Sax Appeal

Summary

99% Invisible — “Sax Appeal”

Host: Roman Mars
Reporter: Jay Coburn
Guests: Dr. Stephen Cottrell, Paul Cohen, Lakecia Benjamin, Darius Jones
Original Air Date: December 16, 2025

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Episode Overview

“Sax Appeal” explores the fascinating origins, design ingenuity, and cultural journey of the saxophone—an instrument born of 19th-century innovation, later beloved in American jazz, reviled by fascist regimes, and ultimately cemented as a versatile icon of modern music. Through lively narration, expert interviews, and memorable anecdotes, Roman Mars and Jay Coburn uncover how the saxophone’s appeal—and controversy—extends far beyond music, touching on issues of invention, identity, and power.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Birth of the Saxophone (01:01–07:16)

• Adolphe Sax – A Life of Danger and Innovation

  • Adolphe Sax, born Antoine-Joseph Sax in Dinant, Belgium (1814), survived a perilous childhood marked by numerous near-death accidents, earning his mother’s grim prophecy:
    • “He’s a child condemned to misfortune. He won’t live.” — Mother of Adolphe Sax (04:15)
  • Son of Charles-Joseph Sax, a musician/carpenter turned instrument maker; Adolphe followed into the craft (04:42).
  • Early efforts focused on improving the bass clarinet using scientific acoustic measurements for precise tone and harmony.
    • Dr. Stephen Cottrell on Sax’s approach:
      “He came up with the measurements. He decided to make this a much more scientific operation than previously in determining where the holes actually needed to be cut.” (06:21)

• Move to Paris and Inventions Galore

  • Seeking a bigger stage, Sax relocates to Paris—Europe’s musical hub—where he makes further improvements to existing brass instruments and invents a series of “saxhorns” and “saxatrombas.” (07:41–08:42)
    • Adolphe’s penchant: taking existing inventions, adding improvements, and always branding them with his name.

Chasing the French Military Contract (09:08–13:05)

• Winning Big: Military Ambitions

  • The French military, eager to compete with Austria and Prussia’s powerful brass bands, sought better instruments.
  • Sax’s big breakthrough: create a “hybrid” brass/woodwind—loud, portable, and harmonically rich—by blending the reed mouthpiece of a clarinet with elements of brass design (the failed ophiclide as inspiration). (10:04–12:44)
  • He patented an entire family of saxophones (eight types) in 1846, aiming for a "choir of human voices" in instrumental form.

• Trial by Fire: The “Battle of the Bands” (15:54–19:29)

  • The French Ministry of War sets up a musical showdown: Sax’s ensemble of saxhorns and saxophones vs. a traditional, woodwind-heavy military band.
  • Amid sabotage attempts (“seven of Sax’s musicians really didn’t show up... bribed to stay away”) Sax fills in himself. (17:13)
  • The public cheers louder for Sax’s group; his designs win the coveted military contract.
    • Newspaper, on the difference between Sax’s instruments and the old:
      “A Stradivarius violin compared with a violin from the village. A glass of generous Bordeaux next to an adulterated beverage...” (19:48)

Triumph, Downfall, and American Rebirth (20:14–22:54)

• Boom to Bust

  • With the military contract, Sax briefly prospers as military bands mandate his instruments.
  • But lawsuits, patent disputes, war (Franco-Prussian conflict), and debts lead him to bankruptcy—three times (20:53–21:53).
    • “He would have been collecting those instruments because they really represented what he wanted to know... although there was relatively little monetary value in them, emotionally, that would have hurt.” — Dr. Stephen Cottrell on Sax losing his collection (21:27)

• End of a Life, Start of a Legacy

  • Dies impoverished in 1894, but his invention soon finds unlikely new life in America.

The Saxophone Craze & Jazz Revolution (22:35–27:06)

• American Enthusiasm (22:35–24:06)

  • The early 20th century sees a “saxophone craze” in the US—saxophones as mass-market novelties, vaudeville props, and household entertainment (23:04).
    • Paul Cohen: “Play the saxophone and be more popular.” (23:28)
  • Depression slows sales, but jazz soon claims the instrument’s destiny.

