a familiar poster.

Forepaugh-Sells later had what they termed the "Soo-See" ragtime military band and John Robinson also had a "Soo-See" band. Gentry Bros.-James Patterson was content to have their own "Sou Zee" band.

19 March, 2009 08:41

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