August 1, 2023 • 54 mins
Today the saxophone is a well-known musical instrument, popular across the planet. But, when you learn the story of its inventor Adolphe Sax, you quickly learn it's amazing he survived long enough to invent the saxophone in the first place. In today's episode, Ben, Max and returning special guest Lauren Vogelbaum dive deep into Sax's bizarre -- dare we say ridiculous -- habit of repeatedly injuring himself and almost dying due to any number of nearly-unbelievable accidents.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous Histories, a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome to the show,
(00:27):
Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much for tuning in.
Let's hear it for the Man, the myth, the legend,
our super producer Max, the soprano Williams. You like that one?
Speaker 2 (00:40):
You like that one. It's like a soprano saxophone, like
high and loud and annoying.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Oh that's how we're starting today.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Folks.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
They call me Ben my pal nol is on some adventures.
We'll be returning soon and in the meantime, we are
thrilled to welcome a returning special guest, a longtime partner
and podcast Crime with Me, Lauren Vogelbaum. Lauren, thanks for
coming back on the show.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Hello, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Yeah. So, the last time you were on Ridiculous History,
you and our dear friend June explored how houses can
legally be haunted.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Yes, physically there's a question, but legally they can absolutely
be haunted, which is nuts.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
I totally took that research and brought it to our
friends at the Daily Zeitgeist. Oh and they were like, hey,
what's some interesting about your search history? So thank you
for letting me crib that anytime. Yes, So I was
thinking before we get into today's show, we were talking
about this off air. I realized that I have lost
track of just how many projects you and I have
(01:48):
worked together on over the years.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
I that is a very good question, because we've been
working together for Nilla Loon in our twelve or thirteen years. I.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Wow, Yeah, I guess that's right.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Yeah. I think the first stuff that we worked on
together was the brain Stuff video series when we did.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
That, right, wow. And you I can name several of
the many things that you have done. You are the
head writer and host of brain Stuff, which continues in
podcasts form today. Yes, and you are creator and co
host of Saver, which is one of my favorite food podcasts.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Oh, thank you, thank you. Yeah. Yeah, that one's a
conversational food show that that I do along with Annie Reese.
And yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Sometimes we get to go to wacky places and talk
to wacky people, but mostly it's just like what is
up with artichokes?
Speaker 2 (02:42):
So I want to jump in here, Lauren. I do
actually miss cutting y'all's ads behind the scenes. For about
a year. When I first started at iHeart, I cut
Annie and Lauren's ad reads and it was a real joy.
Producer Andrew Howard always asked me, He's like, you know,
you don't have to do this. I'm like, you know,
it actually kind of brains my day. Like, you know,
the week they were really busy. I didn't enjoy it
(03:03):
as much, but like you know, you kind of bummed down.
Let's see what type of high jinks any Lauren are getting.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Into over here and what kind of curse words.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Lots of curts Worth.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I buttoned it up on air most
of the time. But but I'd say that other than
maybe Holly Fry, I am one of the customist people
here at iHeart.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
And actually, just to get back on again, you said
Halley from Everything About You two were like the first
two people I worked at at this job. I cut
all the generic ads for the company along with the
ones for stuff you missed an insta class with Holly Fry.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Yeah, so we're going back old days like three years ago.
Oh yeah, as long as you guys, Bud.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
No, Hey, you've got your stretch and the last three
years have been a very long three years, to be fair.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
That's true. That is true. You feel like they feel
like they were longer than they were supposed to be,
and we are also currently can't say too much about
it yet, folks. Currently, Lauren, you and I are working
on Thirteen Days of Halloween. We've also done you do
a lot of voice work. We've also both played roles,
(04:08):
I think recently on a show called Remus the Bootleg King.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Yeah, yeah, you were. You were the titular Remus, Yes,
the bootleg Ging.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
I have yet again been asked to play an unhinged lunatic.
Thank you, Max, Thank you for that understanding not.
Speaker 5 (04:24):
Getting asked to play play all right, Yeah, just wait
for my book that's coming out in about like three
four years working for Ben Bolan, The Unhinged Lunatic with
Oh Hey, there you go Forward by Paul Decant.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Oh no, yeah, I got to I got to play
Remus's wife and that one. And it's certainly the most
times I've ever said daddy in my life. So that's
absolutely fine and not weird at all. Now, I'm glad
that we recorded that separately. I'm not sure if I
could have done it in the same room.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Yeah, I was thinking that I was thinking of the
same thing. Honestly, when I learned about that and we
speaking to fantastic segue. Yes, we're here to talk about
something that I think. It's a story not a lot
of people know, and I was. I was kind of
surprised when our good pal Tyler Klang brought this up.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Oh okay, this this is a story that I've talked
about on a show that sadly just ended called American Shadows.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Oh you talked about this?
Speaker 4 (05:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
The structure of that show is, you know, like a
three act structure, and so we had had a beginning
and an epilogue and then a longer part in the middle,
and this was one of our beginning parts.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Oh nice, We are talking about one of my favorite instruments,
and hopefully I'm not alone in this, the saxophone, right
are you? Are you? What's your saxophone stays?
Speaker 3 (05:44):
I'd say that I'm a middling I mean, I like
a saxophone. I do not dislike a saxophone. I can't
I can't proclaim myself a top tier fan of the saxophone,
right right.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
I feel you.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
I think that's got some nostalgia for a lot of
people that generation, because you grew up with uh with
saxophones and sitcoms. Oh yeah, I mean, and so many
eighties and nineties things.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
Yeah, you had the good like yacht rock phase. Yeah yeah,
I mean, but I but I love a smooth jazz,
so absolutely I do.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
I love.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
I like waiting room jazz, you know what I mean? Yeah,
I like I like to sit in the waving room
and look around and like, hey, I wonder what's wrong
with that one? Uh kidding? I kid, But it turns
out as as you know from American chantos, the story
of the saxophone is a story of near misses. We
(06:40):
are so close to living in a world where the
saxophone is not a thing.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
Right there, Yeah, like so close to zero saxophones.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
I mean. The guy who and I say this with
diplomacy and sincerity, the guy who invented the saxophone was
absolute klutz.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Yep yep, yep. Yeah. The episode he appeared in was.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Called Lucky Nice.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
Yeah, I know, he almost died a bunch of times,
all the time, constantly, like his mother joked about it.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Yeah, and how much of that was a joke? Right?
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Like?
Speaker 3 (07:15):
Probably not right?
Speaker 1 (07:16):
So we called this guy or his friends and his
family called him Adolph Adulte already zacks, Yeah, adulphe Sachs.
He was born in Antoine Joseph Sachs November sixth, eighteen fourteen,
in a city that is now part of modern day Belgium.
It's called the not And you know, he had a
(07:38):
big family, but he did not have a poor family.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
Right because his dad was a fairly famous woodworker of instruments.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
M hmm.
Speaker 4 (07:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
He was good at it too. He was gifted such
that William the First of Orange, who was the ruly
monarch at the time, commissioned Sachs to create instruments for
the Belgian military. So he got a government contract. Yeah yeah,
you know, Max and you and I don't make musical instruments,
(08:10):
but that sounds like it's a pretty sweet gig.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
I mean, especially at the time, you know, like you
didn't really have a giant corporation that could be in
charge of you, so it was pretty much just the
government or just a random rich person being like, oh sure,
please art for me. That would be terrific.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
Right, yeah, that's a really good point. So so as
a result of this, our boy, Adolfe Sachs, he grows
up in a very musical environment, he thrives in this
he thrives.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
In this world.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
And a lot of what we know about this time
comes from Joe Santi at the Museum of Musical Instruments
in Brussels.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
Yeah, it turns out, for a number of reasons, there's
not actually that much history written at like like during
his lifetime. We're going to get more into that later.
But but yes, from what we do know, he was
born into a family of eleven children, although only four
of them survived to adulthood.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Yeah yeah, and given the time, we might assume with
some reason that a lot of that would be due
to child mortality. But those the other kids died between
the ages of twenty and twenty five, so they made
it into adulthood. What we're saying is it wasn't all
you know, trumpets and angel farts for this guy. He
(09:29):
did have saxophones angel farts or saxophones and angel farts. Yes,
he was very clever, He was very talented kid. He
was making clarinet. Oh, his dad let him use the workshop.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
Oh yeah, whenever we wanted ye come through. Yeah yeah,
And apparently he was a total prodigy at it.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Right, like making clarinets when he was fourteen or fifteen,
and he didn't just replicate the design of the clarinet.
He improved it by changing the locations of the holes
through which the wind goes.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
I am not a.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Clarinet s wind wind scientist. I'm not a wind doctor.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Yeah, and Sex was a wind doctor. But but that
wasn't the only medium that he worked in. He also
apparently made some ivory flutes, which I am also not
a wind doctor. But but other people thought that that
was impossible at the time, So I guess that's pretty
(10:30):
okay for you know, an actual teenager.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
I know there's a lot of stuff about the changing
of you know, the process of making flutes, because we
got into this when we did Library of Congress to
talk about the glass flutes. Be I think Noel talked
about this because this is way more in Nol's spectrum. Yeah,
the guy who knows about the stuff is the one
we don't have here right now. Perfect But like they were,
they were really experimenting, trying out and they didn't settle
(10:55):
with ivory because that's kind of inhumane at this point.
Make sure stuff out ivory. But like I feel like
that was the material that had like the best sounding
of them at that point, because I'm I don't know,
I'm out of my oleman too, but I remember us
talking about that.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Something, right, right, Like the glass the glass flute, which
Lizzo famously played recently, is a is a marvel. And
the ivory itself. First, ivory is expensive, that's a flex.
They weren't so very worried about animal rights in the
eighteen hundreds. Yep, this this impressed people, but unfortunately, given
(11:33):
Sax's young age, this also garnered him a couple of
what we would describe as haters in the modern day. Yeah,
the couple, Yeah, who is this kid?
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Right? And so he gets a reputation over time for
making not just clarinets but also flutes and trumpets that
are better than the than those of the established instrument
makers of the day. When he's twenty years old, again,
just twenty, he makes a brand new clarinet that has
(12:07):
twenty four keys. Then he makes a bass clarinet, and
people are starting to say, wow, these other non Sax clarinets,
those are barbarian instruments, which is just weirdly aggressive.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Did they literally call them barbarian instruments? Is that a quote?
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (12:28):
That's a quote that comes from that actually I think
comes from the website of his hometown.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
Huh. Yeah, I did not know that clarinet players were
that agro, but I guess I appreciate it. Yeah, apparently
people were like jealous and mad about it, like not
just mad, mad with a hy mad about it. I
guess the soloist at the Great Royal Harmony in Brussels
(12:59):
refused to use this thing, even though it was ostensibly better,
because it had come from And again I quote that
weedy little pupil sax.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
You can call people weedy. That just seems like a strange,
strange thing, strange insult.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
I mean, I guess you know it. It makes sense.
