The Martin Band Instrument Company was a musical instrument manufacturer in
Elkhart, Indiana
Elkhart ( ) is a city in Elkhart County, Indiana, United States. The city is located east of South Bend, Indiana, east of Chicago, Illinois, and north of Indianapolis, Indiana. Elkhart has the larger population of the two principal cities of th ...
. The firm produced band instruments, including trumpets, cornets, fluegelhorns, trombones, and saxophones from 1908 through the 1960s. The brand was acquired by the
Leblanc Corporation in 1971 and discontinued in 2007 after Leblanc's 2004 acquisition by
Conn-Selmer
Conn-Selmer, Inc. is an American manufacturer of musical instruments for concert bands, marching bands and orchestras. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Steinway Musical Instruments and was formed in 2003 by combining the Steinway properties, ...
.
History
John Henry Martin and the first Martin company
John Henry (Johann Heinrich) Martin was born February 24, 1835, in Dresden, Germany. He learned to make instruments in the old way as an apprentice to the instrument maker Christian Hammig of
Markneukirchen
Markneukirchen () is a town in the Vogtlandkreis district, in Saxony, Germany, close to the Czech border. It lies in between the Erzgebirge and the Fichtelgebirge in the Elstergebirge, southeast of Plauen, and northeast of Aš (Czech Republic ...
, Germany, from 1850–54, according to the archives of ''Musikinstrumenten-Museum''. In 1855 he emigrated to the United States and followed his trade, first in New York by establishing "The Martin Company" then during the later part of 1865 in Chicago. It is believed that Martin was the first maker of musical instruments in Chicago. In 1871 the original Martin factory was destroyed by the
great Chicago fire
The Great Chicago Fire was a conflagration that burned in the American city of Chicago during October 8–10, 1871. The fire killed approximately 300 people, destroyed roughly of the city including over 17,000 structures, and left more than 10 ...
. The family lost everything and was reunited three days after the fire when they met on the shores of Lake Michigan. In 1876 the family moved to Elkhart, Indiana, where John Henry became an employee of
C.G. Conn. During this period his employment was sporadic and he worked for other instrument manufacturers. Some of these companies were The Michigan Musical Manufacturing Company of Detroit, Michigan and the early
York Band Instrument Company
The York Band Instrument Company was a musical instrument manufacturer in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
History
James Warren York was a former army musician and played professionally in the Grand Rapids, Michigan theaters. He eventually decided to ...
in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Because of ill health, he retired from making instruments in 1902 and died on November 25, 1910.
Henry Charles Martin and the Martin Band Instrument Company
The eldest son of John Henry Martin was Henry Charles Martin (b. New York City, 12 January 1866; d. Elkhart, 8 November 1927). From about 1890 he worked for Conn as his father had done. Martin family sources claim that the Martin Band Instrument Company began in 1905. It may have been setting up at this date with very limited production, however it wasn't until 1910 that the company was in full operation with Henry Charles Martin, Robert J. Martin, Charles E. Martin and Frederick Martin as president, vice-president, secretary and treasurer respectively. Family sources indicate that the four brothers fought incessantly over the company, and in 1912 Francis Compton bought a major share and assumed the position as vice-president from 1912 to 1917. Charles Henry Martin remained as president until 1917. In 1922 he was working for
Buescher. It is known in a letter dated 1923 that Martin expressed his desire to begin tooling for a third Martin company, but in 1924 he suffered the first of three strokes and was forced to resign from Buescher.
The company from 1912 to 1971
Another photo of Charlie Parker playing a 1920s Martin 'Handcraft' alto saxophone
From 1912 into the 1920s production expanded rapidly to include a full line of brasswinds and saxophones for the professional and amateur markets. The trademark name "Martin Handcraft" acquired modifiers designating specific models such as "Master," "Troubador," "Imperial," "Committee," and "Standard," with "Standard" designating second-line instruments sold under Martin's name prior to 1942. The mid-1930s saw introduction of the "
Martin Committee" model trumpets and "
Martin Handcraft Committee" saxophones. Production was very limited during World War II and the Korean War, however Martin was able to survive as a company thanks to their limited production and strong reputation. The "Handcraft Committee" name for saxophones was dropped in 1945. Martin's postwar "Committee III" saxophones were branded "The Martin (saxophone type)" without the "Handcraft," although the "Committee" name for saxophones was officially revived during the late 1950s. Martin also produced limited edition and commemorative versions of their saxophones with names such as "Centennial' and "Music Man" and, from 1956 on, a deluxe version called the "Magna." Martin saxophones were distinctive for having tonehole chimneys soldered onto the body decades after other manufacturers switched to drawing them out of the body tube to save production costs.
