THE PERFECT TUBA

The story of a musical instrument born out of the circus and brass bands.

In his latest book, Quinones, author of the award-winning Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic, turns his attention to a lively search for the perfect tuba—and so much more. In the 1930s two tubas, the “almost mystical” Yorks, were made in Chicago. Quinones seems to have interviewed everyone who’s someone in the tuba world. He profiles Bill Bell, the first to record an album with the tuba as lead instrument and who became a member of John Philip Sousa’s band. He describes the famous “Tuba Woodstock” of 1971, when legions of tuba players descended on Indiana University, where the Tubists Universal Brotherhood Association was born. Readers meet Fred Marrich, who tried to corner the tuba market with his Tuba World store near Detroit. Quinones provides an in-depth profile of the celebrated music teacher Arnold Jacobs, owner of a prized York, who possessed “one of the most illustrious careers in American tubadom” and who played in the Chicago Symphony. He visits Roma, Texas, a “speck of a town” with a statewide-contending high school marching band directed by the illustrious Al Cortinas with young J.R. Trevino proudly holding forth on tuba. The author introduces us to Jim Self, who built a tuba hall on his roof. Then there’s Zig Kanstul, a “lone wolf among U.S. brass instrument makers,” and New Orleans’ Tuba Fats, a “mythical mountain of a man.” Sadly, steady tuba jobs, Quinones writes, are painfully scarce. The horn “can provide a living for only the tiniest fraction of the young people that its promise inspires.” And yet the instrument brings immeasurable joy to its players. He writes, “What is the tuba, anyway, if not a 12- to 18-foot tube for channeling imagination?”

A sprightly, entertaining hodgepodge of all things tuba.