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The Inventor of the Saxophone Had Some of the World's Worst Luck · Ridiculous History

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  Speaker 1: Ridiculous Histories, a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome to the show,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much for tuning in.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Let's hear it for the Man, the myth, the legend,
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: our super producer Max, the soprano Williams. You like that one?
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: You like that one. It's like a soprano saxophone, like
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: high and loud and annoying.
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  Speaker 1: Oh that's how we're starting today.
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  Speaker 2: Folks.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: They call me Ben my pal nol is on some adventures.
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  Speaker 1: We'll be returning soon and in the meantime, we are
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: thrilled to welcome a returning special guest, a longtime partner
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: and podcast Crime with Me, Lauren Vogelbaum. Lauren, thanks for
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: coming back on the show.
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: Hello, thank you so much for having me.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So, the last time you were on Ridiculous History,
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: you and our dear friend June explored how houses can
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: legally be haunted.
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: Yes, physically there's a question, but legally they can absolutely
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: be haunted, which is nuts.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: I totally took that research and brought it to our
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: friends at the Daily Zeitgeist. Oh and they were like, hey,
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: what's some interesting about your search history? So thank you
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: for letting me crib that anytime. Yes, So I was
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: thinking before we get into today's show, we were talking
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  Speaker 1: about this off air. I realized that I have lost
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  Speaker 1: track of just how many projects you and I have
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: worked together on over the years.
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: I that is a very good question, because we've been
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: working together for Nilla Loon in our twelve or thirteen years. I.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: Wow, Yeah, I guess that's right.
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I think the first stuff that we worked on
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: together was the brain Stuff video series when we did.
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  Speaker 1: That, right, wow. And you I can name several of
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  Speaker 1: the many things that you have done. You are the
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: head writer and host of brain Stuff, which continues in
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: podcasts form today. Yes, and you are creator and co
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: host of Saver, which is one of my favorite food podcasts.
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  Speaker 3: Oh, thank you, thank you. Yeah. Yeah, that one's a
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  Speaker 3: conversational food show that that I do along with Annie Reese.
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  Speaker 3: And yeah.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: Sometimes we get to go to wacky places and talk
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: to wacky people, but mostly it's just like what is
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: up with artichokes?
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  Speaker 2: So I want to jump in here, Lauren. I do
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  Speaker 2: actually miss cutting y'all's ads behind the scenes. For about
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  Speaker 2: a year. When I first started at iHeart, I cut
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  Speaker 2: Annie and Lauren's ad reads and it was a real joy.
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  Speaker 2: Producer Andrew Howard always asked me, He's like, you know,
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  Speaker 2: you don't have to do this. I'm like, you know,
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  Speaker 2: it actually kind of brains my day. Like, you know,
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: the week they were really busy. I didn't enjoy it
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  Speaker 2: as much, but like you know, you kind of bummed down.
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  Speaker 2: Let's see what type of high jinks any Lauren are getting.
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  Speaker 1: Into over here and what kind of curse words.
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  Speaker 2: Lots of curts Worth.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I buttoned it up on air most
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  Speaker 3: of the time. But but I'd say that other than
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  Speaker 3: maybe Holly Fry, I am one of the customist people
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  Speaker 3: here at iHeart.
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  Speaker 2: And actually, just to get back on again, you said
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  Speaker 2: Halley from Everything About You two were like the first
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  Speaker 2: two people I worked at at this job. I cut
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  Speaker 2: all the generic ads for the company along with the
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  Speaker 2: ones for stuff you missed an insta class with Holly Fry.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, so we're going back old days like three years ago.
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  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, as long as you guys, Bud.
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  Speaker 3: No, Hey, you've got your stretch and the last three
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: years have been a very long three years, to be fair.
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  Speaker 1: That's true. That is true. You feel like they feel
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: like they were longer than they were supposed to be,
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: and we are also currently can't say too much about
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: it yet, folks. Currently, Lauren, you and I are working
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: on Thirteen Days of Halloween. We've also done you do
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: a lot of voice work. We've also both played roles,
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  Speaker 1: I think recently on a show called Remus the Bootleg King.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you were. You were the titular Remus, Yes,
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  Speaker 3: the bootleg Ging.
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  Speaker 1: I have yet again been asked to play an unhinged lunatic.
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  Speaker 1: Thank you, Max, Thank you for that understanding not.
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  Speaker 5: Getting asked to play play all right, Yeah, just wait
• 4:29
  Speaker 5: for my book that's coming out in about like three
• 4:31
  Speaker 5: four years working for Ben Bolan, The Unhinged Lunatic with
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  Speaker 5: Oh Hey, there you go Forward by Paul Decant.
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  Speaker 3: Oh no, yeah, I got to I got to play
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: Remus's wife and that one. And it's certainly the most
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: times I've ever said daddy in my life. So that's
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  Speaker 3: absolutely fine and not weird at all. Now, I'm glad
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  Speaker 3: that we recorded that separately. I'm not sure if I
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  Speaker 3: could have done it in the same room.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was thinking that I was thinking of the
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  Speaker 1: same thing. Honestly, when I learned about that and we
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: speaking to fantastic segue. Yes, we're here to talk about
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  Speaker 1: something that I think. It's a story not a lot
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  Speaker 1: of people know, and I was. I was kind of
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  Speaker 1: surprised when our good pal Tyler Klang brought this up.
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  Speaker 3: Oh okay, this this is a story that I've talked
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  Speaker 3: about on a show that sadly just ended called American Shadows.
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  Speaker 1: Oh you talked about this?
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  Speaker 4: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: The structure of that show is, you know, like a
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  Speaker 3: three act structure, and so we had had a beginning
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  Speaker 3: and an epilogue and then a longer part in the middle,
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  Speaker 3: and this was one of our beginning parts.
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  Speaker 1: Oh nice, We are talking about one of my favorite instruments,
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  Speaker 1: and hopefully I'm not alone in this, the saxophone, right
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  Speaker 1: are you? Are you? What's your saxophone stays?
