December Newsletter
November has been a busy month. With Thanksgiving upon us, my shop is adorned with instruments for the holiday concert emergency repair season. There’s also been some fun restoration work on a hundred-year-old clarinet and a 90+-year-old King Zephyr alto saxophone. And I got a couple of odd but fantastic saxophones I had lying around into shape and sold to a middle school.
I updated my website and added material I recorded with my quartet in October at the VT Music Lab. Let me know if there is a concert series or venue you’d like to see us playing next spring/summer.
DECEMBER GIGS
I’ll play with a trio on Sunday, December 1st, from 5 to 7 p.m., for Wine & Jazz Sunday at Shelburne Vineyard, with J.D. Haenni on bass and Paul Asbell on guitar. Also, Big Easy Tuesday at The126: December 3rd and 17th with Ted, J.D., and Dwight. December 10th with (Back Porch Revival) Mike Santosusso on bass and Rob Church on banjo. The126 will be closed over the holidays for the first two weeks of January, so after 12/17, Big Easy Tuesdays will return in 2025 on January 14th.
I am excited to get my tenor out and play some blues and boogaloo with Three Piece Meal at The126 on Saturday, December 14th, from 9 to 11:30 p.m. They are an exciting and funky organ trio with Van Garrison on organ, Luca Medina on guitar, and Zach Brownstein on drums. Van plays keys in the All Night Boogie Band and is a frequent sit-in guest on Tuesdays.
SHOP SHOW-AND-TELL
I received a 100-year-old Penzel-Müller Boehm system clarinet from a customer who does not play. The instrument has been in his family for generations, and he hoped it could be brought back into play condition. Despite its years-in-an-attic look, somehow, it had not cracked. It’s a great piece of history, and I was impressed with how nice (and unique) it sounds!
“They combine in the highest degree the essential qualities of free and pure tone, perfection in scale and mechanism, ease of manipulation and execution.” —from a 1920s Penzel-Müller ad.
The Penzel-Müller company was established in New York in 1899 as a partnership between the German immigrants Gustav Ludwig “Louis” Penzel (1855 – 1920) and Edward Georg Müller (1869 – 1956) and existed until ~1950. Edward Georg Müller was the grandson of Iwan Müller, who invented the felt and skin pad in the 1800s, revolutionizing the woodwind manufacturing industry. Their clarinets (mainly the Artist, Studio Recording, and Super Brilliante models) were high-quality and comparable to the best European instruments. The tone was more 'American' than 'French' in concept—excellent for Jazz and concert music, free-blowing, more direct than sweet, and the intonation is good.
The fact that Penzel & Müller were German-trained craftsmen and that they imported parts for their clarinets (finally marked with the American eagle) from their native place in Vogtland/Saxony, a Penzel-Müller Albert clarinet looks slightly different from the Albert clarinets made by most of the other instrument makers: the design is more “German” than “French.” George Lewis, Albert Burbank, and Louis Cottrell used their Albert system clarinets. Penzel-Müller clarinets were played by other jazz greats like Sidney Arodin, Willie Humphrey, and Woody Herman (the latter used a Penzel-Müller in the Boehm system, common in big bands).
George Lewis was an influential New Orleans clarinet player from the first half of the twentieth century. He was part of the Preservation Hall Band when it first opened. He mentored many young musicians, including Tom Sancton, who details their relationship in his fantastic memoir, Song For My Fathers.
From New Orleans music store owner Bill Russell in the 1960s:
“In the spring of 1961, when I had my record and music shop at 731 St. Peter St, New Orleans, I bought an Albert system (improved) B-flat L.P (Low Pitch) clarinet made by Penzel-Müller & Co. New York. I don’t remember exactly what I paid for it, or where I bought it, but it was probably some amount between $ 10 and $ 15, and it was possibly a store such as the used furniture stores on Magazine Street. Not long after that, George Lewis came into my store one night, and I showed him the clarinet. He said he had wanted to own an improved Albert system, Penzel-Müller, for some time and asked to buy it. Several New Orleans clarinetists in the past had used them, and I believe today, Albert Burbank and Louis Cottrell have Penzel-Müllers. So I sold him the clarinet for whatever price I had paid for it. He took it to Werleins music store to have new pads and adjustments made. I think he used it quite often during the following years and in fact used it on his last job, when he played with Kid Thomas’ Band at Preservation Hall on Fri. Dec. 13, 1968. The last numbers he played were “My Blue Heaven” and of course Thomas’ final “Theme” song – “I’ll See You In My Dreams”. Shirley (Lewis) & Carolyn (Buck) said that George always called this Penzel-Müller his ‘Bill Russell Clarinet’, but I had almost forgotten about it.”