PART 1 1934 to 1970
1
I was born in the spring of Nineteen thirty-four on the north-western outskirts of the city of Paris, France. It was a brisk Tuesday in February and I was one of about one thousand to be made that year. I was going to be one of the five altos assembled on that day.
My great grandfather Adolphe Sax had settled in Paris from Belgium some eighty years earlier. He had been creating a new range of louder, easy to play musical instruments, with such inventiveness, using the left hand format of an oboe, the right hand character of a clarinet and body with the general stoutness of a trombone.
This made me arguably the sweetest and loudest sounding wind instrument by far.
He called his inventions ‘Saxophones’ and patented four instruments, the E flat, F, B flat, and C models. During my saxophone family’s development and regular improvement, the E flat Alto and the B flat tenor became the more popular instruments of the range.
My elder siblings were not that much liked in the orchestra. I think because they were straight forward and quick to play, making as much clear sound as the trumpet. The orchestra was not accommodating to change in such a radical upgrade. I was destined elsewhere, to the city streets or dance halls, and of course, my Father Henri Selmer had special plans for me for the new technology of radio broadcasting and recording; music for the common people, quality music in the homes around France, Europe and the World.
2
My personal technician rose before daylight. As he did every morning, he ground his own coffee beans and prepared his drip coffee maker. At length he made a bowl of hot cafe-au-lait, using some fresh hot milk along with some of the coffee and a little sugar. He took a slice of warm baguette, buttered it and dipped it in the steaming bowl. He sat at his table and ate the bread. He took another slice and continued the same process before raising the bowl to his lips and drinking the remaining coffee. He poured most of the remaining black coffee into his thermos flask and served a cup for his wife. He washed his hands, brushed his teeth and put on his long raincoat over his work overalls. He tucked his trouser bottoms inside his socks, put on his beret on his head and put knitted gloves on his hands. He kissed his wife briefly on both cheeks, and as he opened the door, he felt the chill of the morning air on his face. He went to the rear of his house. On the ledge of his garden shed there was a small oil can with machine oil in it. He took up the can and methodically squirted a small amount sparingly along his bicycle’s chain as he rotated the pedals backwards until the whole chain glistened. He replaced the can on the shelf and exited the shed with his black bicycle in hand. He walked the machine to the street.
The grey cloudy sky was now totally visible. He looked up at the sky for a moment briefly checking the weather, then turned his attention to the left and right of the roadway. He looked down at his pedals and the chain. He spun the right pedal backwards to the top of its circle, then he mounted his machine. As he started to pedal he felt a few cold drops of rain. He headed southward along the road towards the factory thankfully without any further rain. Twenty minutes later the gateman at the factory let him enter. He parked his bicycle and went to the assembly room. He placed his vacuum flask on a small table beside his favourite cup and moved across the room to a large brightly lit work bench. He sighed and settled his thoughts as he took his seat.
My naked body was hanging like a piece of smoking pork on its hook above his head along with two sisters and two brother tenors in the same condition. It would take much concentration to dress my twenty-three tone holes with pads, keys, leaf springs, rods and mother of pearl decoration.
The skilled assembly technician always took so much care, he had to, his life and family depended on me being the best. He checked that his tools were where he would need them to the right hand side of his bench. He checked his two mouthpieces with reeds already installed in their tray, then he reached forward and took my body in his right hand, holding me in front of his bespectacled eyes. He smiled somewhere between a father’s and a lover’s smile as he looked down my nakedness, down the shaft and around my sensuous arched belly. He looked inside me like a caring doctor looking down a throat or in an ear, then satisfied, placed me on the bench.