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  Speaker 3: I'd say that I'm a middling I mean, I like
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  Speaker 3: a saxophone. I do not dislike a saxophone. I can't
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  Speaker 3: I can't proclaim myself a top tier fan of the saxophone,
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  Speaker 3: right right.
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  Speaker 2: I feel you.
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  Speaker 1: I think that's got some nostalgia for a lot of
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  Speaker 1: people that generation, because you grew up with uh with
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  Speaker 1: saxophones and sitcoms. Oh yeah, I mean, and so many
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  Speaker 1: eighties and nineties things.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, you had the good like yacht rock phase. Yeah yeah,
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  Speaker 3: I mean, but I but I love a smooth jazz,
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  Speaker 3: so absolutely I do.
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  Speaker 2: I love.
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  Speaker 1: I like waiting room jazz, you know what I mean? Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I like I like to sit in the waving room
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  Speaker 1: and look around and like, hey, I wonder what's wrong
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  Speaker 1: with that one? Uh kidding? I kid, But it turns
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  Speaker 1: out as as you know from American chantos, the story
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  Speaker 1: of the saxophone is a story of near misses. We
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  Speaker 1: are so close to living in a world where the
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  Speaker 1: saxophone is not a thing.
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  Speaker 3: Right there, Yeah, like so close to zero saxophones.
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  Speaker 1: I mean. The guy who and I say this with
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  Speaker 1: diplomacy and sincerity, the guy who invented the saxophone was
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  Speaker 1: absolute klutz.
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  Speaker 3: Yep yep, yep. Yeah. The episode he appeared in was.
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  Speaker 1: Called Lucky Nice.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I know, he almost died a bunch of times,
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  Speaker 3: all the time, constantly, like his mother joked about it.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, and how much of that was a joke? Right?
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  Speaker 2: Like?
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  Speaker 3: Probably not right?
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  Speaker 1: So we called this guy or his friends and his
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  Speaker 1: family called him Adolph Adulte already zacks, Yeah, adulphe Sachs.
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  Speaker 1: He was born in Antoine Joseph Sachs November sixth, eighteen fourteen,
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  Speaker 1: in a city that is now part of modern day Belgium.
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  Speaker 1: It's called the not And you know, he had a
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  Speaker 1: big family, but he did not have a poor family.
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  Speaker 3: Right because his dad was a fairly famous woodworker of instruments.
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  Speaker 1: M hmm.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: He was good at it too. He was gifted such
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  Speaker 1: that William the First of Orange, who was the ruly
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  Speaker 1: monarch at the time, commissioned Sachs to create instruments for
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  Speaker 1: the Belgian military. So he got a government contract. Yeah yeah,
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  Speaker 1: you know, Max and you and I don't make musical instruments,
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  Speaker 1: but that sounds like it's a pretty sweet gig.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, especially at the time, you know, like you
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  Speaker 3: didn't really have a giant corporation that could be in
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  Speaker 3: charge of you, so it was pretty much just the
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  Speaker 3: government or just a random rich person being like, oh sure,
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  Speaker 3: please art for me. That would be terrific.
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  Speaker 1: Right, yeah, that's a really good point. So so as
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  Speaker 1: a result of this, our boy, Adolfe Sachs, he grows
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  Speaker 1: up in a very musical environment, he thrives in this
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  Speaker 1: he thrives.
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  Speaker 2: In this world.
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  Speaker 1: And a lot of what we know about this time
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  Speaker 1: comes from Joe Santi at the Museum of Musical Instruments
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  Speaker 1: in Brussels.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, it turns out, for a number of reasons, there's
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  Speaker 3: not actually that much history written at like like during
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  Speaker 3: his lifetime. We're going to get more into that later.
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  Speaker 3: But but yes, from what we do know, he was
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  Speaker 3: born into a family of eleven children, although only four
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  Speaker 3: of them survived to adulthood.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, and given the time, we might assume with
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  Speaker 1: some reason that a lot of that would be due
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  Speaker 1: to child mortality. But those the other kids died between
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  Speaker 1: the ages of twenty and twenty five, so they made
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  Speaker 1: it into adulthood. What we're saying is it wasn't all
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  Speaker 1: you know, trumpets and angel farts for this guy. He
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  Speaker 1: did have saxophones angel farts or saxophones and angel farts. Yes,
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  Speaker 1: he was very clever, He was very talented kid. He
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  Speaker 1: was making clarinet. Oh, his dad let him use the workshop.
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  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, whenever we wanted ye come through. Yeah yeah,
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  Speaker 3: And apparently he was a total prodigy at it.
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  Speaker 1: Right, like making clarinets when he was fourteen or fifteen,
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  Speaker 1: and he didn't just replicate the design of the clarinet.
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  Speaker 1: He improved it by changing the locations of the holes
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  Speaker 1: through which the wind goes.
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  Speaker 2: I am not a.
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  Speaker 1: Clarinet s wind wind scientist. I'm not a wind doctor.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, and Sex was a wind doctor. But but that
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  Speaker 3: wasn't the only medium that he worked in. He also
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  Speaker 3: apparently made some ivory flutes, which I am also not
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  Speaker 3: a wind doctor. But but other people thought that that
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  Speaker 3: was impossible at the time, So I guess that's pretty
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  Speaker 3: okay for you know, an actual teenager.
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  Speaker 2: I know there's a lot of stuff about the changing
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  Speaker 2: of you know, the process of making flutes, because we
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  Speaker 2: got into this when we did Library of Congress to
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  Speaker 2: talk about the glass flutes. Be I think Noel talked
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  Speaker 2: about this because this is way more in Nol's spectrum. Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: the guy who knows about the stuff is the one
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  Speaker 2: we don't have here right now. Perfect But like they were,
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  Speaker 2: they were really experimenting, trying out and they didn't settle
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  Speaker 2: with ivory because that's kind of inhumane at this point.
