The Schuster Sisters Saxophone Quartet endorsing instruments by the C. G. Conn Company, ca. 1915. From the Conn Archive at the National Music Museum, Vermillion, South Dakota. © 1997-2009 by The National Music Museum.
Shortly after Carl Greenleaf became president of the company, he noted that saxophones were being produced at a modest rate of about 100 per month. According to his own recollections, the "saxophone trade increased quite rapidly [in the 1920s] and the saxophone business almost immediately became the most profitable part of the business. Every effort was made to increase production and it was built up very materially" (unpublished autobiographical sketch). According to the company's 1922 annual report, saxophone production had increased to about 150 units per day.
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Left: Details of keys inlaid with mother-of-pearl on a gold-plated New Wonder model 18M soprano saxophone made in 1926 (NMM 5661). Right: Detail of knurled G-sharp key on gold-plated New Wonder model 10M tenor saxophone made in 1927 (NMM 5664). Both saxophones were donated to the NMM by John Powers, Carbondale, Colorado, 1993. Photographs by Simon R. H. Spicer. © 1997-2009 by The National Music Museum. |
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The Conn company offered a full line of saxes, from the small, E-flat soprano to the bass, as well as the first American contrabass sarrusophone (1921) which was offered in lieu of a contrabass saxophone. American saxophone production during this era was dominated by Conn and the Buescher Company, also of Elkhart. While still operated by former Conn employee, Gus Buescher, that company was now owned by a syndicate of five men (including Carl Greenleaf) and the Wurlitzer Corporation. It was Conn's saxes, however, that first introduced drawn-and- rolled tone holes (1919) after a 1914 patent by William S. Haynes. Conn also introduced an optional, sprayed-on colored finish for saxophones in 1922 and, for a few years, one could obtain purple, rose, green, blue, black-and-silver, or white-and-gold saxophones.
In an attempt to recapture what he saw as a declining saxophone market in the late 1920s, Greenleaf introduced the F-mezzo-soprano saxophone, an improved soprano in B-flat, and the unusual Conn-O-Sax. The latter was a hybrid cross between the saxophone, the English horn, and the heckelphone, based on a patent filed in 1913 by his predecessor, Col. Conn. Unfortunately, these particular models, initiated during Greenleaf's "new era," did not survive the fall of the stock market and the subsequent Great Depression.
Advertisement for the Conn-O-Sax from a Conn catalog of 1928. From the Conn Archive at the National Music Museum, Vermillion, South Dakota. © 1997-2009 by The National Music Museum.
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