It's kind of like kind of like noodley but but
but wheat.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
But it worked out though. We little poopa whatever that
word is.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Because there's a big poopa. Why don't we talk about
the little poopa?
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Yeah, a little poopa?
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Also weedy sort of sounds like a sound the saxophone
mix Max, can we get a saxophone sound?
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Oh yeah, that Clarence.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Oh my goodness, it's amazing. Now now I think weedy
is cool.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
We're bringing back weedy.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
This is some extra weedy music.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
So okay, So so there's this insult, right, the clarinet
soloist at the Great Royal Harmony in Brussels says, I'm
not you're weedy, bro, I'm not using your clarinet, and
then Sachs, who is also a multi instrumentalist, says, okay,
play your clarinet then, and I shall play mine. And
(14:21):
they did it in front of like four thousand people.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
And he became a soloist and people started writing works
for him, and after he left they just put them
down because they were too difficult for anyone else to play.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
And now let's fast forward. It's eighteen forty, he is
twenty six years old. He presents nine of his new works,
his new kind of instruments that he's been working on,
to the Belgian exhibition, and the judges don't give him
first prize, not because he's bad.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
Not because the instruments were of lower quality, but because
he was so young that they were like, this isn't
fair to people who have been working in the industry longer.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
Right, which is a lot like someone saying there's someone
else in line for the Olympic medal, right, right, right,
it did run faster.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
But yeah, yeah, they did give him a medal, but
not the gold.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Yeah, and he was a total jerk about it too.
Oh yeah yeah yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
Apparently he said, if they think me too young to
deserve the gold medal, I myself think me too old
to accept this.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
For Meal one, I didn't know what for Meal was,
Oh it's like gold plated.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Yeah yeah, it's like it's like it's like chinzy, It's
like it's like, oh, it's not not really gold.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Okay. So he was insulted that they offered him Oh yes, okay,
and he dissed the institution pretty hard because he didn't
want to accept these strictures, these traditions, these legacies, the
current musical regime. And if you look at his childho,
it's no wonder that he gave no f's and took
(16:05):
no s you know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (16:06):
Yeah, Yeah, he had already lived.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
Through a lot. That's why I think drew all three
of us to this story, because while other children were
having normal childhoods, you know, for the eighteen hundreds, for
the eight sure, for the eighteen hundred, the occasional plague,
probably a lot of dysentery, Sachs was always almost dying.
(16:34):
He had all these bizarre brushes with death that were
right out of the Final Destination film franchise.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
And Okay, as we said before, there aren't a whole
lot of primary resources that are that are really strenuously
in a research way backing this information up. But from
what we can confirm from the best of our interneting,
right and that nice museum. M Yeah, he almost died
(17:04):
constantly so many times.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Right it Uh, it's that's because he was notorious for
being klutz and to your point on American Shadows, either
very lucky or very unlucky on how you look at it. Yeah, so, uh,
all the way back, and this is something you guys
talked about on this show, all the way back to
(17:27):
when he was so young that he could barely walk.
He fell like the equivalent of three stories. I heard
sometimes that he fell from a tree, and then sometimes
I heard he fell downstairs.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
Yeah. I think that we reported the fell down three
flights of stairs one in American Shadows. But either way,
it's a lot of height from which to fall, and
all stories agree that he really clogged his head.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
Right, Yeah, And so everybody immediately assumes this kid is dead.
Oh sure.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Yeah, and the report of how injured he was ranged
from like he was he was bedridden for like a
week to like he was straight in a coma, and.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
They said, well, I guess we should have ten other
children just to hedge our bets.
Speaker 4 (18:15):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
This that all happened before he was what three years old,
So that's his first brush with death.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
Uh huh uh huh.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
Not long after that, he wound up. So he took
a drink out of, you know, whatever the glass wearer
of the day was, and he thought it was milk.
It was not milk. It was vitriolized water aka sulfuric
acid with water.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Oh right, yeah, he was. He was wrong about that one.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
He was wrong about the milk, but it somehow didn't
murder him.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
So naturally, of course, not long after that, he swallows
a needle, like a big old needle, yes, yeah, like
an eighteen hundreds needle. Yeah, like a before safety standards needle,
and he survives. I think that one is also impressive
given the state of medicine and hygiene at the time, right, Yeah,
(19:09):
the needle would not have been sterilized.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
Oh, certainly not. I think I think it. I think
it passed through his system from from what I understand,
and it did not pierce his intestines and you know
did as nature intents with things other than needles passed
right out.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
That's so crazy. Yeah, and for those of us playing
along at home, that's already three close brushes.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
Yeah, and three close brushes at the age at which
someone is still swallowing pins because they just think it's lulls,
you know, like like this is this is like under
the age of ten for sure behavior mm hmm yeah,
probably under the age of seven.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
And each of these incidents could have led to a
world without a saxophone Max. Maybe something a little bittersweet.
Oh perfect, perfect.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
There we go, heads up to everyone listening. I have
no way to actually know what any of these sound
like before I play them, so it's a it's a guest.
I did know that that one was not going to
be better sweet.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
Though, Okay, yeah, I thought it worked, Yeah yeah, yeah.
So we're pulling out all the stops because because we've
we've got an illustrious guest here. So later on he
gets burned and a gunpowder explosion that's number four.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Uh huh. I've heard that it like threw him across
the room.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
You know, it's nuts. We have a good friend of
the show, Rachel Lance, who is the Worlds who is
a world class authority on explosions, especially underwater explosions.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
Good good friend of the show.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
Yeah, it's a good person to have on speed dial,
you know what I mean, Like, hey, Doc Lance, there
might be some explosions. I got a couple of quick questions. Yes,
So I bring that up to say, when there is
an explosion powerful enough to throw someone, Oh, it's not
like how we see in film. It's not something that
(21:10):
people instantly get up after.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
Oh sure, no, no, no no. And that wasn't the
only that wasn't the only brush with fiery death that
he had, because the next one is that I I
guess there was a cast iron pan on a stove
and he kind of like tripped into it, just just
just wamp kind of uh huh, and just really really
(21:36):
did a number on himself. I mean, you know, And
that's that's cast iron gets quite hot and it holds
heap very well. So yeah, that's bad.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
And then it continues. So that's number five.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
That's number five.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
We can count disasters six, seven, and eight as a
group we talked about this off air, right, like all
the times he almost asphyxiated.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
Yeah, these are actually my favorite because it's such like
an artist thing to do. Okay, So he almost suffocated
himself more than once, more than twice, at least three
times because he just kept varnishing things and then going
to sleep in the room where they were drying without
properly ventilating it. And I feel like as artists, like
I mean like like, I mean, like we're writers, so
(22:21):
we have like slightly less danger.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Sure, but but I love that.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
I just love that. I love it when you're just
arting too hard to bother thinking about, you know.
Speaker 4 (22:32):
Not dying.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Sure. I've walked into my brother doing something like this
before and I'm like, what are you doing, Alex?
Speaker 1 (22:39):
It's Alex Williams who composed this track. And I don't know.
Can Alex play the saxophone?
Speaker 4 (22:45):
Ah?
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Maybe a little.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
I don't think he plays everything else?
Speaker 2 (22:49):
Yeah, I mean I I think he might some. I
don't think he's ever played that much read instrument. Okay, caution,
he's percussion, he's obviously.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
He gave me a great little melodica.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Yeah, I think brass and reed though stuff he hasn't
played that much. But you know what, I'm also based
on this off of like, you know, when we lived
together in high school. Yeah, and we are not in
high school any longer. We are old, old old credits.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
Now, well, the varnish can still get you. The point
of that is keep a window open, yes, always. But then,
of course he almost dies a couple other times.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
Oh yeah, there were a couple more public accidents that happened.
I guess. In one he was just walking down the
street minding his own sax business and a roof paver
or something like slid right down and conked him on the.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
Head, like cartoon stych.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
Sure, yeah, yeah, this was it was probably from acme, right.
And then there was another time that he fell into
a river and was rescued by a stranger who happened
to be passing by and like noticed that this kid
was floating face down.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Which that is sobery, that's frightening. And this all leads
us to that quote you mentioned when even even his
parents acknowledged this this kid at a situation.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
Yeah, they were like, heck and hecket sacks, could you
please could you get your stuff together? Man? Yeah, his
his mother there's a quote from his mother. Again, I'm
not totally sure where we're getting this from, but apparently
she said he's a child condemned to misfortune, he won't.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Live and in the district, in the neighborhood, his street
name was Little Sax the Ghost.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
That's a good street name. Yeah, right, right, could we
get some ghostly secks?
Speaker 2 (24:41):
We can try.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
WHOA nailed it?
Speaker 2 (24:48):
I'm not hearing gonna be sexs phone?
Speaker 3 (24:50):
Yeah that doesn't sound like a sex Yeah, I mean,
but let's.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Give a second. We're doing this live, y'all.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Yeah, listen along with let's let's see what the second
comes in.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
There.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
It is.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Like, butta my dude, that's high quality. Yeah, now, I
just kind of want to hang out and hear this
all right now, this would be weird music to hear
in a waiting room. Oh well, yeah, like what are
you waiting there?
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Right?
Speaker 1 (25:23):
So, Little Sacks the Ghost does reach adulthood, yes, and
he is. He feels that Paris is calling him. He
has the dream of traveling to France, and so he does.
In the eighteen forties. He has only thirty francs in
his pocket, so he's a real success story. There's something
(25:45):
romantic about being this talented musician. I'm in Paris. I'm
gonna make my own way. I'm going to redefine music
going to the big city there it is.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
Yeah, and all of this was you know, this was
after the Revolution, Napoleon's reign, and so Paris was a
little bit nutty little miss at the time. Sure yeah, yeah, yeah,
but there was still money to be made from the military.
So like his father before him, Sachs got some contracts
(26:18):
with the French military, or similar to like his father
before him.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
Right, yeah, which is fascinating to me because that's such
a weirdly specific career or flex. I never thought about it,
but I guess, so what does have to make all
those musical instruments and at this time they're making a
lot of them by hand?
Speaker 3 (26:39):
Yes, well, I mean, and there are still military bands,
but I think that they were more of a phenomenon
at this time than they are currently. You know, people
didn't have Netflix. They had to make their own fun.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
Right yeah, that fun would be war complete with five
sure right. So he also is very very ambitious, this guy,
because he doesn't just want to make the same the
same old vanilla clarinet he starts inventing his own instruments,
and his dream is to bring his own brand new
(27:12):
instruments to these militaries. And in eighteen forty two, that's
when he really starts working on what would become the saxophone,
and the whole weird family.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
Host charmingly named family of other instruments that he just
put his own name in front of and I had
never heard of before. Because you have what the sax.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
Tuba, the sax horn.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
Perhaps my favorite, the sax troumba.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
Sax tromba.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
I don't know what that is, but I want to
hear it.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
Hey, yeah, okay, we're gonna have to dig in on
that one. I think that's a deep cut.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Yeah, because none of these ever really made it anywhere,
certainly not the way that the saxophone did.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Right, And he also didn't name it himself, so lest
we think his ambition led to some meglomaniacal thing, he
was not calling it a saxophone. He was right around
third a little bit. He's like right on the cusp
of becoming thirty years old when he starts making I know,
(28:16):
right when he starts making inroads in the Parisian music scene,
and though he could be an abrasive dude, he makes
He makes a friendship with a composer and a critic
named Hector Berlois. And these guys when they meet, they click.