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  Speaker 2: Make sure stuff out ivory. But like I feel like
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  Speaker 2: that was the material that had like the best sounding
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  Speaker 2: of them at that point, because I'm I don't know,
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  Speaker 2: I'm out of my oleman too, but I remember us
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  Speaker 2: talking about that.
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  Speaker 1: Something, right, right, Like the glass the glass flute, which
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  Speaker 1: Lizzo famously played recently, is a is a marvel. And
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  Speaker 1: the ivory itself. First, ivory is expensive, that's a flex.
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  Speaker 1: They weren't so very worried about animal rights in the
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  Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds. Yep, this this impressed people, but unfortunately, given
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  Speaker 1: Sax's young age, this also garnered him a couple of
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  Speaker 1: what we would describe as haters in the modern day. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: the couple, Yeah, who is this kid?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah?
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  Speaker 1: Right? And so he gets a reputation over time for
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  Speaker 1: making not just clarinets but also flutes and trumpets that
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  Speaker 1: are better than the than those of the established instrument
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  Speaker 1: makers of the day. When he's twenty years old, again,
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  Speaker 1: just twenty, he makes a brand new clarinet that has
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  Speaker 1: twenty four keys. Then he makes a bass clarinet, and
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  Speaker 1: people are starting to say, wow, these other non Sax clarinets,
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  Speaker 1: those are barbarian instruments, which is just weirdly aggressive.
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  Speaker 3: Did they literally call them barbarian instruments? Is that a quote?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah?
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  Speaker 1: That's a quote that comes from that actually I think
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  Speaker 1: comes from the website of his hometown.
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  Speaker 3: Huh. Yeah, I did not know that clarinet players were
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  Speaker 3: that agro, but I guess I appreciate it. Yeah, apparently
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  Speaker 3: people were like jealous and mad about it, like not
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  Speaker 3: just mad, mad with a hy mad about it. I
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  Speaker 3: guess the soloist at the Great Royal Harmony in Brussels
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  Speaker 3: refused to use this thing, even though it was ostensibly better,
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  Speaker 3: because it had come from And again I quote that
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  Speaker 3: weedy little pupil sax.
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  Speaker 1: You can call people weedy. That just seems like a strange,
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  Speaker 1: strange thing, strange insult.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, I guess you know it. It makes sense.
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  Speaker 3: It's kind of like kind of like noodley but but
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  Speaker 3: but wheat.
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  Speaker 2: But it worked out though. We little poopa whatever that
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  Speaker 2: word is.
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  Speaker 1: Because there's a big poopa. Why don't we talk about
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  Speaker 1: the little poopa?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, a little poopa?
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  Speaker 3: Also weedy sort of sounds like a sound the saxophone
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  Speaker 3: mix Max, can we get a saxophone sound?
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  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that Clarence.
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  Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, it's amazing. Now now I think weedy
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  Speaker 1: is cool.
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: We're bringing back weedy.
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: This is some extra weedy music.
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  Speaker 1: So okay, So so there's this insult, right, the clarinet
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  Speaker 1: soloist at the Great Royal Harmony in Brussels says, I'm
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  Speaker 1: not you're weedy, bro, I'm not using your clarinet, and
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  Speaker 1: then Sachs, who is also a multi instrumentalist, says, okay,
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  Speaker 1: play your clarinet then, and I shall play mine. And
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  Speaker 1: they did it in front of like four thousand people.
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  Speaker 3: And he became a soloist and people started writing works
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  Speaker 3: for him, and after he left they just put them
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  Speaker 3: down because they were too difficult for anyone else to play.
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  Speaker 1: And now let's fast forward. It's eighteen forty, he is
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  Speaker 1: twenty six years old. He presents nine of his new works,
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  Speaker 1: his new kind of instruments that he's been working on,
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  Speaker 1: to the Belgian exhibition, and the judges don't give him
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  Speaker 1: first prize, not because he's bad.
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  Speaker 3: Not because the instruments were of lower quality, but because
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  Speaker 3: he was so young that they were like, this isn't
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  Speaker 3: fair to people who have been working in the industry longer.
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  Speaker 1: Right, which is a lot like someone saying there's someone
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: else in line for the Olympic medal, right, right, right,
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: it did run faster.
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  Speaker 3: But yeah, yeah, they did give him a medal, but
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  Speaker 3: not the gold.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, and he was a total jerk about it too.
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  Speaker 1: Oh yeah yeah yeah.
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  Speaker 3: Apparently he said, if they think me too young to
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  Speaker 3: deserve the gold medal, I myself think me too old
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  Speaker 3: to accept this.
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  Speaker 1: For Meal one, I didn't know what for Meal was,
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: Oh it's like gold plated.
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, it's like it's like it's like chinzy, It's
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: like it's like, oh, it's not not really gold.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Okay. So he was insulted that they offered him Oh yes, okay,
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: and he dissed the institution pretty hard because he didn't
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: want to accept these strictures, these traditions, these legacies, the
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: current musical regime. And if you look at his childho,
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: it's no wonder that he gave no f's and took
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: no s you know what I mean?
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, he had already lived.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: Through a lot. That's why I think drew all three
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  Speaker 1: of us to this story, because while other children were
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: having normal childhoods, you know, for the eighteen hundreds, for
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: the eight sure, for the eighteen hundred, the occasional plague,
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: probably a lot of dysentery, Sachs was always almost dying.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: He had all these bizarre brushes with death that were
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: right out of the Final Destination film franchise.
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  Speaker 3: And Okay, as we said before, there aren't a whole
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: lot of primary resources that are that are really strenuously
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: in a research way backing this information up. But from
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: what we can confirm from the best of our interneting,
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: right and that nice museum. M Yeah, he almost died
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  Speaker 3: constantly so many times.
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  Speaker 1: Right it Uh, it's that's because he was notorious for
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: being klutz and to your point on American Shadows, either
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: very lucky or very unlucky on how you look at it. Yeah, so, uh,
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: all the way back, and this is something you guys
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: talked about on this show, all the way back to
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: when he was so young that he could barely walk.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: He fell like the equivalent of three stories. I heard
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: sometimes that he fell from a tree, and then sometimes
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: I heard he fell downstairs.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah. I think that we reported the fell down three
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: flights of stairs one in American Shadows. But either way,
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: it's a lot of height from which to fall, and
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: all stories agree that he really clogged his head.