Martin was also a major source of "stencil" instruments sold under various merchandisers' brands, and created the Indiana Band Instrument Company in 1928 as a paper entity to distribute its second-line products sold under those brands. That entity was officially dissolved by 1942. "The Indiana by Martin" designated second-line instruments from 1942 until the early 1960s, followed by "Medalist" and "Imperial" (not to be confused with Handcraft Imperial). The Indiana by Martin line continued the serial sequence of the old IBIC rather than the main Martin sequence, which sometimes leads to confusion regarding the ages of Indiana by Martin instruments. Some of the stencil instruments such as the postwar "Dick Stabile" and "Olds Super" saxophones were professional grade.
In 1961 Paul E. Richards combined Martin,
E. K. Blessing, and
F.A. Reynolds under the "Roundtable of Music Craftsmen," or RMC. Richards desired increased production for the student market. Key personnel left the company and the arrangement fell apart in 1964. The rights to the Martin trademark were taken over by
Wurlitzer
The Rudolph Wurlitzer Company, usually referred to as simply Wurlitzer, is an American company started in Cincinnati in 1853 by German immigrant (Franz) Rudolph Wurlitzer. The company initially imported stringed, woodwind and brass instruments ...
, and the Martin factory became a division of Wurlitzer in Elkhart. Wurlitzer eventually discontinued production of saxophones and sold low-quality saxophones made by Malerne as "The Martin". In 1971 the rights to the Martin name were bought by
Leblanc, and Wurlitzer closed the old Martin factory.
1971-2007
Leblanc was an early importer of
Yanagisawa saxophones and sold some of those instruments as "The Martin" before marketing them under the producer's own name. Leblanc produced Martin-branded brasswinds at their Holton factory in Elkhorn, Wisconsin. Leblanc used the "
Committee
A committee or commission is a body of one or more persons subordinate to a deliberative assembly. A committee is not itself considered to be a form of assembly. Usually, the assembly sends matters into a committee as a way to explore them more ...
" brand for an Elkhorn-produced trumpet although it was in fact based on a
Holton design. Use of Martin's "Committee" name for trumpets and "Urbie Green" name for trombones continued until 2007.
The Leblanc Company was bought by the
Conn-Selmer
Conn-Selmer, Inc. is an American manufacturer of musical instruments for concert bands, marching bands and orchestras. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Steinway Musical Instruments and was formed in 2003 by combining the Steinway properties, ...
Corporation in 2004. The Martin brand was discontinued when Leblanc's Elkhorn facility was closed in 2007.
Committee brand
Martin Committee was the trademark name of the Martin Band Instrument Company's premier lines of trumpets and saxophones starting in the mid-1930s. All were produced in Elkhart, Indiana. The Martin Committee trumpets and saxophones were favorites of jazz musicians. Committee trombones were introduced in 1939. Committee model saxophones were discontinued towards the end of the 1960s. Committee model trumpets were discontinued in 1971, although the brand was nominally continued and applied to a different design.
Trumpet
The Martin Committee
trumpet
The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standard ...
was originally designed in the late 1930s by the legendary
Renold Schilke
Renold Otto Schilke (Green Bay, June 30, 1910 – September 5, 1982) was a professional orchestral trumpet player, instrument designer and manufacturer. He founded and ran Schilke Music Products Incorporated, a manufacturer of brass instrumen ...
with play testing and feedback by a "committee" of diverse players and teachers. Schilke always maintained that the horn was actually designed "by a committee of one."
The first advertisement for the Martin Committee ran in the December 1, 1940 issue of
Down Beat
' (styled in all caps) is an American music magazine devoted to "jazz, blues and beyond", the last word indicating its expansion beyond the jazz realm which it covered exclusively in previous years. The publication was established in 1934 in Chi ...
. It listed the committee as follows:
*Fred Berman, popular radio staff star, probably the busiest trumpet player and teacher in Boston.
*
Bunny Berigan
Roland Bernard "Bunny" Berigan (November 2, 1908 – June 2, 1942) was an American jazz trumpeter and bandleader who rose to fame during the swing era. His career and influence were shortened by alcoholism, and ended with his early demise at the ...