They have like a Cloud Atlas moment and they're like,
what do you think about you know, clarinets. He's like
(28:38):
that shit's for barbarians or whatever they talk about, and
they burn them indnight oil and Sachs ends up pitching
this guy, this established Parisian musician. He's like, here's what
I think about everything. Here are my ideas we should
have instruments for the armies. I'm gonna do this thing
and that thing, and we pull to quote from his
(29:01):
hometown's website, it was it was kind of a It
was an awkward moment when Sas finally ran out of
steam and stopped talking.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
Huh, because apparently Burloyd's had just been listening to all
of this in silence. According to the hometown website, at
the end of this conference, he confided in Sacks, tomorrow
you will know what I think about the work you
have accomplished.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
That's cryptic.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
I would be pretty mad if I if I poured
my heart out my creative heart out. It's someone who was,
you know, like a decent buddy. Sure, and they were like, yeah,
I wanna get back to you tomorrow about that one.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
Yeah, exactly. It's it's a very strange thing, you know.
And then on June twelfth, eighteen forty two, Sax learns
that there's an article in this journal Beloy's writes for
and it's all about how great Sax is. Axe is
called as invention at this point the bass horn. Okay,
(30:05):
but it's Hector who gives it the name. We know
it by today.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
Yeah, and can we can we get can we get
some music in the background for this quote? Sure, I
don't know what mood I want.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
Oh I got one right here. It's called sticky Wicket.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
Okay, okay, all right.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
The description says strip tease for superheroes.
Speaker 3 (30:31):
Oh no, I hear that.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
Yeah, yeah, I can see that. Okay, this is this
is a good vibe.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
This is good. Okay, all right.
Speaker 3 (30:36):
The beats a little bit fast, but let's see, let's
see what we can do with this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
it's principal Merit in my view, is the very beauty
of its accent, sometimes serious, sometimes calm, sometimes impassioned, dreamy,
or melancholic, or vague, like the weakened echo of an echo,
like the indistinct, plaintiff mones of the breeze in the woods,
and even better, like the mysterious vibrations of a bell
(30:59):
long after it has been struck. There does not exist
another musical instrument that I know of that possesses this
strange resonance which is situated at the edge of silence.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
Thank you, especially because yeah, with that you're spitting for
a second there, you know that with the beat at
that speed, so he is over the moon, hector and
he may have been taciturn toward the end of that
initial conversation, but after he had some time to digest,
to percolate, to chew on it, he decided he was
(31:33):
a sax fan for life. He thought the name basehorn
was dumb, so he started calling it the saxophone. It
was new, it was different. This article, with all this praise,
it goes out in Belgium, it goes out in France,
and this is the start of a brand new era
for Adolphus Sacks. Of course, being a brand new era
(31:58):
doesn't mean it's one hundred said a great brand new era.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
Yeah, because, as it happened in the past, with this
success and this skill and talent came a lot of
weird vibes his way, Like there was a lot of
jealousy and criticism to deal with. M m.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
Yeah. He was introduced throughout the musical world. It was
sort of like when something hits Twitter and everybody feels
that they are required to have a stance on it.
Oh yeah, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
Oh yeah, the Bean's dad.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
Yeah, sure, sure, yeah you can. You can hate the saxophone,
you can love it, but you are going to be
taking you have an opinion. You have an opinion. And
he met a lot of other composers who who co
signed it. They said, you know, let's add this to
classical music. Let's let's shake things up. He gets to
(32:55):
hang out at the salons the doing the Ted Talks
of day and everybody knows his name. He's at this time,
like you said, he's working on these things that he
starts calling sax horns, counting the sax horn, the sax tube,
and of course the vogel bomb favorite the sax tromba.
Speaker 4 (33:14):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
They all work off the same principle, right, you are
influencing the sound of air released into a brass.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
Tube in various ways. Sure, yeah, yeah, And.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
He created this instrument, the original saxophone, in two sizes.
One is the larger subcontra bassed saxophone, and the other one,
which Max I think is the one you like, is
the soprano.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
Sorry, I was drinking some water right there. I think
there's like, what's there's like? Now there is what the soprano,
the alto, the baritone, a lot more. See out the
ones that are really like high pitch and annoying. Hold
us like, let me just get one real quick. Yeah,
so saxophone, so prano, I think that's how it is,
fell soprano like something kind of the loading has taken
(34:07):
longer than I expected to take something along the here
we go.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
Sopranino, something like that. I don't know, I don't know
why I'm saying with that egregious mark accent, but but yeah,
So he makes these they they're a blend of wood
winds and brass. They can get those notes we would
call bluesy today, and they can even you know, they
can even give you like a melancholy stringed instrument vibe.
Speaker 3 (34:39):
Yeah, as as Berloy was was saying to that very
perky music, very.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
Perky music, and the saxophone would later be called I
want to see how you feel about this quote. It
would later be called the perennial Cinderella of serious music
by Time magazine.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
Wow, Time magazine. That's the word salad. I mean, okay,
all right, perennial Cinderella of serious music.
Speaker 1 (35:09):
Mm hmm yeah. So every so the idea is the saxophone.
At least in Sacks, his life was seen as not
super legit nor respectable, you know what I mean. It's
like to a lot of the haters. Again, and I
hesitate to use that phrase, but it is the most
accurate to a lot of his haters, a lot of
(35:30):
the people who are envious or disliked him. Having a
saxophone in your orchestra would be the same thing as
having like a jug, yeah, or like you know, a washboard.
Speaker 3 (35:41):
Or something yeah yeah, like like like, please be serious,
why are you eating here right now?
Speaker 1 (35:45):
Saucer for wood, right, that kind of thing. And if
you look around today, it seems like he was really successful.
He did revolutionize music, but not really in his time,
and a lot a lot of it goes down to
his personality. Uh he he he could be ornery.
Speaker 4 (36:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
Another another quote from that website. He apparently had exceptional
gifts for the gentle art of making enemies.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
Which poetic. Oh beautiful. Why is it a gentle art?
Speaker 3 (36:20):
I mean, if you want really high quality enemies, you
have to be gentle about it.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
Right, Yeah, you got you got to ease your way
into the enmity. So people tried to sabotage his innovations.
People refuse to play instruments he made. His boy Burloys
is continuing to defend him. Uh. And then this guy
comes out of Germany. His name, we'll call him Viprecht.
(36:46):
He is a band leader for a part of the
German military. And he says, hold on, this guy's a
phony because some inventors from Germany were the first ones
to make this thing you're calling the saxophone, and you
have stolen the idea. You're a plagiarizer and imitator. And
(37:08):
they said, look, we're going to show you that we
did this. Ben would he be a saxophony?
Speaker 4 (37:21):
He would?
Speaker 3 (37:23):
He would?
Speaker 1 (37:23):
You know what, you know what we gotta do the
max with the facts on that one that seeking in
the phone and he's fallen.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
Lolge it's just for you right now with the fact.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
Do you know this song? Oh yeah, okay, legendary. We
got Matt Frederick to do it live one time.
Speaker 3 (37:46):
Oh it's beautiful.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
So they they perpetrate fraud themselves. What they do is
they order some of his some of Sax's actual instruments
from him from Paris. When they get it in the mail,
they buff out his name.
Speaker 3 (38:05):
From the brass yeah, uh huh, and then send the
instruments back to France. We made this, yeah, see it
doesn't have your serial number on it at all.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
That's insane to me. That's like buying a car and
then switching out the branding, you know, a little picture
of yourself and then sending it back to Honda or
whatever and say like, actually, I made this score and
I'm suing you. So so this is this is a
heck of a con or an attempt at it, and
(38:37):
Sax is not going to take it. Laying down line down,
lane down, lind down.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
I can never tell that one apart. It's yeah, that's
not the kind of editing I'm good at.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
He's not going to take it in a horizontal position.
Speaker 3 (38:50):
Yeah no no, but but they were serious about it,
like they really tried to be like no, no, no,
like we've done known about these in German for a
hot minute. Look at how good our German musicians are
at playing these instruments. They clearly wouldn't be this good
if they didn't. And the thing is is that they
couldn't play them right like like like there like there
(39:14):
was a there was a whole like like public demonstration
and they literally could not play the saxophone and the
bass clarinet. They were kind of like peepoop. Yeah right,
that's a historical reenactment. It's very very act accurate.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
Thank you, and uh and VI break all of a
sudden has has like a revelational like a Rode to
Damascus moment, and he goes, you know what, I like
sax now. I think you're cool, bro. And then and
then sax Flex is on him and goes, you know
what about the patent. I shall wait another year before
(39:50):
registering this patent. We shall see whether by then a
maker will have produced a true saxophone.
Speaker 4 (39:56):
He's like, oh wow, He's like, yeah, come at me exactly.
I wish he would Yeah right right, make one if
he can, you know what I mean? It eventually does
patent the saxophone. It's eighteen forty six. And as soon
as he does that, there are pirated versions that come
out in France and he makes no money.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
Off of those. He's more and more known for his
difficult personality. If we go back to Joe Santi at
the Museum of Musical Instruments, we see a weird We
see a quote that shows us just how divisive a
figure he was.
Speaker 3 (40:35):
Yeah, he said with Adolph Sachs, he was so controversial.
You were either for him or against him. This dangerous, dynamic,
prolific Belgian who had arrived in Paris split up the
musical world in France between pros and cons.
Speaker 1 (40:50):
Okay, now we have all at some point in our lives.
We have all felt that someone has for no valid
reason and decided they don't like us.
Speaker 3 (41:02):
Right, Oh sure, yeah, I'm I'm I'm paranoid about that
all the time with everybody constantly. Right, It's like a
really key defining personality trait.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
And sometimes you know, people will resent someone for due
to envy. Right, why is why as why don't I
have a musical instrument named after me et cetera.
Speaker 3 (41:23):
Yeah, why is that kid getting all the attention? He's
so weedy.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
He's so weedy, right and so perfect?
Speaker 3 (41:30):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
And so Sax experiences this on a much more extreme
level than most people. Entire clubs are formed centering on
how much they dislike Sax and how much they dislike
his inventions.
Speaker 3 (41:45):
And this was before the internet. So yeah, I'm really
proud of like the amount of effort this must have taken.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
They scheduled, they like met up in person. You know,
they probably had an agenda at their meetings.
