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The Sound of America

From Port Washington, March King John Philip Sousa sent music all over the nation

By Peter Goodman | Staff Writer

John Philip Sousa might not have spent much time on Long Island, but he loved the time he spent.

In 1921, answering a query from a friend about whether he wanted to sell Wilbank, his Mediterranean-style mansion overlooking Hempstead Harbor, Sousa replied: ``I have to live somewhere, and the North Shore is so near Paradise that I have no idea of ever renting or selling my place.''

The March King was already rich and famous when he came to Sands Point in 1914. Sousa's family -- J.P., wife Jane, son J.P. II and daughters Jane Priscilla and Helen -- had been living in New York hotels for more than 20 years before he bought the mansion.

The Port Washington peninsula remained Sousa's home from then until his death in 1932, and daughter Jane lived in Wildbank until she died in 1958. The North Shore, filled with wooded estates occupied by the royalty of an expanding, confident, industrial nation, was a good place for a musician who embodied as well as anyone the peak of late 19th-Century American society.

For Sousa was a self-made man of tremendous talent and energy, a real all-American, from his many variations of mustache and beard to his love for shooting and partiality to the manly art of boxing. He was a full-blooded patriot born in 1854 in Washington, D.C., of a Portuguese-Spanish father and a Bavarian mother. At 60, he was already the composer of music that sounded like America, especially the thrilling martial notes of such marches as ``The Stars and Stripes Forever,'' ``Manhattan Beach'' and ``El Capitan.''

His Sousa Band was probably the most successful and popular musical organization in the country in its time -- but that very success kept him from spending much time on Long Island. The band toured incessantly, crossing and criss-crossing the nation by train, sometimes giving two concerts a day, and spending the summers giving daily and nightly performances at places such as Willow Grove Park outside Philadelphia and Manhattan Beach in Brooklyn. It engaged in several European trips and a round-the-world tour in 1910-11.

When he did come back to the spacious house on a cliff overlooking the water, he would spend part of his time composing or ensconced in his library. Sousa was an avid rider and sportsman who didn't motor into town to pick up his mail. He would saddle a favorite mount, such as Aladdin or Patrician Charlie, and head for the post office, which in those days was at the foot of Main Street where it begins to curve south along Manhasset Bay.

He never did bring the Sousa Band to Long Island -- the money was in New York and points west, according to Floyd Mackay, announcer and emcee at Port Washington's Sousa Bandshell, where they still have band concerts on summer evenings. But Mackay and his wife, June, treasure the stories they heard from her uncle, D.P. (Webb) Walker, who worked at the post office and knew Sousa.

``He was a rather generous sort of person,'' Mackay said, ``involved in the community but not overinvolved.'' Sousa, among his many clubs and associations, was an active Mason, and Walker chatted with him once about his becoming master of the local lodge. ``He said, `Yes I am, and if you pick up a few musicians, I'll conduct them for you,''' Mackay recounted.

But there's no indication Sousa ever did lead a Masonic band in Port Washington; there were reports that he led a community band in Port Washington once, and he was, according to Mackay, scheduled to conduct the school band two weeks after he died.

He also liked baseball. His band would play other bands on the road and Sousa sometimes pitched the first inning -- and he sponsored a Sousa Band team in Nassau County in the 1920s.

Another of his favorite activities was trapshooting -- he was, according to Paul E. Bierley's biography, ``John Philip Sousa, American Phenomenon,'' one of the best shots in the country. Naturally, Sousa was friendly with Theodore Roosevelt, who lived at Sagamore Hill on the next peninsula east. They would often go shooting together, or discuss politics and world affairs.

Sousa came by his nationalism virtually by birth, for his parents lived in a section of Washington known as the Navy Yard, only a block and a half west of the Marine Barracks. His father, Antonio, was a trombonist in the Marine Band, and young John grew up hearing military music -- and watching the streams of troops and wounded pass through the capital during the Civil War.

The boy enlisted in the Marine Corps at the age of 14, as an apprentice musician. A violinist, he spent his teenage years playing for the government during the day and with local orchestras at night. In 1880, at the age of 26, he was named director of the Marine Band -- and promptly grew a beard to appear as old as the veterans he was conducting.

In his 12 years as leader, he reformed the band, adding new music, including his own work, raising standards and tightening discipline. The band's reputation grew, and it began to tour. The band even made some pioneering cylinder recordings, but Sousa found the work boring and let an assistant lead during the sessions.

Finally, he left the Marines and formed a partnership with manager David Blakely; his own Sousa Band gave its first concert in Plainfield, N.J., in September, 1892. During the next 40 years, the Sousa Band became the ne plus ultra of wind-powered musical organizations, and one of the finest ensembles of any kind. Sousa re-upped during World War I, commissioned at the age of 62 as a lieutenant in the Naval Reserve, to train and lead military bandsmen. His Band Battalion, called the Jackie Band, raised more than $21 million in war bonds and other funds.

He was a businessman as well as a musician and, as a founding member with Victor Herbert of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), fought to ensure that composers and performers got paid for their work.

The grand old bandmaster never retired. ``When you hear of Sousa retiring, you will hear of Sousa dead,'' he told reporters in his latter years.

And he was right: Early in the morning of March 5, 1932, the day he was to conduct the Ringgold Band of Reading, Pa., in its 80th birthday concert, Sousa suffered a heart attack and died. He was buried in his hometown on March 10, after a service in the Marine Band Auditorium.

Wildbank remained in family hands until it was sold in 1965. The current owners, Peter and Bridgette Hirsch, say the house has been completely renovated and, except for a plaque on the wall and a section of wallpaper, ``no part of the house is Sousafied.''