, soloist and band leader
*M. Thomas Cousins, of the National Symphony Orchestra
*Dana Garrett, formerly cornet soloist of the Sousa Band - now first trumpet, Capitol Theatre, Washington, D.C.
*
Rafael Mendez
Rafael may refer to:
* Rafael (given name) or Raphael, a name of Hebrew origin
* Rafael, California
* Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, Israeli manufacturer of weapons and military technology
* Hurricane Rafael, a 2012 hurricane
Fiction
* ''R ...
, Hollywood artist
*Jimmy Neilson, Band Director and Instrumental Instructor, Oklahoma City University - an outstanding trumpet and cornet artist.
*
Renold Schilke
Renold Otto Schilke (Green Bay, June 30, 1910 – September 5, 1982) was a professional orchestral trumpet player, instrument designer and manufacturer. He founded and ran Schilke Music Products Incorporated, a manufacturer of brass instrumen ...
, one of the most highly skilled artists in America, first trumpet with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
*Otto Kurt Schmeisser, formerly with the Boston and Detroit Symphony Orchestras, later a successful teacher in Detroit.
*
Charlie Spivak
Charlie Spivak (February 17, 1907 – March 1, 1982) was an American trumpeter and bandleader, best known for his big band in the 1940s.
Early life
The details of Spivak's birth are unclear. Some sources place it in Ukraine in 1907, and that h ...
, rated "tops" by everybody who knows - now heading his own fine combination.
*
Charlie Teagarden
Charlie Teagarden (July 19, 1913 – December 10, 1984), known as 'Smokey Joe', was an American jazz trumpeter. He was the younger brother of Jack Teagarden. His nickname was ''Little T''.
Born in Vernon, Texas, United States, Teagarden worked loc ...
, soloist and brother of bandleader
Jack Teagarden
Weldon Leo "Jack" Teagarden (August 20, 1905 – January 15, 1964) was an American jazz trombonist and singer. According to critic Scott Yannow of Allmusic, Teagarden was the preeminent American jazz trombone player before the bebop era of the 19 ...
The input of the committee was taken into consideration during the Committee trumpet's design process.
The horn became widely adopted in
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a m ...
music because of its warm, rich sound and flexible intonation. It has a unique sound that has been described as "dark and smokey".
Miles Davis
Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926September 28, 1991) was an American trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th-century music. Davis adopted a variety of musi ...
played custom-made Committees throughout his career. Other notable players include
Dizzy Gillespie,
Clark Terry,
Chet Baker,
Lee Morgan
Edward Lee Morgan (July 10, 1938 – February 19, 1972) was an American jazz trumpeter and composer.
One of the key hard bop musicians of the 1960s, Morgan came to prominence in his late teens, recording on John Coltrane's '' Blue Train'' (1 ...
,
Maynard Ferguson,
Art Farmer,
Wallace Roney
Wallace Roney (May 25, 1960 – March 31, 2020) was an American jazz ( hard bop and post-bop) trumpeter. He has won 1 Grammy award and has two nominations.
Roney took lessons from Clark Terry and Dizzy Gillespie and studied with Miles Davis fr ...
, and
Chris Botti
Christopher Stephen Botti ( ; born October 12, 1962) is an award-winning American trumpeter and composer.
In 2013, Botti won the Grammy Award in the Best Pop Instrumental Album category, for the album ''Impressions''.
He was also nominated in ...
.
When the rights to the Martin brand were purchased by
Leblanc in 1971, the Committee designs were discontinued and the name given to trumpets of a different design produced at a Leblanc's
Holton facility in
Elkhorn, Wisconsin
Elkhorn is a city in Walworth County, Wisconsin, United States. It is located southwest of Milwaukee. As of the 2020 census, it was home to 10,247 people, up from 10,084 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat.
Geography
Elkhorn is located ...
. These horns were produced until 2007, when the Martin brand was dropped by
Conn-Selmer
Conn-Selmer, Inc. is an American manufacturer of musical instruments for concert bands, marching bands and orchestras. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Steinway Musical Instruments and was formed in 2003 by combining the Steinway properties, ...
, who had purchased Leblanc in 2004.