Speaker 3 (41:57):
Yeah, and and and and like the press got involved
and business turned real sour for sex. He wound up
declaring bankruptcy three times eighteen fifty two, eighteen seventy three,
and eighteen seventy seven. It probably would have been a fourth,
But then Napoleon the Third, who I guess was on
(42:20):
the other side of this pro sex anti Sax debate.
I just stepped in and saved him from financial ruin
because he.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
Could also not that Napoleon, not that oh the third?
Speaker 1 (42:32):
Yes, yes, the first, Yes, the Napoleon three, the first
president of France.
Speaker 2 (42:38):
Yes, yes, how tall was Napoleon three? Do we know
let's see s Ben, You and I like to joke about,
like how the first Napoleon wasn't actually that short.
Speaker 3 (42:47):
Oh no, he was quite reasonably sized for someone of
that age.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
Right, a lot taller than some other people like Stalin.
Stalin was much shorter than Napoleon.
Speaker 3 (42:55):
Really yeah, ooh that's fun.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
But Stalin had people had purposely had a lot of
people around who were very short to make him look
taller in photos.
Speaker 1 (43:03):
Oh that's great, yeah, until he erased them out of
the photos right during his purges. This is a yeah,
the very first photoshop under Stalin. It's thank you to
Adobe for being way more cool. But yet, so without
knowing how tall, uh, Napoleon three was, I guess we
(43:27):
could say, in modern parlance, Napoleon Napoleon, Napoleon the first
was about five six.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
See, I've heard five eight.
Speaker 3 (43:36):
Also, yeah, I've heard I've heard between five six and
five eight.
Speaker 2 (43:39):
Right. There's a lot of debate because I know Stalin
was five to five.
Speaker 1 (43:42):
Yeah, stall was definitely five to five, right, So.
Speaker 2 (43:45):
I think that's one of those things that's lost to history.
It was mostly like propaganda and I counterattacks on Napoleon
be like, oh he's so short, right, And there's also
been like a lot of people like I think Peter
did great. Was Peter the Greade six eight or was
he like six four? I can't remember either way.
Speaker 3 (43:58):
That's quite tall.
Speaker 2 (43:59):
He's quite tall, much taller than me. He gets portrayed
as like seven to two.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
I mean, history cast a shadow, does it?
Speaker 3 (44:05):
Not?
Speaker 1 (44:05):
Right?
Speaker 2 (44:06):
True?
Speaker 1 (44:07):
So, no matter how tall or short, Napoleon the Third was,
no matter how you feel about his domestic and foreign policies,
the guy loved saxophones. And he was like, oh, come on, man,
don't go broke over this. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (44:21):
Yeah, And his buddy Burlois still was coming up to
his defense, and he was still selling saxophones, Like, he
was still selling not a lot of those other saxes.
But from eighteen forty three to eighteen sixty he apparently
sold like twenty thousand different ones.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
Yeah, that's a lot of it's a lot of smooth jazz,
it is, which wasn't a thing yet either, No, no, no, no,
no not at all.
Speaker 3 (44:47):
That's but right, yeah, and he continued inventing instruments. He
was teaching at the Paris Conservatory. It wasn't all bad.
Speaker 1 (44:56):
It wasn't all bad, but he was always under some
sort of financial strain. In eighteen fifty eight, he gets
lip cancer, which is a thing.
Speaker 3 (45:06):
Apparently that's a thing.
Speaker 1 (45:08):
Apparently that's the thing.
Speaker 3 (45:09):
I mean, you can get cancer anywhere.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
I guess, sure, yeah, you can get cancer anywhere. He
got lip cancer. This did not kill him. He experienced
a full recovery. Bizarrely enough, he lives a full life,
and he dies of pneumonia in Paris, impoverished and elderly.
He's like seventy nine eighty years old. On February seventh,
(45:34):
eighteen ninety four, when you did an excellent teaser at
the beginning here a little bit of foreshadowing in our
episode where you said, we don't have a lot of
sources on Sax's early life, and we're going to learn why.
So that's the question, why don't we know more about
this guy? Because saxophones are everywhere today?
Speaker 2 (45:55):
Right?
Speaker 3 (45:55):
Oh yeah, you're tripping over saxophones anywhere you go. It
would be an awkward thing to trip over. I feel
like I would try to, though I'm.
Speaker 1 (46:04):
Laughing because I'm imagining this sound effect, even though it
doesn't make sense, because someone would have to be playing
the saxophone, for to make a saxophone noise when you
trip over it. Yeah, So at this point you're basically
like jumping over someone or they're on the ground playing
the saxophone.
Speaker 2 (46:19):
Yea, So Ben, what you're saying is, if you trip
over a saxophone with no one around, is there a sound?
Speaker 1 (46:34):
That's exactly what I'm saying. Yeah, And you articulated it
so well, Max, Okay, but why Yeah.
Speaker 3 (46:43):
The thing is is that no one cared about him
at the time. By the time he died, I feel
like what happened was everyone was so what was bored
of arguing about it. It was kind of pushed to
argue about him for a certain period of his life.
And then by the time he passed, he wasn't that
big of a deal anymore. No one was talking about
him anymore. So records about him were not saved until
(47:06):
a little bit later when the saxophone became something that
you might be in danger of driving there.
Speaker 1 (47:14):
Right, Yeah, yes, And now we know that the saxophone
was almost forgotten entirely, and it had become it had
become not quite prestigious enough to be part of an orchestra.
But now it wasn't interesting enough to argue about in
those salons. As you said, it would take a century
(47:37):
or more for the saxophone to become what we know
it today, because although it was im penurias circumstances, sax
was not aware that his creation was on the move.
I think it was in nineteen hundred people who played
in military bands in the Spanish American War come back
(47:58):
to the United States, particularly New Orleans, and they bring
the saxophone with them. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (48:05):
So with the rise of jazz in the United States,
I think specifically like like by like like world like
after World War One, you started really getting this, this
the zeitgeist of the saxophone.
Speaker 1 (48:22):
One hundred percent. Yeah, in that Inner War period, like
nineteen twenties, the late teens and the jazz age that's
that is what they call it. Yes, so we might
need a Lauren with the facts.
Speaker 2 (48:38):
Who's that guest hosting the show burn and she's on
this podcast, Lawrence.
Speaker 1 (48:50):
Yeah, so we would say, all right, the story's over.
Jazz saves the saxophone. However, jazz also brought a lot
of a lot of social problems in the United States
to bear right and a lot of people who saw
(49:11):
themselves as posh fans of classical music. They looked down
at jazz, they looked askance at it, and the saxophone
being associated with jazz meant that. Yet again, there was
a huge group of people who thought, this is not series.
Speaker 3 (49:26):
Yeah, this is an un serious instrument.
Speaker 1 (49:28):
Yes, yes, yeah, And that would have been the case
all the way up to the modern day if it
weren't for a guy named Marcel Mule in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 3 (49:40):
Yeah, and okay, so I don't have an extremely good
grip on musical history, but according to Time Magazine, when
he played the Heck and Sacks, the instrument could produce
quote an open, evenly controlled sound that could sing with
a clean vibrato or a finely trimmed staccato swell robustly
(50:01):
and solidly, with no trace of the breath the air sound.
Speaker 1 (50:04):
Who sounds like the sounds like the journalist over a
time had a little bit of misophonia, right or misophoonia.
Speaker 3 (50:11):
Yeah, yeah, that was like not like that heck and
clarinet where you're hearing the mouth noises all the time.
Speaker 1 (50:16):
The mouth noises is what the guy at time is saying. Yeah,
so Marcel mule is this champion of making the saxophone
a well respected classical instrument, and he goes so far
as to form a saxophone an all saxophone quartet.
Speaker 3 (50:34):
A classical saxophone quartet, a.
Speaker 1 (50:36):
Classical saxophone quartet. And when they formed this, there wasn't
any music for them to play. Sure, people didn't write for.
Speaker 3 (50:44):
It, no, but he he was not deterred. He told
Time Magazine, I have one mission in life. That is
to make people take the saxophone seriously. It's time they
discovered the nobility of this spoiled instrument.
Speaker 1 (51:00):
Since we are an audio podcast, I want everyone to know, Lauren,
you were like getting very close to slamming your hand
on the table in Time, right, justice for the saxophone.
This this is crazy because I did not know just
how close. Again and again and again the world came
(51:23):
to not having the saxophone.
Speaker 3 (51:26):
I mean, what would Lisa Simpson have even done?
Speaker 1 (51:29):
Right, that's like half her thing?
Speaker 3 (51:32):
Yeah, that's it. Yeah, I mean right, due to like
various brushes with death and I guess being very weedy. Yeah,
we almost didn't have the sex.
Speaker 1 (51:46):
And you know, while we're while we're going out to
our regular outro. Max, maybe we can have just a
little saxophone to get us in.
Speaker 2 (51:56):
I thought you would never ask. I've been queuing this
one up the whole time.
Speaker 1 (52:00):
I'm excited.
Speaker 2 (52:00):
Bolts it with saxophone. And remember, I have no idea
what it sounds like.
Speaker 1 (52:08):
Waltz it with saxophone. It is a little racy, man,
It's beautiful. Facts this point has headphones and shrunking.
Speaker 2 (52:20):
It's much quieter in my headphones than yours. And I
don't know why I can barely hear it of these.
So I'm really going blind faith on this song.
Speaker 1 (52:28):
Okay, Well, let's hope it works. Of course, Thank you
mister Max Williams are super producer. Thanks of course to
Alex Williams, who can pose the banging track you here.
Thanks of course to Jonathan Strickland aka the Quister. We're
required to say it, get that. Yeah, and most especially Lauren,
(52:49):
thank you so much for coming on the show. You're
one of the busiest folks I know, and it's an
absolute pleasure to have you join us again.
Speaker 3 (52:57):
Oh it's always good to come on and goof around.
And here's some good sax music.
Speaker 1 (53:02):
Yes, and for everybody who's wondering. We talked a little
bit about your many other projects here. Where can people
find you? Where can they learn more about your work?
Speaker 3 (53:11):
Oh? On the internet if you can, if you can
spell my name, you can probably find me. And I
know that that's a little bit of a tall order,
but but yeah, that's that's Lauren Vogelbaum and I am
currently on brain stuff Saver And you can listen to
the archive of American Shadows and yeah yeah, or or
(53:32):
find me on Instagram at vogel Bomb v O g
e l Bomb.
Speaker 1 (53:38):
Yeah yeah, so and so with that, we hope you
join us next time, Ridiculous Historians. We're going to be
diving into moral panics surrounding hip hop. We're going to
be We're gonna be doing lots of stuff. We're going
to be doing all right, lot lots of things. Thanks
so much, folks, We'll see you next time.
Speaker 2 (54:06):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous Histories, a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome to the show,
(00:27):
Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much for tuning in.
