My Top 20 Favorite Sousa Marches Part 1 (No specific order)

1. THE STARS AND STRIPES FOREVER (1896) - Sousa's greatest march and our National March will always have a connection to me. For several years of my life, this was my only favorite Sousa composition as I grew up with it. My dad, who is now a high school band and orchestra director in Racine, played in the Racine Concert Band as a trombonist for the beginning parts of my life. Del Eisch, the previous director of the band, from the time my dad played in the group until his retirement, would always close with this march due to the fact that it became our National March in 1987. When the band played it, Del even had the piccolos along with the trumpets and trombones come out to the front in the trio section as what was the tradition in Sousa's Band. When my dad joined the Kenosha Pops Concert Band in 1998, I asked if the directors if they play it regularly. They said we play other marches by Sousa. As you can see, this march has been part of my childhood as there are home videos of my parents and I humming the piece. So being connected with this march, it began the passion that I have with Sousa's music and life. When I'd play this in high school, and we'd get to the final strain. I would often flip the stand around because I knew the trombone countermelody of this march by heart from the amount of times I have heard this march. The interesting story about this march is Sousa wrote it out of homesickness. Sousa was vacationing in Europe with his family. Upon hearing the news of the death of his business manager, David Blakely, Sousa paced the deck of steamship Teutonic looking at the American flag aboard the ship. According to interviews with the press, Sousa says that he heard a band in his playing in his head constantly the strains of the march. Sousa did not write a bit of it until he reached American soil, and completed the bulk of the music on Christmas Day of 1896. Sousa toyed around with it for several months until giving it's premiere in Philadelphia in May of 1897. From then on, Sousa featured it on all of his concerts and even had his band play it on the radio in 1929. The march was also the last piece Sousa ever conducted as he ended a rehearsal with the Ringgold Band before his death on March 6th, 1932. This recording is from that radio broadcast in 1929 with Sousa giving a short introduction.

2. THE WASHINGTON POST MARCH (1889) - Lately, I have now connected Sousa's first hit and second most popular march as being one of my close favorite marches of his. This is mainly now due to connecting this march to my current profession of being a journalist. This march was one of the marches to spark Sousa's career and make him a household name. During Sousa's time as director of the United States Marine Band (1880-1892), Sousa was approached by a reporter from the now famous but struggling newspaper at the time in the Washington Post. The newspaper was holding an essay contest for children on the Smithsonian grounds in the summer, and wanted Sousa to write one of his marches for the occasion. In June of 1889, Sousa and the Marine Band premiered it after the children read their essays and marched by the Willard Hotel and performed it. One of the reasons that this made Sousa's career and yet alone made the Washington Post famous is because a convention of dance masters used it as the official tune to a new dance called the Two-Step. As the dance took the world by storm, the march became connected to it. Whenever someone would want to dance the Two-Step, they would just ask a group to play a "Washington Post." This march along with a few of Sousa's well known Marine Band-Era marches were recorded by the Marine Band by the Columbia Phonograph Company in Washington D.C. with around 16 players playing with a short introduction by Sousa, but most likely without him conducting as he hated recordings. This was one of the first marches that Sousa received royalties for as he was netted $35 dollars after the publication of the march. It helped produce to music manufacturing plants as a result. Another interesting fact about this march is if you flip the trio of it upside down, it is the trio of a march Sousa wrote six years later in his "King Cotton March," from 1895. 

3. THE FAIREST OF THE FAIR (1908) - This march has been a little bit of a recent favorite of mine due to the discovery that Sousa often foreshadowed in most of his marches. Sousa often would write everything but the introduction before he completed one of his marches. He tries to hint at what is coming later in some of his marches. He does this in "Stars and Stripes," as well as there are small things in the intro that clue to the trio and dogfight. In this march, you'll hear something in the introduction that will continue to come back throughout the whole march. For several seasons, Sousa's Band was engaged to play at the Boston Food Fair. Few years leading up to Sousa writing this march, a young lady caught the eye of Sousa and he called her the "Fairest of the Fair," which is a title now given to young ladies at several county fairs these days. In 1908, the band had a 20 day engagement in which Sousa wrote this march. The march almost missed it's premiere as it was heavily promoted that the march would be premiered at the fair to the public. Before the performance of the march, Sousa's copyist Louis Morris worked until the crack of dawn to prepare the parts off of Sousa's conductor's sketch that was going to be given to the publisher. His copyist was asleep in his hotel when the band premiered it. Sousa did not mention it to him ever again, but gave Morris 50 extra bucks in his next pay check. Here is a recent recording of the Ohio Capital Winds with an intro by Sousa's biographer in Paul Bierley. 

Bierley's intro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUyU7ihRGKU

Ohio Capital Winds performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e-ycyCaxls

4. THE UNTITLED MARCH (1930) - This march was one of the last things Sousa ever wrote in his lifetime. We'll never know who or what it was written for, or what the the title would have been. Sousa often titled his marches after the first performance. This march has an interesting story in terms of the discovery of it. After Sousa's death in 1932, his manuscripts were sent to various places around the country including the Library of Congress and the University of Illinois. As his manuscripts were being shipped from Sousa's estate at Sand's Point near New York, a group of burglars broke into the Sousa home and dumped what they thought were useless manuscripts onto the floor of the home. One of these was this march, that was not discovered over 40 years after Sousa's death. In 1988, now Sousa authority Loras Schissel correctly pieced together all 14 pages of Sousa's unknown march. The march did not get it's first performance until 1990 under direction of Keith Brion. My favorite thing about this march is the trio section as it is one of most beautiful trio melodies out of any Sousa march.