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  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, And so everybody immediately assumes this kid is dead.
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: Oh sure.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, and the report of how injured he was ranged
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  Speaker 3: from like he was he was bedridden for like a
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  Speaker 3: week to like he was straight in a coma, and.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: They said, well, I guess we should have ten other
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: children just to hedge our bets.
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  Speaker 4: Uh.
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: This that all happened before he was what three years old,
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: So that's his first brush with death.
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  Speaker 3: Uh huh uh huh.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: Not long after that, he wound up. So he took
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: a drink out of, you know, whatever the glass wearer
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: of the day was, and he thought it was milk.
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: It was not milk. It was vitriolized water aka sulfuric
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: acid with water.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: Oh right, yeah, he was. He was wrong about that one.
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: He was wrong about the milk, but it somehow didn't
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: murder him.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: So naturally, of course, not long after that, he swallows
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: a needle, like a big old needle, yes, yeah, like
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: an eighteen hundreds needle. Yeah, like a before safety standards needle,
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: and he survives. I think that one is also impressive
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: given the state of medicine and hygiene at the time, right, Yeah,
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: the needle would not have been sterilized.
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: Oh, certainly not. I think I think it. I think
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: it passed through his system from from what I understand,
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: and it did not pierce his intestines and you know
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: did as nature intents with things other than needles passed
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: right out.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: That's so crazy. Yeah, and for those of us playing
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: along at home, that's already three close brushes.
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and three close brushes at the age at which
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: someone is still swallowing pins because they just think it's lulls,
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: you know, like like this is this is like under
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: the age of ten for sure behavior mm hmm yeah,
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: probably under the age of seven.
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: And each of these incidents could have led to a
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: world without a saxophone Max. Maybe something a little bittersweet.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: Oh perfect, perfect.
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: There we go, heads up to everyone listening. I have
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: no way to actually know what any of these sound
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: like before I play them, so it's a it's a guest.
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: I did know that that one was not going to
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: be better sweet.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: Though, Okay, yeah, I thought it worked, Yeah yeah, yeah.
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: So we're pulling out all the stops because because we've
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: we've got an illustrious guest here. So later on he
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: gets burned and a gunpowder explosion that's number four.
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: Uh huh. I've heard that it like threw him across
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: the room.
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: You know, it's nuts. We have a good friend of
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: the show, Rachel Lance, who is the Worlds who is
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: a world class authority on explosions, especially underwater explosions.
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: Good good friend of the show.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a good person to have on speed dial,
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like, hey, Doc Lance, there
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: might be some explosions. I got a couple of quick questions. Yes,
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: So I bring that up to say, when there is
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: an explosion powerful enough to throw someone, Oh, it's not
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: like how we see in film. It's not something that
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: people instantly get up after.
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: Oh sure, no, no, no no. And that wasn't the
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: only that wasn't the only brush with fiery death that
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: he had, because the next one is that I I
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: guess there was a cast iron pan on a stove
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: and he kind of like tripped into it, just just
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: just wamp kind of uh huh, and just really really
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: did a number on himself. I mean, you know, And
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: that's that's cast iron gets quite hot and it holds
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: heap very well. So yeah, that's bad.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: And then it continues. So that's number five.
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: That's number five.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: We can count disasters six, seven, and eight as a
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: group we talked about this off air, right, like all
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: the times he almost asphyxiated.
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, these are actually my favorite because it's such like
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: an artist thing to do. Okay, So he almost suffocated
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: himself more than once, more than twice, at least three
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: times because he just kept varnishing things and then going
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: to sleep in the room where they were drying without
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: properly ventilating it. And I feel like as artists, like
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: I mean like like, I mean, like we're writers, so
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: we have like slightly less danger.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: Sure, but but I love that.
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: I just love that. I love it when you're just
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: arting too hard to bother thinking about, you know.
• 22:32
  Speaker 4: Not dying.
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: Sure. I've walked into my brother doing something like this
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: before and I'm like, what are you doing, Alex?
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: It's Alex Williams who composed this track. And I don't know.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: Can Alex play the saxophone?
• 22:45
  Speaker 4: Ah?
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: Maybe a little.
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: I don't think he plays everything else?
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I I think he might some. I
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: don't think he's ever played that much read instrument. Okay, caution,
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: he's percussion, he's obviously.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: He gave me a great little melodica.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think brass and reed though stuff he hasn't
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: played that much. But you know what, I'm also based
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: on this off of like, you know, when we lived
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: together in high school. Yeah, and we are not in
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: high school any longer. We are old, old old credits.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: Now, well, the varnish can still get you. The point
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: of that is keep a window open, yes, always. But then,
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: of course he almost dies a couple other times.
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, there were a couple more public accidents that happened.
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: I guess. In one he was just walking down the
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: street minding his own sax business and a roof paver
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: or something like slid right down and conked him on the.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: Head, like cartoon stych.
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: Sure, yeah, yeah, this was it was probably from acme, right.
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: And then there was another time that he fell into
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: a river and was rescued by a stranger who happened
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: to be passing by and like noticed that this kid
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: was floating face down.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: Which that is sobery, that's frightening. And this all leads
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: us to that quote you mentioned when even even his
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: parents acknowledged this this kid at a situation.
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they were like, heck and hecket sacks, could you
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: please could you get your stuff together? Man? Yeah, his
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: his mother there's a quote from his mother. Again, I'm
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: not totally sure where we're getting this from, but apparently
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: she said he's a child condemned to misfortune, he won't.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: Live and in the district, in the neighborhood, his street
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: name was Little Sax the Ghost.
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: That's a good street name. Yeah, right, right, could we
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: get some ghostly secks?
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: We can try.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: WHOA nailed it?
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: I'm not hearing gonna be sexs phone?