Let's hear it for the Man, the myth, the legend,
our super producer Max, the soprano Williams. You like that one?
Speaker 2 (00:40):
You like that one. It's like a soprano saxophone, like
high and loud and annoying.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Oh that's how we're starting today.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Folks.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
They call me Ben my pal nol is on some adventures.
We'll be returning soon and in the meantime, we are
thrilled to welcome a returning special guest, a longtime partner
and podcast Crime with Me, Lauren Vogelbaum. Lauren, thanks for
coming back on the show.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Hello, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
Yeah. So, the last time you were on Ridiculous History,
you and our dear friend June explored how houses can
legally be haunted.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Yes, physically there's a question, but legally they can absolutely
be haunted, which is nuts.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
I totally took that research and brought it to our
friends at the Daily Zeitgeist. Oh and they were like, hey,
what's some interesting about your search history? So thank you
for letting me crib that anytime. Yes, So I was
thinking before we get into today's show, we were talking
about this off air. I realized that I have lost
track of just how many projects you and I have
(01:48):
worked together on over the years.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
I that is a very good question, because we've been
working together for Nilla Loon in our twelve or thirteen years. I.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Wow, Yeah, I guess that's right.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Yeah. I think the first stuff that we worked on
together was the brain Stuff video series when we did.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
That, right, wow. And you I can name several of
the many things that you have done. You are the
head writer and host of brain Stuff, which continues in
podcasts form today. Yes, and you are creator and co
host of Saver, which is one of my favorite food podcasts.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Oh, thank you, thank you. Yeah. Yeah, that one's a
conversational food show that that I do along with Annie Reese.
And yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Sometimes we get to go to wacky places and talk
to wacky people, but mostly it's just like what is
up with artichokes?
Speaker 2 (02:42):
So I want to jump in here, Lauren. I do
actually miss cutting y'all's ads behind the scenes. For about
a year. When I first started at iHeart, I cut
Annie and Lauren's ad reads and it was a real joy.
Producer Andrew Howard always asked me, He's like, you know,
you don't have to do this. I'm like, you know,
it actually kind of brains my day. Like, you know,
the week they were really busy. I didn't enjoy it
(03:03):
as much, but like you know, you kind of bummed down.
Let's see what type of high jinks any Lauren are getting.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Into over here and what kind of curse words.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Lots of curts Worth.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I buttoned it up on air most
of the time. But but I'd say that other than
maybe Holly Fry, I am one of the customist people
here at iHeart.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
And actually, just to get back on again, you said
Halley from Everything About You two were like the first
two people I worked at at this job. I cut
all the generic ads for the company along with the
ones for stuff you missed an insta class with Holly Fry.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
Yeah, so we're going back old days like three years ago.
Oh yeah, as long as you guys, Bud.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
No, Hey, you've got your stretch and the last three
years have been a very long three years, to be fair.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
That's true. That is true. You feel like they feel
like they were longer than they were supposed to be,
and we are also currently can't say too much about
it yet, folks. Currently, Lauren, you and I are working
on Thirteen Days of Halloween. We've also done you do
a lot of voice work. We've also both played roles,
(04:08):
I think recently on a show called Remus the Bootleg King.
Speaker 3 (04:12):
Yeah, yeah, you were. You were the titular Remus, Yes,
the bootleg Ging.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
I have yet again been asked to play an unhinged lunatic.
Thank you, Max, Thank you for that understanding not.
Speaker 5 (04:24):
Getting asked to play play all right, Yeah, just wait
for my book that's coming out in about like three
four years working for Ben Bolan, The Unhinged Lunatic with
Oh Hey, there you go Forward by Paul Decant.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
Oh no, yeah, I got to I got to play
Remus's wife and that one. And it's certainly the most
times I've ever said daddy in my life. So that's
absolutely fine and not weird at all. Now, I'm glad
that we recorded that separately. I'm not sure if I
could have done it in the same room.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Yeah, I was thinking that I was thinking of the
same thing. Honestly, when I learned about that and we
speaking to fantastic segue. Yes, we're here to talk about
something that I think. It's a story not a lot
of people know, and I was. I was kind of
surprised when our good pal Tyler Klang brought this up.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Oh okay, this this is a story that I've talked
about on a show that sadly just ended called American Shadows.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Oh you talked about this?
Speaker 4 (05:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
The structure of that show is, you know, like a
three act structure, and so we had had a beginning
and an epilogue and then a longer part in the middle,
and this was one of our beginning parts.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Oh nice, We are talking about one of my favorite instruments,
and hopefully I'm not alone in this, the saxophone, right
are you? Are you? What's your saxophone stays?
Speaker 3 (05:44):
I'd say that I'm a middling I mean, I like
a saxophone. I do not dislike a saxophone. I can't
I can't proclaim myself a top tier fan of the saxophone,
right right.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
I feel you.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
I think that's got some nostalgia for a lot of
people that generation, because you grew up with uh with
saxophones and sitcoms. Oh yeah, I mean, and so many
eighties and nineties things.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
Yeah, you had the good like yacht rock phase. Yeah yeah,
I mean, but I but I love a smooth jazz,
so absolutely I do.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
I love.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
I like waiting room jazz, you know what I mean? Yeah,
I like I like to sit in the waving room
and look around and like, hey, I wonder what's wrong
with that one? Uh kidding? I kid, But it turns
out as as you know from American chantos, the story
of the saxophone is a story of near misses. We
(06:40):
are so close to living in a world where the
saxophone is not a thing.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
Right there, Yeah, like so close to zero saxophones.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
I mean. The guy who and I say this with
diplomacy and sincerity, the guy who invented the saxophone was
absolute klutz.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Yep yep, yep. Yeah. The episode he appeared in was.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Called Lucky Nice.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
Yeah, I know, he almost died a bunch of times,
all the time, constantly, like his mother joked about it.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Yeah, and how much of that was a joke? Right?
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Like?
Speaker 3 (07:15):
Probably not right?
Speaker 1 (07:16):
So we called this guy or his friends and his
family called him Adolph Adulte already zacks, Yeah, adulphe Sachs.
He was born in Antoine Joseph Sachs November sixth, eighteen fourteen,
in a city that is now part of modern day Belgium.
It's called the not And you know, he had a
(07:38):
big family, but he did not have a poor family.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
Right because his dad was a fairly famous woodworker of instruments.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
M hmm.
Speaker 4 (07:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
He was good at it too. He was gifted such
that William the First of Orange, who was the ruly
monarch at the time, commissioned Sachs to create instruments for
the Belgian military. So he got a government contract. Yeah yeah,
you know, Max and you and I don't make musical instruments,
(08:10):
but that sounds like it's a pretty sweet gig.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
I mean, especially at the time, you know, like you
didn't really have a giant corporation that could be in
charge of you, so it was pretty much just the
government or just a random rich person being like, oh sure,
please art for me. That would be terrific.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
Right, yeah, that's a really good point. So so as
a result of this, our boy, Adolfe Sachs, he grows
up in a very musical environment, he thrives in this
he thrives.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
In this world.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
And a lot of what we know about this time
comes from Joe Santi at the Museum of Musical Instruments
in Brussels.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
Yeah, it turns out, for a number of reasons, there's
not actually that much history written at like like during
his lifetime. We're going to get more into that later.
But but yes, from what we do know, he was
born into a family of eleven children, although only four
of them survived to adulthood.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Yeah yeah, and given the time, we might assume with
some reason that a lot of that would be due
to child mortality. But those the other kids died between
the ages of twenty and twenty five, so they made
it into adulthood. What we're saying is it wasn't all
you know, trumpets and angel farts for this guy. He
(09:29):
did have saxophones angel farts or saxophones and angel farts. Yes,
he was very clever, He was very talented kid. He
was making clarinet. Oh, his dad let him use the workshop.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
Oh yeah, whenever we wanted ye come through. Yeah yeah,
And apparently he was a total prodigy at it.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Right, like making clarinets when he was fourteen or fifteen,
and he didn't just replicate the design of the clarinet.
He improved it by changing the locations of the holes
through which the wind goes.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
I am not a.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Clarinet s wind wind scientist. I'm not a wind doctor.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Yeah, and Sex was a wind doctor. But but that
wasn't the only medium that he worked in. He also
apparently made some ivory flutes, which I am also not
a wind doctor. But but other people thought that that
was impossible at the time, So I guess that's pretty
(10:30):
okay for you know, an actual teenager.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
I know there's a lot of stuff about the changing
of you know, the process of making flutes, because we
got into this when we did Library of Congress to
talk about the glass flutes. Be I think Noel talked
about this because this is way more in Nol's spectrum. Yeah,
the guy who knows about the stuff is the one
we don't have here right now. Perfect But like they were,
they were really experimenting, trying out and they didn't settle
(10:55):
with ivory because that's kind of inhumane at this point.
Make sure stuff out ivory. But like I feel like
that was the material that had like the best sounding
of them at that point, because I'm I don't know,
I'm out of my oleman too, but I remember us
talking about that.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Something, right, right, Like the glass the glass flute, which
Lizzo famously played recently, is a is a marvel. And
the ivory itself. First, ivory is expensive, that's a flex.
They weren't so very worried about animal rights in the
eighteen hundreds. Yep, this this impressed people, but unfortunately, given
(11:33):
Sax's young age, this also garnered him a couple of
what we would describe as haters in the modern day. Yeah,
the couple, Yeah, who is this kid?
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Right? And so he gets a reputation over time for
making not just clarinets but also flutes and trumpets that
are better than the than those of the established instrument
makers of the day. When he's twenty years old, again,
just twenty, he makes a brand new clarinet that has
(12:07):
twenty four keys. Then he makes a bass clarinet, and
people are starting to say, wow, these other non Sax clarinets,
those are barbarian instruments, which is just weirdly aggressive.
Speaker 3 (12:24):
Did they literally call them barbarian instruments? Is that a quote?
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (12:28):
That's a quote that comes from that actually I think
comes from the website of his hometown.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
Huh. Yeah, I did not know that clarinet players were
that agro, but I guess I appreciate it. Yeah, apparently
people were like jealous and mad about it, like not
just mad, mad with a hy mad about it. I
guess the soloist at the Great Royal Harmony in Brussels
(12:59):
refused to use this thing, even though it was ostensibly better,
because it had come from And again I quote that
weedy little pupil sax.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
You can call people weedy. That just seems like a strange,
strange thing, strange insult.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
I mean, I guess you know it. It makes sense.
It's kind of like kind of like noodley but but
but wheat.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
But it worked out though. We little poopa whatever that
word is.
Speaker 1 (13:30):
Because there's a big poopa. Why don't we talk about
the little poopa?
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Yeah, a little poopa?
Speaker 3 (13:34):
Also weedy sort of sounds like a sound the saxophone
mix Max, can we get a saxophone sound?
