Note: John Philip Sousa and Scott Joplin both made appearances at or near the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis. Chicago had vied for the right to host the World's Fair, based on its experience with hosting the Columbian Exposition in 1893. I thought it would be interesting to wonder what Sousa's music would have sounded like during his St. Louis appearances if he'd previously heard Joplin's music back when Chicago celebrated the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's voyage to the New World.
Mr. Tomllns, dabbing at his neck with a damp crumpled handkerchief, marched across Jackson Park toward the golden Pullman car. The gleaming train carriage perched on a stub of the Illinois Central Railroad. At the point where the tracks ended, just the right number of extra rails had been added to ensure that the gilt carriage rested inside the boundary of the park.
The stiff soles of Mr. Tomlins' patent-leather shoes clattered up three wrought-iron steps. His knuckles rapped the door sharply in the exact middle of the panel, just below a large ornamental plaque. The plaque featured a gilt bugle, nested in a leafy wreath, the whole balanced on the outspread wings of a noble American eagle.
Sousa!" Mr. Tomlins shouted at the closed door of the train compartment. Hot and vexed, he folded over his limp handkerchief and used it to swab the inside of his celluloid collar. "You are required at the bandstand!" He rapped on the door again. "Sousa!" He rattled the gold knob, and the door swung inward, throwing him off-balance.
Having regained his balance, Mr. Tomlins surveyed the carriage interior. No expense had been spared. It was all splendid Persian carpets, velveteen curtains, and matching mahogany settees. At the far end of the car, on a bench pulled up to an octagonal walnut table, sat a spectacled man. His face, despite an impressive mustache, was unremarkable. However, his attire was eye-catching.
John Philip Sousa's red uniform was tailored to fit him perfectly. The jacket, its buttons gleaming, was festooned with gold braid, while the fringed epaulets sat on the shoulders like a pair of tiny parlor lampshades. Sousa's center-parted hair was pomaded and neat comb marks organized each strand of dark hair. On the walnut table, a round red stiff-brimmed cap rested on a special velvet-topped stand next to an open dressing-case. The cap’s emblem was an eagle, a circlet of stars surrounding its head and sharp beak. The eagle emblem was reflected in the mirrored lid of Sousa's dressing-case. Its owner gazed gloomily into the mirror, slowly grooming his mustache with a miniature ivory comb.
"I regret to inform you that I cannot perform at the Opening Ceremony today," Sousa told Mr. Tomlins, placing the tiny comb on the table with a tiny click. "I asked for a bottle of Doctor Brown’s Celery Tonic, and received very inferior ginger ale. My valise, containing a supply of Nu-Vigor Mustache Wax, has been carted away to some spot on the fairgrounds -- the Peristyle, the Ferris Wheel, or I know not where."
"You perfect ninny!" cried Mr. Tomlins, "The Fair schedule’s tighter than Grover Cleveland's cummerbund! The Manufactures Building has seven thousand ticket holders plus the entire Chicago Orchestra crammed into it!" He glared at the eagle emblem on Sousa's red cap. "The President of the United States just pressed a telegraph key which sent a direct signal to Washington D.C., then Mrs. Potter Palmer addressed the Exposition on behalf of The Board of Lady Managers, and Harriet Monroe bored us all with her Columbian Ode. Two overheated ladies and an intoxicated man have been wheeled off the grounds in bath chairs already, and it's not yet noon. Now, mustache wax or no, you double-time it to the bandstand and draw off that crowd! Give 'em ‘Stars and Stripes Forever,’ and ‘After the Ball,’ twice each. I don’t want us to look like a bunch of sick cats in front of the French dignitaries!"
"Do these look new to you?" asked Sousa, brandishing a pair of white cotton gloves, each limp fingertip showing a hint of gray. "My contract calls for one pair of new white gloves per performance. I believe that this pair was plunged up and down in a washbasin of murky water, then draped over the settee to form whatever shape it would. I do have spare gloves are in my valise, but that probably whirls around the Ferris Wheel as we speak, obtaining an excellent view of Lake Michigan but doing me no good whatsoever."
