SAX APPEAL

On June 28, 1846, musician / inventor Adolphe Sax filed 14 patents for his new invention: the saxophone. Initially crafted from wood, Sax’s instrument flared at the tip to form a music-amplifying bell. Although the saxophone quickly became popular with French army bands, the Belgian-born Sax spent decades in court trying to fend off knockoffs and made only meager profits before his patents expired in 1866. US production began in 1888 when Charles Conn of Elkhart, Indiana, started manufacturing the instruments for military bands.

Lucille Ball had briefly played the saxophone as a child. When the “I Love Lucy” writers discovered this they asked Lucy if she could still play. She replied “No, but give me a week.” By the time rehearsals for “The Saxophone” (ILL S2;E2) started she knew enough to get by. In fact, she practiced so much that she played a little too well and had to consciously remember to play the wrong notes. Writer Madelyn Pugh later said,

“As for Lucy playing the saxophone – she was a writer’s dream. No matter what we asked her to do – ride a lawnmower, jump on a trampoline, walk on stilts – she never said ‘No,’ just ‘Give me a few days to learn it.’”

In his autobiography, A Book, Desi Arnaz said,

“We could’ve had Lucy fake playing the xylophone and the sax, while someone off-camera did it, but it wouldn’t have been as funny as Lucy struggling to do it well herself.“

Lucy demonstrates her musical skill for Ethel on her newly rediscovered saxophone. She toots out a halting, off-pitch version of “Glow-Worm.” “The Glow-Worm” is a song from Paul Lincke’s 1902 operetta Lysistrata.  She claims that she was in the marching band in high school.

It isn’t long before the whole building knows that Lucy has rediscovered the saxophone!

Ralph Brady of the Desi Arnaz / Ricky Ricardo orchestra has a solo riff (his ‘audition’) at the start of the scene at the Tropicana and is then asked to go to the office and make the deal.   Of course, in reality Brady had been with the band all along but the show hoped viewers wouldn’t recognize him.

This frees up his chair for the next candidate – Lucy!  She dresses and talks like a stereotypical ‘hip’ musician of the 1920s and ‘30s.

Lucy Ricardo picked up the sax again in “Lucy’s Club Dance” (S3;E25)…

and in “Ragtime Band” (S6;E21), although in that episode “Sweet Sue” is the only song Lucy can play, not “Glow Worm.”

Lucy Carmichael played the sax in 1964′s “Ethel Merman and the Boy Scout Show” (TLS S2;E19) while a skeptical Mr. Mooney (Gale Gordon) looks on.

Lucy Carter played the sax during the talent portion of the Secretary Beautiful Pageant in “Lucy Competes with Carol Burnett” (HL S2;E24).

Bandleader Phil Harris has not one, but two sax players (Ted Nash and Jack Kelso) in his orchestra when he appears on a 1974 episode of “Here’s Lucy”.

Rudy Vallee ‘plays’ the sax in a 1970 episode of “Here’s Lucy.” Or does he?

In 1971′s “Lucy and Her All-Nun Band” (HL S4;E8), Lucy Carter subs on sax for a sick sister.

In that episode, she gets a lesson from Freddy Martin, a saxophonist and bandleader who first gained national attention in 1940 and continued on through the 1970s leading one of the most popular bands of the Big Band Era.

Lucy Barker wants to pass on her love of the saxophone to her granddaughter (Jenny Lewis) on an episode of “Life With Lucy” (1986).

When Lucy Barker pulls the saxophone from the trunk, the audience immediately applauds remembering when Lucy Ricardo played sax on “I Love Lucy.”

When Becky reads the inscription her grandmother had placed on her saxophone for her, she at first reads “made in Elkhart, Indiana.”  Conn and Buescher both made saxophones in the city of Elkhart. Founder Gus Buescher was first employed by Conn until he broke off to become their main competition. Buescher became the main supplier of student-grade saxophones to the H&A Selmer Company, which later joined with Conn. The Buescher brand was retired by Selmer in 1983.

At the Lucy-Desi Museum in Jamestown, New York, iconic items of Lucy Ricardo’s include her precious saxophone.