The subdued, suspenseful tunes of an unsolved mystery have faded away into a loud celebratory march for an Exton music publisher that has finally settled the dispute over creation and whereabouts of the world’s first sousaphone thanks to music enthusiasts.

A lifelong sousaphone player from nearby Harleysville was instrumental in discovering the evidence that points to Exton’s J.W. Pepper Co. as the maker of the tuba family’s largest prototype — as opposed to the rival Indiana manufacturer that claims credit for first commercializing the instrument, according to a report on Philly.com.

Undisputed is the inspiration for it: world-famous musician John Philip Sousa. “In the 1890s, Sousa, who spent the early part of his career in Philadelphia, envisioned an instrument that would emit a more diffuse sound than the overpowering helicon, another member of the tuba family. He suggested that the bell point up instead of forward, like other tubas,” the article stated. “… A 1922 article in the Christian Science Monitor quoted Sousa as saying he had discussed the idea 30 years earlier with Pepper, who ‘built one and, grateful to me for the suggestion, called it a Sousaphone.’”

The latest evidence is an 1895 copy of a Pepper newsletter collected by a Kentucky musician “that refers to the sousaphone three years before the C.G. Conn Co. of Elkhart (Ind.) produced its first version of the instrument.”

Dave Detwiler, who located the newsletter, was expected to receive the honor of playing the prototype Sunday with the Montgomery County Concert Band.

“I love it,” he said in the article. “This is one of those bucket-list of things I never thought was on my bucket list.”

That newsletter artifact is the biggest news for the Exton firm since it recovered the prototype in 1991 after yet another musician picked it up at a flea market — without realizing what he had for almost 20 years.

Read much more about the history of the sousaphone and J.W. Pepper’s quest to find and verify its very first version of the instrument on Philly.com here.
_______
Top photo credit: New Orleans 6702 via photopin (license)