• The Golden Age of Jazz and Black American Identity (24:19–27:32)

  • The saxophone becomes the signature of jazz and swing, vital to nightclubs and dance halls.
    • Lakecia Benjamin: “The instrument that they called on for that was a saxophone. There were even sax battles... and they would just completely try to murder each other... This saxophone playing was real raunchy.” (24:55)
    • Bebop transforms the sax from ensemble workhorse to virtuoso soloist (Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie era).
    • “No one ever danced the jazz again.” — Lakecia Benjamin, on the shift to bebop (26:00)
  • By midcentury, the saxophone stands as a symbol of Black American music, culture, and political resistance.

Controversy, Censorship, and Global Transformation (27:32–32:07)

• Rebellion, Scandal, and Suppression

  • White purists decry “Jassing” as vulgar (28:01):
    • “God save us from the hideous catcalling that is so much in vogue at present termed Jassing... The Jassa should be subject to the same quarantine restrictions as if he had the foot and mouth disease.” — 1917 magazine column (28:01)
  • Persecution by authoritarian regimes: Nazis, Soviets, and even the Vatican ban the saxophone as “degenerate” (30:03–31:06).
    • Visual evidence: “A racist caricature of a black man holding a saxophone with a Star of David…” — on Nazi propaganda (30:37)
  • The sax goes from a banned symbol of rebellion to a widespread, mainstream instrument.

• Saxophone in Pop and Beyond

  • Hip hop samples, James Brown, and 1980s pop cement the saxophone’s place in varied modern genres (31:49–32:07).
    • Lakecia Benjamin describes the saxophone’s journey from sexy, rebellious icon to “just another instrument”—but maintains its versatility and expressive range (33:28).

The Saxophone’s Enduring “Appeal” (33:28–34:48)

• “When people think of love and they think of an instrument, they usually think of some saxophone player coming out and seducing somebody. When it’s time to really shred and rock out, you could really crank that thing up and take it all the way to Metallica land. So for me it’s just the most versatile way to be all your complete self.” — Lakecia Benjamin (33:28)
• Paul Cohen: “Feel that I’m playing something that is so connected to me internally and physically that it feels like it’s an extension of my inner soul.” (34:07)
• Jay Coburn: “The sound... might be air vibrating inside a mathematically appropriate metal tube, but how it makes you feel, that’s all about the human who’s blowing on that reed, pressing those keys and feeling the sax appeal.” (34:16)

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Novelty Saxophones: Museum Tour with Paul Cohen (38:30–46:46)

• Paul Cohen’s Saxophone Museum (Englewood, NJ)

  • Over 250 saxophones, ranging from the tiny curved sopranino (41:23) to the massive subcontrabass (42:21) said to “shake your guts around.”
  • Notable oddities include:
    • Slide saxophone: “like a theremin... or the fanciest slide whistle you’ve ever heard” (40:30).
    • Triple saxophone contraption played by Billy True: “He was also known as the one man saxophone section.” (43:28)
    • Adolphe Sax’s legendary (possibly mythical) inventions: The Saxo-Cannon and the Saxo-Tonnerre (train-sized organ)—extravagant concepts possibly designed to impress the military (44:49–45:46).

• Roman Mars on Sax’s Legacy:
  “He just likes to take an invention and like, make it bigger, more ridiculous. Maybe add some valves and some scientific thinking to it and then just slap his name on the front of it.” (46:24)

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Memorable Quotes & Moments with Timestamps

• On Adolphe Sax’s Scientific Acoustics:

  • Dr. Stephen Cottrell: "He decided to make this a much more scientific operation than previously in determining where the holes actually needed to be cut." (06:21)

• The Battle of the Bands:

  • Jay Coburn: “This was a big deal. The press was full of rumors about nefarious forces trying to interfere.” (16:52)
  • Roman Mars: “After four hours of performance...Adolphe Sax's sax band were louder, loud enough for him to be declared the winner...” (19:29)

• Jazz Transformation:

  • Lakecia Benjamin: “The instrument that they called on for that was a saxophone. There were even sax battles... This saxophone playing was real raunchy.” (24:55)
  • “No one ever danced the jazz again.” (26:00)

• On Censorship:

  • Jay Coburn (quoting 1917 column): "God save us from the hideous catcalling...termed Jassing... Really, the Jassa should be subject to the same quarantine restrictions as if he had the foot and mouth disease." (28:01)
  • “The Nazis banned what they called entartette music. Degenerate music... It was apparently much more popular than the one showcasing fine German art.” (30:09)

