A Brief History of the Conn Company (1874-present)*
by Margaret Downie Banks, Ph.D.
Curator of Musical Instruments
National Music Museum
Vermillion, South Dakota
© Copyright 1997 by The National Music Museum.
All Rights Reserved.
No portion of this site, including this page and any of the separate
pages, may be copied, retransmitted, reposted, duplicated or otherwise
used without the express written permission of The National Music Museum.
*Excerpted and updated from Elkhart's Brass Roots: An Exhibition
to
Commemorate the 150th Anniversary of C. G. Conn's Birth and the 120th
Anniversary of the Conn Company by Margaret Downie Banks (Vermillion,
South Dakota: The Shrine to Music Museum, 1994).
The Schuster Sisters Saxophone Quartet endorsing instruments by the
C. G. Conn Company, ca. 1915. From the Conn
Archives at National Music Museum, Vermillion, South Dakota.
This photograph is available for purchase from the Museum in either a
postcard or
poster
format.
© Copyright 1997 by The National Music Museum.
Shortly after Carl Greenleaf became president of the company, he noted
that
saxophones were being produced at a modest rate of about 100 per month.
According to his own recollections, the "saxophone trade increased quite
rapidly [in the 1920s] and the saxophone business almost immediately became
the most profitable part of the business. Every effort was made to increase
production and it was built up very materially" (unpublished autobiographical
sketch). According to the company's 1922 annual report, saxophone production
had increased to about 150 units per day.
Left: Details of keys inlaid with mother-of-pearl on a gold-plated
New
Wonder model 18M soprano
saxophone made in 1926 (National Music Museum catalog no.
5661). Right: Detail of knurled G-sharp key on gold-plated New Wonder
model 10M tenor saxophone made in 1927 (catalog no. 5664). Both
saxophones were donated to the Museum by John Powers, Carbondale,
Colorado, 1993. Photographs by Simon R. H. Spicer.
© Copyright 1997 by The National Music Museum.
The Conn company offered a full
line of
saxes, from the small, E-flat soprano to the bass, as well as the first
American contrabass sarrusophone (1921) which was offered in lieu of a
contrabass saxophone. American saxophone production during this era was
dominated by Conn and the Buescher Company, also of Elkhart. While still
operated by former Conn employee, Gus Buescher, that company was now owned by
a syndicate of five men (including Carl Greenleaf) and the Wurlitzer
Corporation. It was Conn's saxes, however, that first introduced drawn-and-
rolled tone holes (1919) after a 1914 patent by William S. Haynes. Conn
also
introduced an optional, sprayed-on colored finish for saxophones in 1922 and,
for a few years, one could obtain purple, rose, green, blue, black-and-silver,
or white-and-gold saxophones.
In an attempt to recapture what he saw
as a
declining saxophone market in the late 1920s, Greenleaf introduced the
F-mezzo-soprano saxophone, an improved soprano in B-flat, and the unusual
Conn-O-Sax. The latter was a hybrid cross between the saxophone, the English
horn, and the heckelphone, based on a patent filed in 1913 by his predecessor,
Col. Conn. Unfortunately, these particular models, initiated during
Greenleaf's "new era," did not survive the fall of the stock market and the
subsequent Great Depression.
Advertisement for the Conn-O-Sax from a Conn catalog of 1928. From the
Conn Archives at
National Music Museum, Vermillion, South Dakota.
© Copyright 1997 by The National Music Museum.
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Dr. Margaret Downie Banks, Curator of Musical Instruments
National Music Museum
The University of South Dakota
414 East Clark Street
Vermillion, SD 57069-2390
E-mail: mbanks@usd.edu
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