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Oh yeah, that Clarence.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Oh my goodness, it's amazing. Now now I think weedy
is cool.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
We're bringing back weedy.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
This is some extra weedy music.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
So okay, So so there's this insult, right, the clarinet
soloist at the Great Royal Harmony in Brussels says, I'm
not you're weedy, bro, I'm not using your clarinet, and
then Sachs, who is also a multi instrumentalist, says, okay,
play your clarinet then, and I shall play mine. And
(14:21):
they did it in front of like four thousand people.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
And he became a soloist and people started writing works
for him, and after he left they just put them
down because they were too difficult for anyone else to play.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
And now let's fast forward. It's eighteen forty, he is
twenty six years old. He presents nine of his new works,
his new kind of instruments that he's been working on,
to the Belgian exhibition, and the judges don't give him
first prize, not because he's bad.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
Not because the instruments were of lower quality, but because
he was so young that they were like, this isn't
fair to people who have been working in the industry longer.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
Right, which is a lot like someone saying there's someone
else in line for the Olympic medal, right, right, right,
it did run faster.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
But yeah, yeah, they did give him a medal, but
not the gold.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
Yeah, and he was a total jerk about it too.
Oh yeah yeah yeah.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
Apparently he said, if they think me too young to
deserve the gold medal, I myself think me too old
to accept this.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
For Meal one, I didn't know what for Meal was,
Oh it's like gold plated.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Yeah yeah, it's like it's like it's like chinzy, It's
like it's like, oh, it's not not really gold.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Okay. So he was insulted that they offered him Oh yes, okay,
and he dissed the institution pretty hard because he didn't
want to accept these strictures, these traditions, these legacies, the
current musical regime. And if you look at his childho,
it's no wonder that he gave no f's and took
(16:05):
no s you know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (16:06):
Yeah, Yeah, he had already lived.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
Through a lot. That's why I think drew all three
of us to this story, because while other children were
having normal childhoods, you know, for the eighteen hundreds, for
the eight sure, for the eighteen hundred, the occasional plague,
probably a lot of dysentery, Sachs was always almost dying.
(16:34):
He had all these bizarre brushes with death that were
right out of the Final Destination film franchise.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
And Okay, as we said before, there aren't a whole
lot of primary resources that are that are really strenuously
in a research way backing this information up. But from
what we can confirm from the best of our interneting,
right and that nice museum. M Yeah, he almost died
(17:04):
constantly so many times.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Right it Uh, it's that's because he was notorious for
being klutz and to your point on American Shadows, either
very lucky or very unlucky on how you look at it. Yeah, so, uh,
all the way back, and this is something you guys
talked about on this show, all the way back to
(17:27):
when he was so young that he could barely walk.
He fell like the equivalent of three stories. I heard
sometimes that he fell from a tree, and then sometimes
I heard he fell downstairs.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
Yeah. I think that we reported the fell down three
flights of stairs one in American Shadows. But either way,
it's a lot of height from which to fall, and
all stories agree that he really clogged his head.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
Right, Yeah, And so everybody immediately assumes this kid is dead.
Oh sure.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Yeah, and the report of how injured he was ranged
from like he was he was bedridden for like a
week to like he was straight in a coma, and.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
They said, well, I guess we should have ten other
children just to hedge our bets.
Speaker 4 (18:15):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
This that all happened before he was what three years old,
So that's his first brush with death.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
Uh huh uh huh.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
Not long after that, he wound up. So he took
a drink out of, you know, whatever the glass wearer
of the day was, and he thought it was milk.
It was not milk. It was vitriolized water aka sulfuric
acid with water.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Oh right, yeah, he was. He was wrong about that one.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
He was wrong about the milk, but it somehow didn't
murder him.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
So naturally, of course, not long after that, he swallows
a needle, like a big old needle, yes, yeah, like
an eighteen hundreds needle. Yeah, like a before safety standards needle,
and he survives. I think that one is also impressive
given the state of medicine and hygiene at the time, right, Yeah,
(19:09):
the needle would not have been sterilized.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
Oh, certainly not. I think I think it. I think
it passed through his system from from what I understand,
and it did not pierce his intestines and you know
did as nature intents with things other than needles passed
right out.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
That's so crazy. Yeah, and for those of us playing
along at home, that's already three close brushes.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
Yeah, and three close brushes at the age at which
someone is still swallowing pins because they just think it's lulls,
you know, like like this is this is like under
the age of ten for sure behavior mm hmm yeah,
probably under the age of seven.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
And each of these incidents could have led to a
world without a saxophone Max. Maybe something a little bittersweet.
Oh perfect, perfect.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
There we go, heads up to everyone listening. I have
no way to actually know what any of these sound
like before I play them, so it's a it's a guest.
I did know that that one was not going to
be better sweet.
Speaker 1 (20:15):
Though, Okay, yeah, I thought it worked, Yeah yeah, yeah.
So we're pulling out all the stops because because we've
we've got an illustrious guest here. So later on he
gets burned and a gunpowder explosion that's number four.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Uh huh. I've heard that it like threw him across
the room.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
You know, it's nuts. We have a good friend of
the show, Rachel Lance, who is the Worlds who is
a world class authority on explosions, especially underwater explosions.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
Good good friend of the show.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
Yeah, it's a good person to have on speed dial,
you know what I mean, Like, hey, Doc Lance, there
might be some explosions. I got a couple of quick questions. Yes,
So I bring that up to say, when there is
an explosion powerful enough to throw someone, Oh, it's not
like how we see in film. It's not something that
(21:10):
people instantly get up after.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
Oh sure, no, no, no no. And that wasn't the
only that wasn't the only brush with fiery death that
he had, because the next one is that I I
guess there was a cast iron pan on a stove
and he kind of like tripped into it, just just
just wamp kind of uh huh, and just really really
(21:36):
did a number on himself. I mean, you know, And
that's that's cast iron gets quite hot and it holds
heap very well. So yeah, that's bad.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
And then it continues. So that's number five.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
That's number five.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
We can count disasters six, seven, and eight as a
group we talked about this off air, right, like all
the times he almost asphyxiated.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
Yeah, these are actually my favorite because it's such like
an artist thing to do. Okay, So he almost suffocated
himself more than once, more than twice, at least three
times because he just kept varnishing things and then going
to sleep in the room where they were drying without
properly ventilating it. And I feel like as artists, like
I mean like like, I mean, like we're writers, so
(22:21):
we have like slightly less danger.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Sure, but but I love that.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
I just love that. I love it when you're just
arting too hard to bother thinking about, you know.
Speaker 4 (22:32):
Not dying.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Sure. I've walked into my brother doing something like this
before and I'm like, what are you doing, Alex?
Speaker 1 (22:39):
It's Alex Williams who composed this track. And I don't know.
Can Alex play the saxophone?
Speaker 4 (22:45):
Ah?
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Maybe a little.
Speaker 3 (22:47):
I don't think he plays everything else?
Speaker 2 (22:49):
Yeah, I mean I I think he might some. I
don't think he's ever played that much read instrument. Okay, caution,
he's percussion, he's obviously.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
He gave me a great little melodica.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Yeah, I think brass and reed though stuff he hasn't
played that much. But you know what, I'm also based
on this off of like, you know, when we lived
together in high school. Yeah, and we are not in
high school any longer. We are old, old old credits.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
Now, well, the varnish can still get you. The point
of that is keep a window open, yes, always. But then,
of course he almost dies a couple other times.
Speaker 3 (23:26):
Oh yeah, there were a couple more public accidents that happened.
I guess. In one he was just walking down the
street minding his own sax business and a roof paver
or something like slid right down and conked him on the.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
Head, like cartoon stych.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
Sure, yeah, yeah, this was it was probably from acme, right.
And then there was another time that he fell into
a river and was rescued by a stranger who happened
to be passing by and like noticed that this kid
was floating face down.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Which that is sobery, that's frightening. And this all leads
us to that quote you mentioned when even even his
parents acknowledged this this kid at a situation.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
Yeah, they were like, heck and hecket sacks, could you
please could you get your stuff together? Man? Yeah, his
his mother there's a quote from his mother. Again, I'm
not totally sure where we're getting this from, but apparently
she said he's a child condemned to misfortune, he won't.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
Live and in the district, in the neighborhood, his street
name was Little Sax the Ghost.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
That's a good street name. Yeah, right, right, could we
get some ghostly secks?
Speaker 2 (24:41):
We can try.
Speaker 1 (24:44):
WHOA nailed it?
Speaker 2 (24:48):
I'm not hearing gonna be sexs phone?
Speaker 3 (24:50):
Yeah that doesn't sound like a sex Yeah, I mean,
but let's.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Give a second. We're doing this live, y'all.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Yeah, listen along with let's let's see what the second
comes in.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
There.
Speaker 3 (25:02):
It is.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Like, butta my dude, that's high quality. Yeah, now, I
just kind of want to hang out and hear this
all right now, this would be weird music to hear
in a waiting room. Oh well, yeah, like what are
you waiting there?
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Right?
Speaker 1 (25:23):
So, Little Sacks the Ghost does reach adulthood, yes, and
he is. He feels that Paris is calling him. He
has the dream of traveling to France, and so he does.
In the eighteen forties. He has only thirty francs in
his pocket, so he's a real success story. There's something
(25:45):
romantic about being this talented musician. I'm in Paris. I'm
gonna make my own way. I'm going to redefine music
going to the big city there it is.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
Yeah, and all of this was you know, this was
after the Revolution, Napoleon's reign, and so Paris was a
little bit nutty little miss at the time. Sure yeah, yeah, yeah,
but there was still money to be made from the military.
So like his father before him, Sachs got some contracts
(26:18):
with the French military, or similar to like his father
before him.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
Right, yeah, which is fascinating to me because that's such
a weirdly specific career or flex. I never thought about it,
but I guess, so what does have to make all
those musical instruments and at this time they're making a
lot of them by hand?
Speaker 3 (26:39):
Yes, well, I mean, and there are still military bands,
but I think that they were more of a phenomenon
at this time than they are currently. You know, people
didn't have Netflix. They had to make their own fun.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
Right yeah, that fun would be war complete with five
sure right. So he also is very very ambitious, this guy,
because he doesn't just want to make the same the
same old vanilla clarinet he starts inventing his own instruments,
and his dream is to bring his own brand new
(27:12):
instruments to these militaries. And in eighteen forty two, that's
when he really starts working on what would become the saxophone,
and the whole weird family.
Speaker 3 (27:24):
Host charmingly named family of other instruments that he just
put his own name in front of and I had
never heard of before. Because you have what the sax.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
Tuba, the sax horn.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
Perhaps my favorite, the sax troumba.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
Sax tromba.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
I don't know what that is, but I want to
hear it.
