The Stars and Stripes Forever

Rich would often sneak into jazz clubs at an age when he looked old enough to sit on the drum set.

He was on Broadway as Baby Traps, the Drum Wonder, at age four, playing Stars and Stripes Forever on a drum.

At 15, he became the second highest paid child entertainer behind Jackie Coogan during the 1930s.

He began playing jazz in 1937, first with clarinetist Joe Marsala, on with such acts as Buddy Barrigan, Artie Shaw, Tommy Dorsey, Count Basie, and Harry James.

And how many of the 33 pieces published in the Signature Series can you name in one minute?

go living hope all hail king jesus this is the most recent uh worship the king wraps down saint francis uh living power uh the stars stars and stripes forever um man americana uh Shenandoah? Is that in that one? Oh, Hope.

The Glory of Jehovah.

No, wait.

Americana, Martin Cordner.

Living Power, Tom DeVoren.

Shenandoah, Dorothy Gates, Stars and Stripes Forever, Dorothy Gates, Be Still, Dorothy Gates, Fearless, Andrew Wainwright, The Glory of Jehovah, Dorothy Gates, Semper Fidelis, Martin Corner, To Last Lord's Blessing, Simon Morton, Gabriel's Oboe, Dorothy Gates, King of the Seven Heavens, Phil Harper, St. Francis, Wainwright, The Conqueror, Marcus, God is My Shelter, Ken Downey, Invisible Fire, Dorothy Gates, Uniquity, Martin Corner, Concurrence, Marcus, All Through the Night, Kevin Norbury, The Invitation, Gavin Whitehouse, Wake Up the Saint, Hope Alive, Battle Belongs, Here Again, Phil Raymond, All Hail King Jesus, and Living Hope.

Gavin Whitehouse.

Martial moments where we play three military marches back to back on the way for you next.

Yes, we've got the Showman's March, Stars and Stripes Forever, and the ever-popular...

Midi March, the star on Marenghi Organ Wonderland.

Enjoy your martial moments.

¶¶ ¶¶ Thank you.

¶¶ ¶¶ Thank you.

Stars and Stripes Forever, The Silver Bell Dean.

Before that, we did The Diamond Jubilee Gavioli and The Showman's March and Marenghi Organ Wonderland with The Midi March.

Yeah, it's an enormous difference.

And, and it's, You talk about John Philip Sousa, who is the band leader most remembered today for Stars and Stripes Forever and marching band music.

But he also is credited with introducing one of the first big sheet music hits or one of the biggest sheet music hits of the period after the ball because he

played it at the Chicago World's Fair.

But let me take you back to, I think it was coincidentally a 1906 essay by John Philip Sousa, who was at the time a very famous musician.

And he was the guy who wrote, I think, Stars and Stripes Forever, you know, his marching band music.

And right about that time, that's when the first recorded music was possible.

And he wrote a thing called The Menace of Mechanical Music.

For some reason, I have in my head exactly 120 beats per minute.

How do I have that? What I do is, when crisply conducted with a particularly agile marching band, it's the opening of John Philip Seuss' Stars and Stripes Forever.

And his marches all come out to 120 beats per minute.

So if you get that in your head, You can have striatal neurons that have learned that.

Now, amid that wonderful demonstration, there's a danger in this, and I caution everyone there at home to be trepidatious about doing this.

The danger, of course, is evoking the beginning of the stars and stripes forever in your head.

is that inevitably the rest of your day is going to be maddened with going through your head the words, be kind to your web-footed friends because a duck may be somebody's mother.

So it is possible to entrain plasticity learning in these neurons to become familiar with certain intervals.

A one-hundred-piece band was passing in front of them.

They were playing "The Stars and Stripes Forever." They were followed by the Saks Fifth Avenue display, nine small floats, each depicting life on another planet.

The National Academy of Sciences had a success on its hands.

"Wow, Daddy, I want to ride on it.

Right.

My favorite march, being a musician, was Stars and Stripes Forever.

Oh, yeah.

We played all of that.

Yeah, I used

to love Stars and Stripes Forever.

We played all of that.

And, you know, people don't know this, but to be in the Army band, you have to try out.