Sousa's band on strike?

[imperialbari]

Today I for the first time saw a reference to Sousa's players going on strike around 1919 or 1920 thereby causing a reorganisation of the band with new players.

I had no success with Google, so please provide a relevant link for reading about that situation.

Klaus

[ghmerrill]

You had no success with Google?

http://books.google.com/books?id=J2gdCa ... et="_blank

[imperialbari]

Didn't search for books.google, so ended up with lot of links for Strike Up the Band.

The two or so pages of allowed reading gave me an idea about the background for the strike. From these pages the strike was just about one matinee performance, and nothing could be read about the post-strike situation.

Sadly the book is not available as an ebook, as reading from paper is no longer really possible.

Still: Thanks for the links!

Klaus

[Paul Scott]

My understanding is that everyone who participated in the strike with the exception of August Helmecke, the bass drummer, was let go the following year. Cornet soloist Frank Simon was also let go, even though he didn't participate in the strike, (apparently Sousa saw him as a ring-leader). I believe that tubist John "Chief Red Cloud" Kuhn was let go at this time with a very young William Bell coming in the following year.

Paul Bierley's book, The Incredible Sousa Band is the best reference for the subject.

[ghmerrill]

Didn't search for books.google, so ended up with lot of links for Strike Up the Band.

As a (now retired) expert in information retrieval and text analytics, I have become more and more distressed/amused at what I regard as the degradation of most commercial search engines as a result of the types of algorithms/heuristics they have taken to using in an attempt to provide "smarter" retrieval of information (though often this is oriented towards presenting you with opportunities to buy products). It's become increasingly more difficult even to craft an advanced query that will suppress some of the transformational and semantic search enhancements, and so more searches are resulting in retrieval hits of (to the user) junk in which you have no interest. One problem appears to be the increased use of statistical methodologies to give high rankings to things that "most people" are trying to find -- even if you're doing your best to find something quite different. I feel your pain.

[imperialbari]

I don't even know the theories behind Boolean or other search modes. Only I am aware about my previous searches influencing any of my current searches.

And then geography plays a role. A TubeNetter more or less doubted my sanity, when I couldn't get any relevant links for a US suburban cultural center, which topped his search (had to send him a screen dump). But then he was within a distance of 50KM, where I was 100 times further away.

Klaus