Mr. Tomlins lifted his sodden handkerchief toward his neck, but noted Sousa’s glance of revulsion, and put it away. "Heard of a musical genius called Joplin? Brown-skinned fellow who plays ragtime piano? I can see from your face that you have, Sousa. Well, he’s on the Midway with a cornet right now. Didn't know he could play a horn, did you? He's catching the pikers on their way to ogle Little Egypt!" Mr. Tomlins held out a shaking forefinger. "You are not inclined to play for hundreds of people who've traveled from all over the world to visit Chicago, Illinois? Well, I know where to find a young man who is so inclined!" Mr. Tomlins spun on his patent-leather slipper, marched through the doorway of the Pullman car, thumped down the three wrought-iron steps, and strode vigorously across Jackson Park toward the Ferris Wheel’s ever-changing silhouette.
Five minutes later, Mr. Tomlins, accompanied by a distinguished-looking man with a high forehead, wearing a carefully-knotted cravat and carrying a worn but serviceable cornet, led a parade of black musicians toward the circular concert area in the middle of a broad lawn. As the group walked along, Mr. Tomlins' companion occasionally put the horn to his lips and filled the air with tumbling cascades of brassy notes. Mr. Tomlins urged the cornet player and the other musicians along the walkway toward the outdoor bandstand, shouting "This way, lads!" and "That’s the ticket!"
In the distance, a technological wonder -- a moving sidewalk -- was slowly filling with daring tourists from the lakefront. The gliding walkway moved people toward a set of bleachers near the bandstand. Some Fair visitors, leery of the novel conveyance, walked alongside it, scurrying to keep up. Others enjoyed the slow-moving marvel, turning their heads to look at the decorated park filled with Fair visitors in bright summer clothes.
As the bleachers began to fill with people, many of whom held hot pretzels or boxes of Cracker Jack or corned-beef sandwiches brought from home. In the concert area, Scott Joplin’s impromptu band had gathered around their leader, and "The Cascades Rag" rolled through the air. The late morning blazed with syncopated energy, as Joplin's cornet ran up and down unfamiliar but compelling scales.
Fair-goers streamed in continuously from the Manufactures Building, flowing around the obstructions formed by strings of children towed along by nannies, by a group of engineers listening to a man from Western Electric pointing to the series of bulbs which glowed brightly even in the daytime all along the many turrets of the Electrical Building, and by one more maddening knot of people, the slowest-moving obstruction possible. This last was a group of people stuck in place near a wheeled wicker chair, in which a wasp-waisted lady languished, pushed by a Columbian Guard. Men, women and child were forced, by lack of the marrowest exit passage, to serve as escorts for this stranger, her eyelids drooping from heat, fatigue, or an extra tablespoonful of laudanum-based patent medicine. Happily, the cortage veered a bit toward the shore of the lake, and several hemmed-in people were able to find a place for themselves on the moving sidewalk. Whether they'd intended to come hear the music or not, that's where they were going now and the escapees all looked relieved to be free to move again, in any manner, going anywhere.
More than a few of these fair visitors stepped off the moving walkway and made their way to the bleachers, where they settled themselves comfortably under the shade of striped canopies. The breezes blew through the park, flapping and snapping flags of the world displayed on tall poles surrounding Jackson Park.
The bleacher seating was now mostly occupied. Some of the crowd which had poured from the exitways of the Manufactures Building, finding the nowhere to sit but enjoying the music of Scott Joplin and his pickup band, had simply laid their paper-wrapped parcels and fringed parasols on the summer-green grass and begun to one-step and tango, using vigorous dance moves to make space for themselves n the crowd around the open performance area.
Mr. Tomlins, without realizing it had begun tapping his feet happily to Scott Joplin's music. He found himself more relaxed than he's been all day. He re-folded his damp, creased white cotton handkerchief neatly and stowed it away. He'd been assigned the duty of providing lively music for the people eating lunch in the bleachers near the lakefront, and he has done his job. Overcrowded halls had emptied, making room for new visitors, and lemonade vendors change-aprons sagged satisfyingly with coinage. All was well, on-track, harmonious, at last.
But wait... Mr. Tomlins saw, at some distance from the dancers, members of Sousa’s New Marine Band, red-uniformed and suitably white-gloved. They had finally begun to assemble itself, around a bronze statue of Christopher Columbus. The plaque embedded in the statue's concrete footing read "1492-1892, Exploration - Determination - Progress," and scorched dirty spots showed where many pipes and cigars had been tapped out against the bronze plate. Sousa's band was going to play after all, now that another band was already in place.
"Impossible man," sighed Mr. Tomlins. But then he should have realized, he supposed, that a man driven to succeed (even if persnickety and difficult) would not want to be outshone by a competitor.