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah that doesn't sound like a sex Yeah, I mean,
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: but let's.
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: Give a second. We're doing this live, y'all.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, listen along with let's let's see what the second
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: comes in.
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: There.
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: It is.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: Like, butta my dude, that's high quality. Yeah, now, I
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: just kind of want to hang out and hear this
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: all right now, this would be weird music to hear
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: in a waiting room. Oh well, yeah, like what are
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: you waiting there?
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: So, Little Sacks the Ghost does reach adulthood, yes, and
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: he is. He feels that Paris is calling him. He
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: has the dream of traveling to France, and so he does.
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: In the eighteen forties. He has only thirty francs in
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: his pocket, so he's a real success story. There's something
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: romantic about being this talented musician. I'm in Paris. I'm
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: gonna make my own way. I'm going to redefine music
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: going to the big city there it is.
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and all of this was you know, this was
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: after the Revolution, Napoleon's reign, and so Paris was a
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: little bit nutty little miss at the time. Sure yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: but there was still money to be made from the military.
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: So like his father before him, Sachs got some contracts
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: with the French military, or similar to like his father
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: before him.
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: Right, yeah, which is fascinating to me because that's such
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: a weirdly specific career or flex. I never thought about it,
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: but I guess, so what does have to make all
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: those musical instruments and at this time they're making a
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: lot of them by hand?
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: Yes, well, I mean, and there are still military bands,
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: but I think that they were more of a phenomenon
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: at this time than they are currently. You know, people
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: didn't have Netflix. They had to make their own fun.
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: Right yeah, that fun would be war complete with five
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: sure right. So he also is very very ambitious, this guy,
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: because he doesn't just want to make the same the
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: same old vanilla clarinet he starts inventing his own instruments,
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: and his dream is to bring his own brand new
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: instruments to these militaries. And in eighteen forty two, that's
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: when he really starts working on what would become the saxophone,
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: and the whole weird family.
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: Host charmingly named family of other instruments that he just
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: put his own name in front of and I had
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: never heard of before. Because you have what the sax.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: Tuba, the sax horn.
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: Perhaps my favorite, the sax troumba.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: Sax tromba.
• 27:41
  Speaker 3: I don't know what that is, but I want to
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: hear it.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: Hey, yeah, okay, we're gonna have to dig in on
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: that one. I think that's a deep cut.
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because none of these ever really made it anywhere,
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: certainly not the way that the saxophone did.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: Right, And he also didn't name it himself, so lest
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: we think his ambition led to some meglomaniacal thing, he
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: was not calling it a saxophone. He was right around
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: third a little bit. He's like right on the cusp
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: of becoming thirty years old when he starts making I know,
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: right when he starts making inroads in the Parisian music scene,
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: and though he could be an abrasive dude, he makes
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: He makes a friendship with a composer and a critic
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: named Hector Berlois. And these guys when they meet, they click.
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: They have like a Cloud Atlas moment and they're like,
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: what do you think about you know, clarinets. He's like
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: that shit's for barbarians or whatever they talk about, and
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: they burn them indnight oil and Sachs ends up pitching
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: this guy, this established Parisian musician. He's like, here's what
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: I think about everything. Here are my ideas we should
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: have instruments for the armies. I'm gonna do this thing
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: and that thing, and we pull to quote from his
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: hometown's website, it was it was kind of a It
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: was an awkward moment when Sas finally ran out of
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: steam and stopped talking.
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: Huh, because apparently Burloyd's had just been listening to all
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: of this in silence. According to the hometown website, at
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: the end of this conference, he confided in Sacks, tomorrow
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: you will know what I think about the work you
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: have accomplished.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: That's cryptic.
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: I would be pretty mad if I if I poured
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: my heart out my creative heart out. It's someone who was,
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: you know, like a decent buddy. Sure, and they were like, yeah,
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: I wanna get back to you tomorrow about that one.
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. It's it's a very strange thing, you know.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: And then on June twelfth, eighteen forty two, Sax learns
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: that there's an article in this journal Beloy's writes for
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: and it's all about how great Sax is. Axe is
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: called as invention at this point the bass horn. Okay,
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: but it's Hector who gives it the name. We know
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: it by today.
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and can we can we get can we get
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: some music in the background for this quote? Sure, I
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: don't know what mood I want.
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: Oh I got one right here. It's called sticky Wicket.
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: Okay, okay, all right.
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: The description says strip tease for superheroes.
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: Oh no, I hear that.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I can see that. Okay, this is this
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: is a good vibe.
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: This is good. Okay, all right.
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: The beats a little bit fast, but let's see, let's
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: see what we can do with this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: it's principal Merit in my view, is the very beauty
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: of its accent, sometimes serious, sometimes calm, sometimes impassioned, dreamy,
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: or melancholic, or vague, like the weakened echo of an echo,
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: like the indistinct, plaintiff mones of the breeze in the woods,
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: and even better, like the mysterious vibrations of a bell
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: long after it has been struck. There does not exist
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: another musical instrument that I know of that possesses this
• 31:04
  Speaker 3: strange resonance which is situated at the edge of silence.
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: Thank you, especially because yeah, with that you're spitting for
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: a second there, you know that with the beat at
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: that speed, so he is over the moon, hector and
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: he may have been taciturn toward the end of that
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: initial conversation, but after he had some time to digest,
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: to percolate, to chew on it, he decided he was
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: a sax fan for life. He thought the name basehorn
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: was dumb, so he started calling it the saxophone. It
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: was new, it was different. This article, with all this praise,
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: it goes out in Belgium, it goes out in France,
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: and this is the start of a brand new era
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: for Adolphus Sacks. Of course, being a brand new era
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: doesn't mean it's one hundred said a great brand new era.
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because, as it happened in the past, with this
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: success and this skill and talent came a lot of
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: weird vibes his way, Like there was a lot of
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: jealousy and criticism to deal with. M m.
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah. He was introduced throughout the musical world. It was
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: sort of like when something hits Twitter and everybody feels
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: that they are required to have a stance on it.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you know what I mean.
