Musical Inventors #13: J.W. Pepper – The Sousaphone

If J.W. Pepper had named his new instrument after himself, we’d be talking about the pepperphone.

That might have prevented the misconceptions over who invented it.

Instead, he named it after John Philip Sousa, the famous American conductor and composer. For decades, some folks argued that the sousaphone wasn’t invented by Pepper, but by Sousa himself, or instrument maker C.G. Conn.

We know the truth now, but it took years of research — and a chance purchase in a thrift store — to settle the matter of who invented the sousaphone. 

John Philip Sousa was a multi-instrumentalist, composer, conductor, and one of the most famous American musicians of all time.

While he wrote over 150 classical works including operettas, humoresques, and suites, he’s known as The March King for his 130 marches, like “The Stars And Stripes Forever,” “The Washington Post,” and “The Thunderer.”

James Welsh Pepper grew up in Philadelphia. He always had an interest in the arts, in part because the city was a cultural and industrial center. In 1876, at the age of 23, he opened a music store selling instruments and sheet music.

Within three years, his company began publishing music, making it one of the first American firms to publish and distribute band music. Until then, sheet music had to be imported from Europe. It was good timing because brass bands became very popular after the Civil War. Pepper filled his catalog with sheet music arranged for military, school, and community bands. 

Sousa moved to Philadelphia in the same year that Pepper opened his business. The two men were still in their 20s. In 1879, Pepper published Sousa’s tenth march, “Globe And Eagle.” Over the years, he published ten more of Sousa’s marches, as well as the operetta “Desiree.” 

Sousa asked Pepper to make a similar instrument with a bigger bell for better tone. And he wanted the bell to point straight up, as he said in his autobiography, “…so that the sound would diffuse over the entire band like the frosting on a cake!” 

It took three years — because Pepper was running a company so his time and money were in use elsewhere — but he built such a horn and named it the sousaphone because Sousa gave him the idea. 

The huge bell pointing upwards gave it the nickname “raincatcher.”

The musician who played the new instrument on that 1896 tour was named Herman Conrad, a German immigrant and one of the best tubists in the world.

With all that attention, both visually and sonically, interest grew in the sousaphone. It didn’t take long for other instrument manufacturers to start making them, including C.G. Conn.

After the 1896 tour, the first sousaphone seems to have gone missing. Conrad and other bass brass players preferred the sousaphones made by Conn’s company, so it looks like no one gave much thought to the whereabouts of Pepper’s original instrument.

Conn had played coronet in the regimental band of the 15th Indiana Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War. Back home in Elkhart, Indiana after the war, he started grocery, baking, silver plating, and rubber stamp making businesses. He also played in a local band.

One night, Conn and his acquaintance Del Crampton got drunk in a saloon and had a scuffle outside. Crampton split Conn’s lip so badly that Conn thought he’d never play the coronet again.

C.G. Conn Ltd. became one of the biggest instrument makers in the world. It’s now owned by Steinway.

Conn’s sousaphones became known for their high quality. Herman Conrad himself wrote a letter praising Conn’s instrument, and Conn published the letter in its magazine.

Conn introduced a sousaphone with a forward facing bell in 1908. It was part of their new Wonderphone line. Their advertising emphasized how well this design would work in parades and marches, and it’s usually what you’ll see during college football halftime shows. 

Sousa preferred the raincatcher design and continued using it for his entire career.

Pepper finally added a sousaphone to his line in 1905, but he reformed his entire company as J. W. Pepper & Son in 1910. The retail and manufacturing sections closed, and the company focused strictly on sheet music. Conn and Selmer became the biggest names in brass instruments. While Conn didn’t explicitly claim to have invented the sousaphone, their ads implied as much and stressed the improvements they continued to make. To confuse matters even more, some people called it the “Conn sousaphone” the way we call tissues “Kleenex.”

From then on, if they thought about it at all, people assumed Sousa or Conn invented the sousaphone.

Still, not everyone reads the Christian Science Monitor, and the misconception continues.

Conn ran for office, winning a term in the Indiana House of Representatives and another in the U.S. House. He supported temperance, perhaps remembering his drunken fight. Del Crampton, the man who slugged him in the mouth, was one of his biggest supporters. 

After leaving politics, he returned to his businesses, It’s at this point that he accused Pepper of lying about inventing the sousaphone and taking the credit himself.

Pepper successfully sued him for defamation and the judge ordered Conn to publicly apologize. He did so, blaming his behavior on his tobacco usage. His businesses floundered and he sold them off in 1915, dying penniless in 1931.

Pepper died in 1919 of heart failure. Conrad passed the following year.

On March 5, 1932, Sousa arrived in Reading, Pennsylvania to conduct the Ringgold Band in concert.

Following his death, doctors revealed that Sousa had fallen off a horse in 1925 and lived the last nine years of his life with a broken neck.

In 1973, a 24-year-old tuba player named John Bailey joined his mother and sister for an afternoon visit to Renninger’s Antique Market in Adamstown, Pennsylvania.

He spotted a tarnished raincatcher sousaphone hanging from the rafters. When he learned it was only $50, he rushed home for the money, thinking he found a cool old horn to play in parades.

As he cleaned it, he found it was unfinished brass, and he discovered etchings near the bell.

Bailey knew he had something special but, as a recent college grad, he couldn’t afford to have it professionally restored. So he stored it away for 17 years.

In 1991, he sold it to J.W. Pepper & Son. They had it repaired and finished, and offered Dave Detwiler a chance to play it publicly with the Montgomery County Concert Band. Detwiler is a pastor, tubist, and sousaphone historian.

The J.W. Pepper & Son company still thrives and has almost 800,000 sheet music titles available. The original sousaphone is now in a display case in the headquarters in Exton, Pennsylvania.

Every year, tuba, euphonium, and sousaphone players get together to play Christmas carols in an event called TubaChristmas. You haven’t lived until you’ve heard “Carol Of The Bells” performed by 100 tubas.

To find a TubaChristmas near you, visit https://tubachristmas.com.

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