Near Columbus’ bronze feet on their stone pedestal, Sousa’s men were in a great hurry. They struggled to get ready without the benefit of a dressing-room or even a solid surface on which to lay items. Some band members were still getting alto horns and euphoniums into position while sliding chin straps into place. Other musicians fumbled to fasten collar studs. Those who were fully dressed were having trouble tuning up, because Joplin's band, across the lawn, had moved to "Pineapple Rag," and between the music, the laughter, and the dancers' feet hitting wooden platform and/or surrounding ground, the park was much too noisy to hear oneself make a trombone slide adjustment. The members of the New Marine Band were in a tough place; their conductor, they well knew, was a man who kept others waiting, not one to be kept waiting. Despite loose flapping collars here and a tilted cap there, the band made ready to play. At the drop of Sousa's golden baton, the New Marine Band struck up a waltz.
Sousa’s large, elaborate dressing-case, atop the hand truck on which it had been wheeled across the park, served as the conductor’s lectern. As John Philip Sousa stood before it, the American eagle on his cap glittered in the early-afternoon sun. He looked good; his band looked good, and played well too. But the invigorating whirl of "The Belle of Chicago" didn’t pull the stream of ladies and gentlemen away from the ragtime rhythms reinforced by many shoes thumping the boardwalk.
Annoyed that Sousa's band was interfering with the dancers that Scott Joplin and his band played for, Mr. Tomlins,who stood just outside the bandstand, pulled the folded handkerchief from his pocket and wafted it back and forth to Joplin's music. Mr. Tomlinson, with not much of an ear for music, kept time badly, moving his tiny white banner less to Joplin's raggy rhythm and more in line with a hesitation waltz, but his nods and smiles and enthusiasm still seemed to encourage the newcomers to come closer to enjoy the whirl of song and dance.
His back to the statue of Christopher Columbus towering over him, Sousa crisply swept the air, his gaze averted from the sight of his own dingy white gloves, nearly as gray as Mr. Tomlin's pocket-handkerchief. The conductor, all gleaming buttons and tasseled epaulets, lurched the New Marine Band through "El Capitan," then "The Thunderer," and finally, "King Cotton." But the fair-goers still flowed steadily toward Joplin’s music, which had swung into a cakewalk as dancers spilled out onto the promenade along the Grand Basin. The bandstand's broad railings were festooned with jumbles of shawls, parasols, vests, and straw hats discarded by overheated dancers.
As the oom-pah drive of "King Cotton" came to a slightly-abrupt halt, and before a single mouthpiece could be lowered, Sousa shouted "The Liberty Bell!" and he lifted his golden baton once more. But at that moment, a tuba player crept from the back row of The New Marine Band toward the moving sidewalk. As the other red-uniformed musicians pulled in a very quick breath before the new number, the rogue musician, his middle encircled by the coil of his sousaphone, glided slowly away from the Columbus statue and toward the bandstand filled with dancers. When he stepped away from the moving walkway, he added his tuba to Joplin's arrangement, his instrument taking up "The Swipesy Cakewalk."
Next, two piccolo players, a trombonist, and a huge man with a bass drum strapped to his chest all subtly drifted away from the New Marine Band , then stepped onto the slow-moving carrier and were brought to the ragtime bandstand. With a beefed-up band, Joplin’s cakewalk now drowned out Sousa’s formerly blaring march.
"After the Ball!" Sousa bawled from under his limp mustache, now openly desperate. But even as the popular ballad -- gaps audible -- filled the air, he lost an oboeist, a snare drummer, and then, humiliatingly, the triangle player. Finally forced to acknowledge the massive desertion, Sousa adjusted his eagle-crowned cap, removed his tired gray-tipped gloves and let them drop to the turf and tobacco ash at Columbus’ feet. He motioned to the remnants of The New Marine Band to step gracefully onto the moving sidewalk.
From inside the bandstand, the black jazzmen -- never missing a note -- obligingly made room for the new musicians. They finished their number, and then --with a quick glance at Joplin, who nodded and put his cornet mouthpiece to his lips -- began enthusiastically to pump out a sped-up, syncopated version of "After the Ball." All dancers had merged into one happy, overheated jumble in front of, behind, and even under the bleachers, whirling and stepping. The last of Sousa’s red-uniformed men, uneasily balanced on the conveyor, whirred along the margin of the promenade, taking advantage of the moment to pull off their own white gloves and let them drop all over the lawn like fallen gardenia blooms. The entirety of The New Marine Band began to follow Joplin's players, and to add a little bounce, matching the jazzy beat which echoed off the vast surface of the Grand Basin.
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