Posted by fred young on November 24, 2003 at 19:37:40:
In Reply to: A story posted by dp on November 24, 2003 at 16:26:33:
In the late 1950s or early 1960s I was visiting Arnold Jacobs back stage just before a concert. He asked me to hold his tuba whilst he went to the rest room. He said I could play it if I wished. He vanished behind a curtain and I tried to blow his tuba. Hardly any sound came out of that large York. Several CSO musicians were watching me. I took my largest breath a bar or two of Die Meistersinger solo. Then Arnold appeared from behind the curtain and took his tuba after asking me how I liked it. I told him it played like a sousaphone I had in high school when a grapefruit was stuck in it. It was near the end of the season and Mr. Jacobs said he had been having trouble for several weeks and was considering giving up the tuba because it was such hard work to play. I suggested he have a repair shop look it over because there was something stuck in it. The next season when I stopped by to see him he told me that a large shoe brush was stuck around the first bend in his tuba and that upon removal he and his tuba returned to normal. It seems that it fell off a cabinet next to his tuba which was propped bell up in a corner next to the cabinet. Ron Bishop and Bob Tucci, then Arnold's students, had been looking for something in the cabinet and when they shut the cabinet door the shoe brush on top of the cabinet fell into Mr. Jacob's tuba. I assume that later Arnold picked up his tuba and rotated in such a direction the brush travelled further in and got stuck!
The brush really stuffed it up terribly!!