Another photo of band members for this week’s Sepia Saturday! I’m sure at one point, I’ll exhaust my collection of these, but it’s fun to explore two very differnt photos two weeks in a row. There’s no label on this photo so I have no idea who these two gents are. They don’t appear in any other photos in the family collection either. I have to assume they were family friends of the Powis family and specifically of Herbert Powis from last week’s post. The cap seems similar to last week, but this uniform is a little more elaborate, and the photo was taken in a proper studio by photographer J. Krismer in Coalport, Pennsylvania. It looks to me like the man on the right has a trumpet and the man on the left a euphonium. A short and sweet post this week since I don’t have a lot of information on these two men, but given they were playing in Pennsylvania, I have to imagine they played a polka or two in their band days.
Lest we forget those polkas, I’d like to post my favorite Polka, the Pennsylvania Polka, representing the state where these two men lived.
Interesting photograph of the band boys; & the Pennsylvania Polka with the Andrew Sisters was fun!
Another old memory post for me, and my musical mother, she sure showed me the world of music!
Great photo and post. I enjoy vintage photos that are still in the photographer’s cardboard frame or with the photographer’s logo on the border like this one. And I hope you don’t think I’m knocking your post. But that rug has got to go. And I’ve never heard of an euphonium. It just looks like a regular wind instrument. Do we call it by another name today?
Haha, you’re right, the rug is a little weird, but it was apparently a favorite of the photographer’s.. I have a few other photos from the same photographer with the same rug! And the euphonium is still a euphonium, commonly used in marching bands as a bass brass instrument, and easier to carry than its cousin, the Baritone horn.
This pair are from the decade before your previous duo, perhaps 1892. You are correct the left instrument is a euphonium and the one on the right is a cornet. Their uniforms are very typical of American small town or factory bands. They certainly did play many polkas too, with the cornet taking the solo tune.
1892 would make sense being as the majority of the other photos from the album fall around that date. I was kind of wondering if the man with the mustache might be Alfred Harris from this other post (http://www.sheetar.com/2015/03/07/sepia-saturday-269/).. the families were close, so that would make the most sense, unless it’s someone completely different that I haven’t run across yet. It would’ve definitely been from a small town – nothing nearby is even a remotely large city and the towns in that area were all coal mining towns.
What a good idea to include a state-specific polka to go with the picture.