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, the Bean's dad.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, sure, sure, yeah you can. You can hate the saxophone,
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: you can love it, but you are going to be
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: taking you have an opinion. You have an opinion. And
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: he met a lot of other composers who who co
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: signed it. They said, you know, let's add this to
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: classical music. Let's let's shake things up. He gets to
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: hang out at the salons the doing the Ted Talks
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: of day and everybody knows his name. He's at this time,
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: like you said, he's working on these things that he
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: starts calling sax horns, counting the sax horn, the sax tube,
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: and of course the vogel bomb favorite the sax tromba.
• 33:14
  Speaker 4: Uh.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: They all work off the same principle, right, you are
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: influencing the sound of air released into a brass.
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: Tube in various ways. Sure, yeah, yeah, And.
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: He created this instrument, the original saxophone, in two sizes.
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: One is the larger subcontra bassed saxophone, and the other one,
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: which Max I think is the one you like, is
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: the soprano.
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: Sorry, I was drinking some water right there. I think
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: there's like, what's there's like? Now there is what the soprano,
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: the alto, the baritone, a lot more. See out the
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: ones that are really like high pitch and annoying. Hold
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: us like, let me just get one real quick. Yeah,
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: so saxophone, so prano, I think that's how it is,
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: fell soprano like something kind of the loading has taken
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: longer than I expected to take something along the here
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: we go.
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: Sopranino, something like that. I don't know, I don't know
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: why I'm saying with that egregious mark accent, but but yeah,
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: So he makes these they they're a blend of wood
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: winds and brass. They can get those notes we would
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: call bluesy today, and they can even you know, they
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: can even give you like a melancholy stringed instrument vibe.
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, as as Berloy was was saying to that very
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: perky music, very.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: Perky music, and the saxophone would later be called I
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: want to see how you feel about this quote. It
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: would later be called the perennial Cinderella of serious music
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: by Time magazine.
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: Wow, Time magazine. That's the word salad. I mean, okay,
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: all right, perennial Cinderella of serious music.
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: Mm hmm yeah. So every so the idea is the saxophone.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: At least in Sacks, his life was seen as not
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: super legit nor respectable, you know what I mean. It's
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: like to a lot of the haters. Again, and I
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: hesitate to use that phrase, but it is the most
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: accurate to a lot of his haters, a lot of
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: the people who are envious or disliked him. Having a
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: saxophone in your orchestra would be the same thing as
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: having like a jug, yeah, or like you know, a washboard.
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: Or something yeah yeah, like like like, please be serious,
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: why are you eating here right now?
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: Saucer for wood, right, that kind of thing. And if
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: you look around today, it seems like he was really successful.
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: He did revolutionize music, but not really in his time,
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: and a lot a lot of it goes down to
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: his personality. Uh he he he could be ornery.
• 36:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: Another another quote from that website. He apparently had exceptional
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: gifts for the gentle art of making enemies.
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: Which poetic. Oh beautiful. Why is it a gentle art?
• 36:20
  Speaker 3: I mean, if you want really high quality enemies, you
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: have to be gentle about it.
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, you got you got to ease your way
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: into the enmity. So people tried to sabotage his innovations.
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: People refuse to play instruments he made. His boy Burloys
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: is continuing to defend him. Uh. And then this guy
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: comes out of Germany. His name, we'll call him Viprecht.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: He is a band leader for a part of the
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: German military. And he says, hold on, this guy's a
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: phony because some inventors from Germany were the first ones
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: to make this thing you're calling the saxophone, and you
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: have stolen the idea. You're a plagiarizer and imitator. And
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: they said, look, we're going to show you that we
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: did this. Ben would he be a saxophony?
• 37:21
  Speaker 4: He would?
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: He would?
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: You know what, you know what we gotta do the
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: max with the facts on that one that seeking in
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: the phone and he's fallen.
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: Lolge it's just for you right now with the fact.
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: Do you know this song? Oh yeah, okay, legendary. We
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: got Matt Frederick to do it live one time.
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: Oh it's beautiful.
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: So they they perpetrate fraud themselves. What they do is
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: they order some of his some of Sax's actual instruments
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: from him from Paris. When they get it in the mail,
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: they buff out his name.
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: From the brass yeah, uh huh, and then send the
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: instruments back to France. We made this, yeah, see it
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: doesn't have your serial number on it at all.
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: That's insane to me. That's like buying a car and
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: then switching out the branding, you know, a little picture
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: of yourself and then sending it back to Honda or
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: whatever and say like, actually, I made this score and
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: I'm suing you. So so this is this is a
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: heck of a con or an attempt at it, and
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: Sax is not going to take it. Laying down line down,
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: lane down, lind down.
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: I can never tell that one apart. It's yeah, that's
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: not the kind of editing I'm good at.
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: He's not going to take it in a horizontal position.
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah no no, but but they were serious about it,
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: like they really tried to be like no, no, no,
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: like we've done known about these in German for a
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: hot minute. Look at how good our German musicians are
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: at playing these instruments. They clearly wouldn't be this good
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: if they didn't. And the thing is is that they
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: couldn't play them right like like like there like there
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: was a there was a whole like like public demonstration
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: and they literally could not play the saxophone and the
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: bass clarinet. They were kind of like peepoop. Yeah right,
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: that's a historical reenactment. It's very very act accurate.
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: Thank you, and uh and VI break all of a
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: sudden has has like a revelational like a Rode to
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: Damascus moment, and he goes, you know what, I like
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: sax now. I think you're cool, bro. And then and
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: then sax Flex is on him and goes, you know
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: what about the patent. I shall wait another year before
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: registering this patent. We shall see whether by then a
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: maker will have produced a true saxophone.
• 39:56
  Speaker 4: He's like, oh wow, He's like, yeah, come at me exactly.