Martin committee members.jpg, Members of the Martin committee
Martin Committee Trumpet.jpg, 1954 Martin Committee trumpet in unrestored condition
Martin Committee Bell.jpg, Martin Committee bell engraving
Saxophone
A new model of Martin saxophone named Handcraft Committee was introduced in 1936, replacing the Handcraft Imperial model. This series, often referred to as "Committee I" today, has
art-deco
Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the United ...
engraving depicting an urban skyline with
searchlight
A searchlight (or spotlight) is an apparatus that combines an extremely bright source (traditionally a carbon arc lamp) with a mirrored parabolic reflector to project a powerful beam of light of approximately parallel rays in a particular direc ...
s sweeping the sky as an airplane flies through. These are informally called "Martin skyline" and "Martin searchlight" horns.
In 1939 Martin introduced a new design named Handcraft Committee II, with a larger bell and a deeper sound, sometimes called "Lion and Crown" after the new engraving design. The "Handcraft" name was still engraved, but not "Committee"; "Comm. II" was stamped on the rear of the body tube.
In 1945 Martin introduced a new model that gained favor among R&B and rock & roll players for its dynamic sound properties. The "Handcraft" name was dropped and the horns were branded "The Martin (saxophone type);" the "Committee" name was engraved on some examples from the late 1950s on. Other variations in engraving include the "RMC" initials on horns produced from 1961-64. It is sometimes called "Committee III" today to disambiguate it from other Martin saxophones.
Production of the "Committee III" model continued until the late 1960s, when Wurlitzer discontinued saxophone production at the Martin factory and began using "The Martin" as the name for student model instruments manufactured by Malerne. After the acquisition of the Martin brand rights by
Leblanc in 1971, the name was applied to
Yanagisawa saxophones imported by Leblanc. Neither the Malerne or Yanagisawa instruments branded "The Martin" are related to the Committee III design that preceded them.
Trombone
Martin introduced the Committee
trombone
The trombone (german: Posaune, Italian, French: ''trombone'') is a musical instrument in the brass family. As with all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player's vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate ...
in 1939.
The committee that designed it, chaired by Chuck Campbell, also consisted of
Miff Mole, Jack Jenney, Al Angelotta, Andy Russo, Al Philburn, Phil Giardina, Lloyd Turner, and Charlie Butterfield. It was available in medium bore with a bell and medium large bore with a bell. A "De Luxe" model was later added featuring
nickel silver
Nickel silver, Maillechort, German silver, Argentan, new silver, nickel brass, albata, alpacca, is a copper alloy with nickel and often zinc. The usual formulation is 60% copper, 20% nickel and 20% zinc. Nickel silver does not contain the eleme ...
trim.
References
{{Reflist
Sources
*McMakin, Dean "Musical Instrument Manufacturing in Elkhart, Indiana" (unpublished typescript, 1987, available at Elkhart Public Library)
*Elkhart city directories (available Elkhart Public Library)
*''The Elkhart Truth'', Saturday 26 November 1910, obituary of John Henry Martin
*''Elkhart Daily Review'', Saturday 26 November 1910, obituary of John Henry Martin
*''The Elkhart Truth'', Tuesday 8 November 1927, obituary of Henry Charles Martin
TheMartinStory.net
See also
*
C.G. Conn
*
Conn-Selmer
Conn-Selmer, Inc. is an American manufacturer of musical instruments for concert bands, marching bands and orchestras. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Steinway Musical Instruments and was formed in 2003 by combining the Steinway properties, ...
*
York Band Instrument Company
The York Band Instrument Company was a musical instrument manufacturer in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
History
James Warren York was a former army musician and played professionally in the Grand Rapids, Michigan theaters. He eventually decided to ...
*
Leblanc (musical instrument manufacturer)
Leblanc, Inc. was a musical instruments manufacturing company based in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The company was a woodwind instrument manufacturer known mainly for its clarinets. In 2004 the firm was sold to Conn-Selmer, a division of Steinway Musical ...
*
Buescher Band Instrument Company
The Buescher Band Instrument Company was a manufacturer of musical instruments in Elkhart, Indiana, from 1894 to 1963. The company was acquired by the H&A Selmer Company in 1963. Selmer retired the Buescher brand in 1983.
History
The company ...
*
Steinway Musical Instruments
Brass instrument manufacturing companies
Companies based in Elkhart County, Indiana
Manufacturing companies established in 1905
Companies disestablished in 1971
Musical instrument manufacturing companies of the United States
1905 establishments in Indiana