His subtle hands selected the parts to establish my first key, and a few moments later I started to feel the first flutters of life as he checked his work for the absence of light, silent movement and firmness on my first tone hole. He had been assembling my brothers and sisters for a few months now, so he smoothly moved on with each key in steady motion for more than an hour. Then abruptly he stopped and stood up. He reached into one of his pockets for a rectangular tin and took from it a thin hand rolled cigarette. He placed it on his lips. From another pocket he took a matchbox, shook it near his ear and listened to the rattle. He slid open the matchbox, took a stick out and struck it along the sandpaper with flare, as he had done thousands of times before. He raised his hand to the end of the cigarette and took a deep puff. The tobacco glared red close to his lips and he felt the heat from the flame on his cheeks, nose and throat as the smoke entered his lungs. With the next puff he felt the nicotine in his brain and he strolled to get a strong black coffee from his flask across the room. He only stood away from the desk for three minutes. I called him back. I had desire for life. I always have.
He continued with my precise construction process, tone hole by tone hole, adding felts and adjusting as I steadily took shape, and later in the morning, he took up a neck and purposefully offered it up at the top of my shaft. Once satisfied, he installed corking and inspected me all over again now very much as a father. We were happy together. There were no blemishes. He looked for light at my tone holes and checked for the quiet slaps as the pads sat down rhythmically for the last time. He positioned his own favourite mouthpiece on my new neck.
Now my assembly completed, he placed his third finger of his left hand on my appropriate key and his right thumb on my thumb support taking my full weight on it. He offered me up to his waiting lips, took a deep breath and paused for a couple of seconds in anticipation. As he expelled the air from his lungs through his tightened lips I instantly sung for him. It was a clean and rich melody. I sang from Doh descending an octave and a little. I sang perfectly from the first breath, such was my technician’s skill and love for music. I was dancing with youth and excitement.
Another cigarette and coffee, and he took out an engraving tool marking my number on my belly along with a little distinctive artistic linear design.
I was quickly disassembled. A silver plug was installed where my neck fitted and I was placed on the soft blue felt of a snug fitting, leather dressed carrying case, along with my own autographed black mouthpiece with silver ring. Happy with his work, my technician smiled inside and out.
He called for the runner to carry me to the supervising musician in the sound room. The runner picked me up as my technician turned his attention back to the line above his head height. He now selected a naked tenor saxophone body. He placed it on the workbench, and without a break he started his next new project.
The senior musician in the sound room finished checking a tenor and then turned his attention to me. He was very careful and meticulous with my keys. He started with my lowest note and gently checked every semitone including all the optional alternate fingerings. In ten minutes he was happy. He placed a checked tag around the top of my shaft then placed me back in my case and sent me to the front room. Next the office clerk wrote my information in a log book and a label was placed on one of the handles of my case for shipment to Cite de Londres, L’Angleterre, Grande Bretagne.
I sat in the assembly factory for a week. I was finally parcel wrapped for shipment, and then at ten in the morning, a strong wiry young man, wearing his beret rather casually on his head came there to me. He unceremoniously took me to his bicycle. He mounted his well maintained machine and delivered me the short distance through the busy Parisian streets to the Gare du Nord, for the train ride to Calais. After a while at the station, I was put in a dusty, smokey carriage, then just after two in the afternoon I started the journey north out of Paris. The carriage rocked and rattled on the rails as we picked up speed, then glided rhythmically through the lowland farms of Northern France.
In the evening our train arrived at the port and I was put with some other parcels in a large net bag and carried onto the ferry boat bound for Dover. There were shouts from the sailors and dock handlers as the ship prepared to depart. The ship’s horn blasted, and then almost unnoticeably we glided away from the dock into the English Channel and on northward.
There were still many ships at sea in the night passing by us on this busy passageway, a cargo ship from China bound for the Thames Estuary and Tilbury Docks, a ship from the North of England carrying coal bound for the Channel Isles, a ferry going in the opposite direction to us and others sailing more distantly. The night crossing was smooth with a gentle swell and we glided toward the English harbour under the White Cliffs with the ship’s captain blowing repeatedly his deep, powerful ship’s horn through the sea mist which had developed three quarters of the way over.