• 40:00
  Speaker 4: I wish he would Yeah right right, make one if
• 40:02
  Speaker 4: he can, you know what I mean? It eventually does
• 40:07
  Speaker 4: patent the saxophone. It's eighteen forty six. And as soon
• 40:10
  Speaker 4: as he does that, there are pirated versions that come
• 40:14
  Speaker 4: out in France and he makes no money.
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: Off of those. He's more and more known for his
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: difficult personality. If we go back to Joe Santi at
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: the Museum of Musical Instruments, we see a weird We
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: see a quote that shows us just how divisive a
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: figure he was.
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he said with Adolph Sachs, he was so controversial.
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: You were either for him or against him. This dangerous, dynamic,
• 40:43
  Speaker 3: prolific Belgian who had arrived in Paris split up the
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: musical world in France between pros and cons.
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: Okay, now we have all at some point in our lives.
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: We have all felt that someone has for no valid
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: reason and decided they don't like us.
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: Right, Oh sure, yeah, I'm I'm I'm paranoid about that
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: all the time with everybody constantly. Right, It's like a
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: really key defining personality trait.
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: And sometimes you know, people will resent someone for due
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: to envy. Right, why is why as why don't I
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: have a musical instrument named after me et cetera.
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, why is that kid getting all the attention? He's
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: so weedy.
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: He's so weedy, right and so perfect?
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: Uh.
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: And so Sax experiences this on a much more extreme
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: level than most people. Entire clubs are formed centering on
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: how much they dislike Sax and how much they dislike
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: his inventions.
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: And this was before the internet. So yeah, I'm really
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: proud of like the amount of effort this must have taken.
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: They scheduled, they like met up in person. You know,
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: they probably had an agenda at their meetings.
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and and and and like the press got involved
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: and business turned real sour for sex. He wound up
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: declaring bankruptcy three times eighteen fifty two, eighteen seventy three,
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: and eighteen seventy seven. It probably would have been a fourth,
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: But then Napoleon the Third, who I guess was on
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: the other side of this pro sex anti Sax debate.
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: I just stepped in and saved him from financial ruin
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: because he.
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: Could also not that Napoleon, not that oh the third?
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, the first, Yes, the Napoleon three, the first
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: president of France.
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, how tall was Napoleon three? Do we know
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: let's see s Ben, You and I like to joke about,
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: like how the first Napoleon wasn't actually that short.
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: Oh no, he was quite reasonably sized for someone of
• 42:50
  Speaker 3: that age.
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: Right, a lot taller than some other people like Stalin.
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: Stalin was much shorter than Napoleon.
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: Really yeah, ooh that's fun.
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: But Stalin had people had purposely had a lot of
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: people around who were very short to make him look
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: taller in photos.
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: Oh that's great, yeah, until he erased them out of
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: the photos right during his purges. This is a yeah,
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: the very first photoshop under Stalin. It's thank you to
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: Adobe for being way more cool. But yet, so without
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: knowing how tall, uh, Napoleon three was, I guess we
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: could say, in modern parlance, Napoleon Napoleon, Napoleon the first
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: was about five six.
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: See, I've heard five eight.
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: Also, yeah, I've heard I've heard between five six and
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: five eight.
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: Right. There's a lot of debate because I know Stalin
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: was five to five.
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, stall was definitely five to five, right, So.
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: I think that's one of those things that's lost to history.
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: It was mostly like propaganda and I counterattacks on Napoleon
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: be like, oh he's so short, right, And there's also
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: been like a lot of people like I think Peter
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: did great. Was Peter the Greade six eight or was
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: he like six four? I can't remember either way.
• 43:58
  Speaker 3: That's quite tall.
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: He's quite tall, much taller than me. He gets portrayed
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: as like seven to two.
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: I mean, history cast a shadow, does it?
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: Not?
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: True?
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: So, no matter how tall or short, Napoleon the Third was,
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: no matter how you feel about his domestic and foreign policies,
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: the guy loved saxophones. And he was like, oh, come on, man,
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: don't go broke over this. Yeah.
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And his buddy Burlois still was coming up to
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: his defense, and he was still selling saxophones, Like, he
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: was still selling not a lot of those other saxes.
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: But from eighteen forty three to eighteen sixty he apparently
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: sold like twenty thousand different ones.
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a lot of it's a lot of smooth jazz,
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: it is, which wasn't a thing yet either, No, no, no, no,
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: no not at all.
• 44:47
  Speaker 3: That's but right, yeah, and he continued inventing instruments. He
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: was teaching at the Paris Conservatory. It wasn't all bad.
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: It wasn't all bad, but he was always under some
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: sort of financial strain. In eighteen fifty eight, he gets
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: lip cancer, which is a thing.
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: Apparently that's a thing.
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: Apparently that's the thing.
• 45:09
  Speaker 3: I mean, you can get cancer anywhere.
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: I guess, sure, yeah, you can get cancer anywhere. He
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: got lip cancer. This did not kill him. He experienced
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: a full recovery. Bizarrely enough, he lives a full life,
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: and he dies of pneumonia in Paris, impoverished and elderly.
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: He's like seventy nine eighty years old. On February seventh,
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: eighteen ninety four, when you did an excellent teaser at
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: the beginning here a little bit of foreshadowing in our
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: episode where you said, we don't have a lot of
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: sources on Sax's early life, and we're going to learn why.
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: So that's the question, why don't we know more about
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: this guy? Because saxophones are everywhere today?
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, you're tripping over saxophones anywhere you go. It
• 46:01
  Speaker 3: would be an awkward thing to trip over. I feel
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: like I would try to, though I'm.
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: Laughing because I'm imagining this sound effect, even though it
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: doesn't make sense, because someone would have to be playing
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: the saxophone, for to make a saxophone noise when you
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: trip over it. Yeah, So at this point you're basically
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: like jumping over someone or they're on the ground playing
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: the saxophone.
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: Yea, So Ben, what you're saying is, if you trip
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: over a saxophone with no one around, is there a sound?
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: That's exactly what I'm saying. Yeah, And you articulated it
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: so well, Max, Okay, but why Yeah.