Speaker 1 (27:44):
Hey, yeah, okay, we're gonna have to dig in on
that one. I think that's a deep cut.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Yeah, because none of these ever really made it anywhere,
certainly not the way that the saxophone did.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
Right, And he also didn't name it himself, so lest
we think his ambition led to some meglomaniacal thing, he
was not calling it a saxophone. He was right around
third a little bit. He's like right on the cusp
of becoming thirty years old when he starts making I know,
(28:16):
right when he starts making inroads in the Parisian music scene,
and though he could be an abrasive dude, he makes
He makes a friendship with a composer and a critic
named Hector Berlois. And these guys when they meet, they click.
They have like a Cloud Atlas moment and they're like,
what do you think about you know, clarinets. He's like
(28:38):
that shit's for barbarians or whatever they talk about, and
they burn them indnight oil and Sachs ends up pitching
this guy, this established Parisian musician. He's like, here's what
I think about everything. Here are my ideas we should
have instruments for the armies. I'm gonna do this thing
and that thing, and we pull to quote from his
(29:01):
hometown's website, it was it was kind of a It
was an awkward moment when Sas finally ran out of
steam and stopped talking.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
Huh, because apparently Burloyd's had just been listening to all
of this in silence. According to the hometown website, at
the end of this conference, he confided in Sacks, tomorrow
you will know what I think about the work you
have accomplished.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
That's cryptic.
Speaker 3 (29:28):
I would be pretty mad if I if I poured
my heart out my creative heart out. It's someone who was,
you know, like a decent buddy. Sure, and they were like, yeah,
I wanna get back to you tomorrow about that one.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
Yeah, exactly. It's it's a very strange thing, you know.
And then on June twelfth, eighteen forty two, Sax learns
that there's an article in this journal Beloy's writes for
and it's all about how great Sax is. Axe is
called as invention at this point the bass horn. Okay,
(30:05):
but it's Hector who gives it the name. We know
it by today.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
Yeah, and can we can we get can we get
some music in the background for this quote? Sure, I
don't know what mood I want.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
Oh I got one right here. It's called sticky Wicket.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
Okay, okay, all right.
Speaker 2 (30:26):
The description says strip tease for superheroes.
Speaker 3 (30:31):
Oh no, I hear that.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
Yeah, yeah, I can see that. Okay, this is this
is a good vibe.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
This is good. Okay, all right.
Speaker 3 (30:36):
The beats a little bit fast, but let's see, let's
see what we can do with this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
it's principal Merit in my view, is the very beauty
of its accent, sometimes serious, sometimes calm, sometimes impassioned, dreamy,
or melancholic, or vague, like the weakened echo of an echo,
like the indistinct, plaintiff mones of the breeze in the woods,
and even better, like the mysterious vibrations of a bell
(30:59):
long after it has been struck. There does not exist
another musical instrument that I know of that possesses this
strange resonance which is situated at the edge of silence.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
Thank you, especially because yeah, with that you're spitting for
a second there, you know that with the beat at
that speed, so he is over the moon, hector and
he may have been taciturn toward the end of that
initial conversation, but after he had some time to digest,
to percolate, to chew on it, he decided he was
(31:33):
a sax fan for life. He thought the name basehorn
was dumb, so he started calling it the saxophone. It
was new, it was different. This article, with all this praise,
it goes out in Belgium, it goes out in France,
and this is the start of a brand new era
for Adolphus Sacks. Of course, being a brand new era
(31:58):
doesn't mean it's one hundred said a great brand new era.
Speaker 3 (32:08):
Yeah, because, as it happened in the past, with this
success and this skill and talent came a lot of
weird vibes his way, Like there was a lot of
jealousy and criticism to deal with. M m.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
Yeah. He was introduced throughout the musical world. It was
sort of like when something hits Twitter and everybody feels
that they are required to have a stance on it.
Oh yeah, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (32:33):
Oh yeah, the Bean's dad.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
Yeah, sure, sure, yeah you can. You can hate the saxophone,
you can love it, but you are going to be
taking you have an opinion. You have an opinion. And
he met a lot of other composers who who co
signed it. They said, you know, let's add this to
classical music. Let's let's shake things up. He gets to
(32:55):
hang out at the salons the doing the Ted Talks
of day and everybody knows his name. He's at this time,
like you said, he's working on these things that he
starts calling sax horns, counting the sax horn, the sax tube,
and of course the vogel bomb favorite the sax tromba.
Speaker 4 (33:14):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
They all work off the same principle, right, you are
influencing the sound of air released into a brass.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
Tube in various ways. Sure, yeah, yeah, And.
Speaker 1 (33:26):
He created this instrument, the original saxophone, in two sizes.
One is the larger subcontra bassed saxophone, and the other one,
which Max I think is the one you like, is
the soprano.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
Sorry, I was drinking some water right there. I think
there's like, what's there's like? Now there is what the soprano,
the alto, the baritone, a lot more. See out the
ones that are really like high pitch and annoying. Hold
us like, let me just get one real quick. Yeah,
so saxophone, so prano, I think that's how it is,
fell soprano like something kind of the loading has taken
(34:07):
longer than I expected to take something along the here
we go.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
Sopranino, something like that. I don't know, I don't know
why I'm saying with that egregious mark accent, but but yeah,
So he makes these they they're a blend of wood
winds and brass. They can get those notes we would
call bluesy today, and they can even you know, they
can even give you like a melancholy stringed instrument vibe.
Speaker 3 (34:39):
Yeah, as as Berloy was was saying to that very
perky music, very.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
Perky music, and the saxophone would later be called I
want to see how you feel about this quote. It
would later be called the perennial Cinderella of serious music
by Time magazine.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
Wow, Time magazine. That's the word salad. I mean, okay,
all right, perennial Cinderella of serious music.
Speaker 1 (35:09):
Mm hmm yeah. So every so the idea is the saxophone.
At least in Sacks, his life was seen as not
super legit nor respectable, you know what I mean. It's
like to a lot of the haters. Again, and I
hesitate to use that phrase, but it is the most
accurate to a lot of his haters, a lot of
(35:30):
the people who are envious or disliked him. Having a
saxophone in your orchestra would be the same thing as
having like a jug, yeah, or like you know, a washboard.
Speaker 3 (35:41):
Or something yeah yeah, like like like, please be serious,
why are you eating here right now?
Speaker 1 (35:45):
Saucer for wood, right, that kind of thing. And if
you look around today, it seems like he was really successful.
He did revolutionize music, but not really in his time,
and a lot a lot of it goes down to
his personality. Uh he he he could be ornery.
Speaker 4 (36:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
Another another quote from that website. He apparently had exceptional
gifts for the gentle art of making enemies.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
Which poetic. Oh beautiful. Why is it a gentle art?
Speaker 3 (36:20):
I mean, if you want really high quality enemies, you
have to be gentle about it.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
Right, Yeah, you got you got to ease your way
into the enmity. So people tried to sabotage his innovations.
People refuse to play instruments he made. His boy Burloys
is continuing to defend him. Uh. And then this guy
comes out of Germany. His name, we'll call him Viprecht.
(36:46):
He is a band leader for a part of the
German military. And he says, hold on, this guy's a
phony because some inventors from Germany were the first ones
to make this thing you're calling the saxophone, and you
have stolen the idea. You're a plagiarizer and imitator. And
(37:08):
they said, look, we're going to show you that we
did this. Ben would he be a saxophony?
Speaker 4 (37:21):
He would?
Speaker 3 (37:23):
He would?
Speaker 1 (37:23):
You know what, you know what we gotta do the
max with the facts on that one that seeking in
the phone and he's fallen.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
Lolge it's just for you right now with the fact.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
Do you know this song? Oh yeah, okay, legendary. We
got Matt Frederick to do it live one time.
Speaker 3 (37:46):
Oh it's beautiful.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
So they they perpetrate fraud themselves. What they do is
they order some of his some of Sax's actual instruments
from him from Paris. When they get it in the mail,
they buff out his name.
Speaker 3 (38:05):
From the brass yeah, uh huh, and then send the
instruments back to France. We made this, yeah, see it
doesn't have your serial number on it at all.
Speaker 1 (38:15):
That's insane to me. That's like buying a car and
then switching out the branding, you know, a little picture
of yourself and then sending it back to Honda or
whatever and say like, actually, I made this score and
I'm suing you. So so this is this is a
heck of a con or an attempt at it, and
(38:37):
Sax is not going to take it. Laying down line down,
lane down, lind down.
Speaker 3 (38:41):
I can never tell that one apart. It's yeah, that's
not the kind of editing I'm good at.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
He's not going to take it in a horizontal position.
Speaker 3 (38:50):
Yeah no no, but but they were serious about it,
like they really tried to be like no, no, no,
like we've done known about these in German for a
hot minute. Look at how good our German musicians are
at playing these instruments. They clearly wouldn't be this good
if they didn't. And the thing is is that they
couldn't play them right like like like there like there
(39:14):
was a there was a whole like like public demonstration
and they literally could not play the saxophone and the
bass clarinet. They were kind of like peepoop. Yeah right,
that's a historical reenactment. It's very very act accurate.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
Thank you, and uh and VI break all of a
sudden has has like a revelational like a Rode to
Damascus moment, and he goes, you know what, I like
sax now. I think you're cool, bro. And then and
then sax Flex is on him and goes, you know
what about the patent. I shall wait another year before
(39:50):
registering this patent. We shall see whether by then a
maker will have produced a true saxophone.
Speaker 4 (39:56):
He's like, oh wow, He's like, yeah, come at me exactly.
I wish he would Yeah right right, make one if
he can, you know what I mean? It eventually does
patent the saxophone. It's eighteen forty six. And as soon
as he does that, there are pirated versions that come
out in France and he makes no money.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
Off of those. He's more and more known for his
difficult personality. If we go back to Joe Santi at
the Museum of Musical Instruments, we see a weird We
see a quote that shows us just how divisive a
figure he was.
Speaker 3 (40:35):
Yeah, he said with Adolph Sachs, he was so controversial.
You were either for him or against him. This dangerous, dynamic,
prolific Belgian who had arrived in Paris split up the
musical world in France between pros and cons.
Speaker 1 (40:50):
Okay, now we have all at some point in our lives.
We have all felt that someone has for no valid
reason and decided they don't like us.
Speaker 3 (41:02):
Right, Oh sure, yeah, I'm I'm I'm paranoid about that
all the time with everybody constantly. Right, It's like a
really key defining personality trait.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
And sometimes you know, people will resent someone for due
to envy. Right, why is why as why don't I
have a musical instrument named after me et cetera.
Speaker 3 (41:23):
Yeah, why is that kid getting all the attention? He's
so weedy.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
He's so weedy, right and so perfect?
Speaker 3 (41:30):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (41:31):
And so Sax experiences this on a much more extreme
level than most people. Entire clubs are formed centering on
how much they dislike Sax and how much they dislike
his inventions.
Speaker 3 (41:45):
And this was before the internet. So yeah, I'm really
proud of like the amount of effort this must have taken.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
They scheduled, they like met up in person. You know,
they probably had an agenda at their meetings.