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: The thing is is that no one cared about him
• 46:44
  Speaker 3: at the time. By the time he died, I feel
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: like what happened was everyone was so what was bored
• 46:50
  Speaker 3: of arguing about it. It was kind of pushed to
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: argue about him for a certain period of his life.
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: And then by the time he passed, he wasn't that
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: big of a deal anymore. No one was talking about
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: him anymore. So records about him were not saved until
• 47:06
  Speaker 3: a little bit later when the saxophone became something that
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: you might be in danger of driving there.
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, yes, And now we know that the saxophone
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: was almost forgotten entirely, and it had become it had
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: become not quite prestigious enough to be part of an orchestra.
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: But now it wasn't interesting enough to argue about in
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: those salons. As you said, it would take a century
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: or more for the saxophone to become what we know
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: it today, because although it was im penurias circumstances, sax
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: was not aware that his creation was on the move.
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: I think it was in nineteen hundred people who played
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: in military bands in the Spanish American War come back
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: to the United States, particularly New Orleans, and they bring
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: the saxophone with them. Yeah.
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: So with the rise of jazz in the United States,
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: I think specifically like like by like like world like
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: after World War One, you started really getting this, this
• 48:19
  Speaker 3: the zeitgeist of the saxophone.
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: One hundred percent. Yeah, in that Inner War period, like
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: nineteen twenties, the late teens and the jazz age that's
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: that is what they call it. Yes, so we might
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: need a Lauren with the facts.
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: Who's that guest hosting the show burn and she's on
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: this podcast, Lawrence.
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so we would say, all right, the story's over.
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: Jazz saves the saxophone. However, jazz also brought a lot
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: of a lot of social problems in the United States
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: to bear right and a lot of people who saw
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: themselves as posh fans of classical music. They looked down
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: at jazz, they looked askance at it, and the saxophone
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: being associated with jazz meant that. Yet again, there was
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: a huge group of people who thought, this is not series.
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah, this is an un serious instrument.
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yeah, And that would have been the case
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: all the way up to the modern day if it
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: weren't for a guy named Marcel Mule in the nineteen fifties.
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and okay, so I don't have an extremely good
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: grip on musical history, but according to Time Magazine, when
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: he played the Heck and Sacks, the instrument could produce
• 49:52
  Speaker 3: quote an open, evenly controlled sound that could sing with
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: a clean vibrato or a finely trimmed staccato swell robustly
• 50:01
  Speaker 3: and solidly, with no trace of the breath the air sound.
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: Who sounds like the sounds like the journalist over a
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: time had a little bit of misophonia, right or misophoonia.
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that was like not like that heck and
• 50:13
  Speaker 3: clarinet where you're hearing the mouth noises all the time.
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: The mouth noises is what the guy at time is saying. Yeah,
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: so Marcel mule is this champion of making the saxophone
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: a well respected classical instrument, and he goes so far
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: as to form a saxophone an all saxophone quartet.
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: A classical saxophone quartet, a.
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: Classical saxophone quartet. And when they formed this, there wasn't
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: any music for them to play. Sure, people didn't write for.
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: It, no, but he he was not deterred. He told
• 50:48
  Speaker 3: Time Magazine, I have one mission in life. That is
• 50:52
  Speaker 3: to make people take the saxophone seriously. It's time they
• 50:56
  Speaker 3: discovered the nobility of this spoiled instrument.
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: Since we are an audio podcast, I want everyone to know, Lauren,
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: you were like getting very close to slamming your hand
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: on the table in Time, right, justice for the saxophone.
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: This this is crazy because I did not know just
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: how close. Again and again and again the world came
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: to not having the saxophone.
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: I mean, what would Lisa Simpson have even done?
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: Right, that's like half her thing?
• 51:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's it. Yeah, I mean right, due to like
• 51:38
  Speaker 3: various brushes with death and I guess being very weedy. Yeah,
• 51:44
  Speaker 3: we almost didn't have the sex.
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: And you know, while we're while we're going out to
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: our regular outro. Max, maybe we can have just a
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: little saxophone to get us in.
• 51:56
  Speaker 2: I thought you would never ask. I've been queuing this
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: one up the whole time.
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: I'm excited.
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: Bolts it with saxophone. And remember, I have no idea
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: what it sounds like.
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: Waltz it with saxophone. It is a little racy, man,
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: It's beautiful. Facts this point has headphones and shrunking.
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: It's much quieter in my headphones than yours. And I
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: don't know why I can barely hear it of these.
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: So I'm really going blind faith on this song.
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: Okay, Well, let's hope it works. Of course, Thank you
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: mister Max Williams are super producer. Thanks of course to
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: Alex Williams, who can pose the banging track you here.
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: Thanks of course to Jonathan Strickland aka the Quister. We're
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: required to say it, get that. Yeah, and most especially Lauren,
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming on the show. You're
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: one of the busiest folks I know, and it's an
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: absolute pleasure to have you join us again.
• 52:57
  Speaker 3: Oh it's always good to come on and goof around.
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: And here's some good sax music.
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: Yes, and for everybody who's wondering. We talked a little
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: bit about your many other projects here. Where can people
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: find you? Where can they learn more about your work?
• 53:11
  Speaker 3: Oh? On the internet if you can, if you can
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: spell my name, you can probably find me. And I
• 53:17
  Speaker 3: know that that's a little bit of a tall order,
• 53:18
  Speaker 3: but but yeah, that's that's Lauren Vogelbaum and I am
• 53:23
  Speaker 3: currently on brain stuff Saver And you can listen to
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: the archive of American Shadows and yeah yeah, or or
• 53:32
  Speaker 3: find me on Instagram at vogel Bomb v O g
• 53:36
  Speaker 3: e l Bomb.
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, so and so with that, we hope you
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: join us next time, Ridiculous Historians. We're going to be
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: diving into moral panics surrounding hip hop. We're going to
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: be We're gonna be doing lots of stuff. We're going
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: to be doing all right, lot lots of things. Thanks
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: so much, folks, We'll see you next time.
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.