Speaker 3 (41:57):
Yeah, and and and and like the press got involved
and business turned real sour for sex. He wound up
declaring bankruptcy three times eighteen fifty two, eighteen seventy three,
and eighteen seventy seven. It probably would have been a fourth,
But then Napoleon the Third, who I guess was on
(42:20):
the other side of this pro sex anti Sax debate.
I just stepped in and saved him from financial ruin
because he.
Speaker 2 (42:27):
Could also not that Napoleon, not that oh the third?
Speaker 1 (42:32):
Yes, yes, the first, Yes, the Napoleon three, the first
president of France.
Speaker 2 (42:38):
Yes, yes, how tall was Napoleon three? Do we know
let's see s Ben, You and I like to joke about,
like how the first Napoleon wasn't actually that short.
Speaker 3 (42:47):
Oh no, he was quite reasonably sized for someone of
that age.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
Right, a lot taller than some other people like Stalin.
Stalin was much shorter than Napoleon.
Speaker 3 (42:55):
Really yeah, ooh that's fun.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
But Stalin had people had purposely had a lot of
people around who were very short to make him look
taller in photos.
Speaker 1 (43:03):
Oh that's great, yeah, until he erased them out of
the photos right during his purges. This is a yeah,
the very first photoshop under Stalin. It's thank you to
Adobe for being way more cool. But yet, so without
knowing how tall, uh, Napoleon three was, I guess we
(43:27):
could say, in modern parlance, Napoleon Napoleon, Napoleon the first
was about five six.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
See, I've heard five eight.
Speaker 3 (43:36):
Also, yeah, I've heard I've heard between five six and
five eight.
Speaker 2 (43:39):
Right. There's a lot of debate because I know Stalin
was five to five.
Speaker 1 (43:42):
Yeah, stall was definitely five to five, right, So.
Speaker 2 (43:45):
I think that's one of those things that's lost to history.
It was mostly like propaganda and I counterattacks on Napoleon
be like, oh he's so short, right, And there's also
been like a lot of people like I think Peter
did great. Was Peter the Greade six eight or was
he like six four? I can't remember either way.
Speaker 3 (43:58):
That's quite tall.
Speaker 2 (43:59):
He's quite tall, much taller than me. He gets portrayed
as like seven to two.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
I mean, history cast a shadow, does it?
Speaker 3 (44:05):
Not?
Speaker 1 (44:05):
Right?
Speaker 2 (44:06):
True?
Speaker 1 (44:07):
So, no matter how tall or short, Napoleon the Third was,
no matter how you feel about his domestic and foreign policies,
the guy loved saxophones. And he was like, oh, come on, man,
don't go broke over this. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (44:21):
Yeah, And his buddy Burlois still was coming up to
his defense, and he was still selling saxophones, Like, he
was still selling not a lot of those other saxes.
But from eighteen forty three to eighteen sixty he apparently
sold like twenty thousand different ones.
Speaker 1 (44:39):
Yeah, that's a lot of it's a lot of smooth jazz,
it is, which wasn't a thing yet either, No, no, no, no,
no not at all.
Speaker 3 (44:47):
That's but right, yeah, and he continued inventing instruments. He
was teaching at the Paris Conservatory. It wasn't all bad.
Speaker 1 (44:56):
It wasn't all bad, but he was always under some
sort of financial strain. In eighteen fifty eight, he gets
lip cancer, which is a thing.
Speaker 3 (45:06):
Apparently that's a thing.
Speaker 1 (45:08):
Apparently that's the thing.
Speaker 3 (45:09):
I mean, you can get cancer anywhere.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
I guess, sure, yeah, you can get cancer anywhere. He
got lip cancer. This did not kill him. He experienced
a full recovery. Bizarrely enough, he lives a full life,
and he dies of pneumonia in Paris, impoverished and elderly.
He's like seventy nine eighty years old. On February seventh,
(45:34):
eighteen ninety four, when you did an excellent teaser at
the beginning here a little bit of foreshadowing in our
episode where you said, we don't have a lot of
sources on Sax's early life, and we're going to learn why.
So that's the question, why don't we know more about
this guy? Because saxophones are everywhere today?
Speaker 2 (45:55):
Right?
Speaker 3 (45:55):
Oh yeah, you're tripping over saxophones anywhere you go. It
would be an awkward thing to trip over. I feel
like I would try to, though I'm.
Speaker 1 (46:04):
Laughing because I'm imagining this sound effect, even though it
doesn't make sense, because someone would have to be playing
the saxophone, for to make a saxophone noise when you
trip over it. Yeah, So at this point you're basically
like jumping over someone or they're on the ground playing
the saxophone.
Speaker 2 (46:19):
Yea, So Ben, what you're saying is, if you trip
over a saxophone with no one around, is there a sound?
Speaker 1 (46:34):
That's exactly what I'm saying. Yeah, And you articulated it
so well, Max, Okay, but why Yeah.
Speaker 3 (46:43):
The thing is is that no one cared about him
at the time. By the time he died, I feel
like what happened was everyone was so what was bored
of arguing about it. It was kind of pushed to
argue about him for a certain period of his life.
And then by the time he passed, he wasn't that
big of a deal anymore. No one was talking about
him anymore. So records about him were not saved until
(47:06):
a little bit later when the saxophone became something that
you might be in danger of driving there.
Speaker 1 (47:14):
Right, Yeah, yes, And now we know that the saxophone
was almost forgotten entirely, and it had become it had
become not quite prestigious enough to be part of an orchestra.
But now it wasn't interesting enough to argue about in
those salons. As you said, it would take a century
(47:37):
or more for the saxophone to become what we know
it today, because although it was im penurias circumstances, sax
was not aware that his creation was on the move.
I think it was in nineteen hundred people who played
in military bands in the Spanish American War come back
(47:58):
to the United States, particularly New Orleans, and they bring
the saxophone with them. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (48:05):
So with the rise of jazz in the United States,
I think specifically like like by like like world like
after World War One, you started really getting this, this
the zeitgeist of the saxophone.
Speaker 1 (48:22):
One hundred percent. Yeah, in that Inner War period, like
nineteen twenties, the late teens and the jazz age that's
that is what they call it. Yes, so we might
need a Lauren with the facts.
Speaker 2 (48:38):
Who's that guest hosting the show burn and she's on
this podcast, Lawrence.
Speaker 1 (48:50):
Yeah, so we would say, all right, the story's over.
Jazz saves the saxophone. However, jazz also brought a lot
of a lot of social problems in the United States
to bear right and a lot of people who saw
(49:11):
themselves as posh fans of classical music. They looked down
at jazz, they looked askance at it, and the saxophone
being associated with jazz meant that. Yet again, there was
a huge group of people who thought, this is not series.
Speaker 3 (49:26):
Yeah, this is an un serious instrument.
Speaker 1 (49:28):
Yes, yes, yeah, And that would have been the case
all the way up to the modern day if it
weren't for a guy named Marcel Mule in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 3 (49:40):
Yeah, and okay, so I don't have an extremely good
grip on musical history, but according to Time Magazine, when
he played the Heck and Sacks, the instrument could produce
quote an open, evenly controlled sound that could sing with
a clean vibrato or a finely trimmed staccato swell robustly
(50:01):
and solidly, with no trace of the breath the air sound.
Speaker 1 (50:04):
Who sounds like the sounds like the journalist over a
time had a little bit of misophonia, right or misophoonia.
Speaker 3 (50:11):
Yeah, yeah, that was like not like that heck and
clarinet where you're hearing the mouth noises all the time.
Speaker 1 (50:16):
The mouth noises is what the guy at time is saying. Yeah,
so Marcel mule is this champion of making the saxophone
a well respected classical instrument, and he goes so far
as to form a saxophone an all saxophone quartet.
Speaker 3 (50:34):
A classical saxophone quartet, a.
Speaker 1 (50:36):
Classical saxophone quartet. And when they formed this, there wasn't
any music for them to play. Sure, people didn't write for.
Speaker 3 (50:44):
It, no, but he he was not deterred. He told
Time Magazine, I have one mission in life. That is
to make people take the saxophone seriously. It's time they
discovered the nobility of this spoiled instrument.
Speaker 1 (51:00):
Since we are an audio podcast, I want everyone to know, Lauren,
you were like getting very close to slamming your hand
on the table in Time, right, justice for the saxophone.
This this is crazy because I did not know just
how close. Again and again and again the world came
(51:23):
to not having the saxophone.
Speaker 3 (51:26):
I mean, what would Lisa Simpson have even done?
Speaker 1 (51:29):
Right, that's like half her thing?
Speaker 3 (51:32):
Yeah, that's it. Yeah, I mean right, due to like
various brushes with death and I guess being very weedy. Yeah,
we almost didn't have the sex.
Speaker 1 (51:46):
And you know, while we're while we're going out to
our regular outro. Max, maybe we can have just a
little saxophone to get us in.
Speaker 2 (51:56):
I thought you would never ask. I've been queuing this
one up the whole time.
Speaker 1 (52:00):
I'm excited.
Speaker 2 (52:00):
Bolts it with saxophone. And remember, I have no idea
what it sounds like.
Speaker 1 (52:08):
Waltz it with saxophone. It is a little racy, man,
It's beautiful. Facts this point has headphones and shrunking.
Speaker 2 (52:20):
It's much quieter in my headphones than yours. And I
don't know why I can barely hear it of these.
So I'm really going blind faith on this song.
Speaker 1 (52:28):
Okay, Well, let's hope it works. Of course, Thank you
mister Max Williams are super producer. Thanks of course to
Alex Williams, who can pose the banging track you here.
Thanks of course to Jonathan Strickland aka the Quister. We're
required to say it, get that. Yeah, and most especially Lauren,
(52:49):
thank you so much for coming on the show. You're
one of the busiest folks I know, and it's an
absolute pleasure to have you join us again.
Speaker 3 (52:57):
Oh it's always good to come on and goof around.
And here's some good sax music.
Speaker 1 (53:02):
Yes, and for everybody who's wondering. We talked a little
bit about your many other projects here. Where can people
find you? Where can they learn more about your work?
Speaker 3 (53:11):
Oh? On the internet if you can, if you can
spell my name, you can probably find me. And I
know that that's a little bit of a tall order,
but but yeah, that's that's Lauren Vogelbaum and I am
currently on brain stuff Saver And you can listen to
the archive of American Shadows and yeah yeah, or or
(53:32):
find me on Instagram at vogel Bomb v O g
e l Bomb.
Speaker 1 (53:38):
Yeah yeah, so and so with that, we hope you
join us next time, Ridiculous Historians. We're going to be
diving into moral panics surrounding hip hop. We're going to
be We're gonna be doing lots of stuff. We're going
to be doing all right, lot lots of things. Thanks
so much, folks, We'll see you next time.
Speaker 2 (54:06):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
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Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.