• On the Saxophone’s Power:

  • Paul Cohen: “Feel that I’m playing something that is so connected to me internally and physically that it feels like it’s an extension of my inner soul.” (34:07)
  • Lakecia Benjamin: “For me it’s just the most versatile way to be all your complete self.” (33:28)

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Notable Segments and Timestamps

| Segment | Time | |---------------------------------------------|--------------| | Introduction & Adolphe Sax’s Origin Story | 01:01–07:16 | | Improving Instruments & Paris Relocation | 07:16–09:08 | | French Military Contract & Patent | 09:08–13:05 | | Battle of the Bands & Victory | 15:54–19:29 | | Downfall & Emigration of Appeal | 20:14–22:54 | | Saxophone Craze in America | 22:35–24:06 | | Jazz & Black American Identity | 24:19–27:32 | | Controversy and Censorship | 27:32–32:07 | | Modern Saxophone in Pop Culture | 32:07–34:48 | | Paul Cohen’s Novelty Saxophone Museum Tour | 38:30–46:46 |

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Concluding Reflection

“Sax Appeal” peels back centuries of history, myth, and social change to reveal why the saxophone endures as both a marvel of design and a vessel for human expression. From Adolphe Sax’s near-fatal childhood and relentless inventiveness, through jazz-era rebellions and modern ubiquity, the episode celebrates the sax as much more than a mere instrument—it's an emblem of survival, defiance, and emotional connection.

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The 99% Invisible Touch

With its rich blend of storytelling, expert voices, and sonic illustration—from the boom of the subcontrabass to the shriek of novelty saxes—this episode will leave you with a new appreciation for the science, struggle, and sheer sax appeal vibrating through every note.

Transcript

[Roman Mars]

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[Jay Coburn]

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[Roman Mars]

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. I want you to imagine a world where you can just invent a musical instrument. I don't mean when you were a kid and you put some rubber bands on a tissue box. I mean you come up with a new instrument almost from scratch and then watch as that instrument gets taken up and played in nearly every marching band, jazz band, and high school music classroom across the world. Across the country, there actually was a.

[Jay Coburn]

Time where this kind of thing happened.

[Roman Mars]

That's reporter Jay coburn.

[Jay Coburn]

In the 19th century, Western Europe saw an explosion of instrument innovation, where the entire landscape of instrumentation was shifting and where there was money to be made if your improvements caught on with the public.

[Roman Mars]

This is when many of the instruments we know today reached their modern forms. Trumpets had been around since Roman times, But in the 19th century, they took on the valved form we know today, and flutes went from being conical wooden instruments to metal cylinders.

[Jay Coburn]

But one of the greatest innovations to come out of this time was the saxophone. The saxophone wasn't an improvement on a previous instrument. It was a brand new invention, a hybrid of brass and woodwind that not only managed to secure a spot in the musical canon, but also went on to change American music forever.

[Roman Mars]

Its design came from the mind of a brash young entrepreneur.

[Jay Coburn]

His name, perhaps unsurprisingly, was Sachs.

[Roman Mars]

Adolf Sachs was born in dinant, Belgium, in 1814.

[Jay Coburn]

His full name was actually Antoine Joseph Sachs, but at the time, Adolf wasn't, you know, taken. So he went by that instead.

[Dr. Stephen Cottrell]

It's difficult not to remember him as this romanticized figure. The rags to riches to rags, the fiery temper.

[Roman Mars]

This is Dr. Stephen Cottrell, emeritus professor of music at City St. George's University of London.

[Dr. Stephen Cottrell]

The brilliant innovator, yet saddled with personal demons and professional challenges throughout his life.

[Roman Mars]

Dr. Cottrell is the author of a book called the Saxophone. But that book might never have been written because Saxe nearly died before he invented anything. Like many, many times, Adolf Sachs was.

[Jay Coburn]

The eldest of 11 children, only four of whom made it to age 30. So the odds were stacked against young Adolf from the start. And I'm going to need a deep breath before I list the ways he apparently nearly died as a kid. He fell three flights of stairs and cracked his head on a stone floor. He drank a mixture of vitriol, probably what we would call sulfuric acid today, and water, mistaking it for milk. He was burned in a gunpowder explosion and then again when a frying pan was knock fell off a roof and left a lifelong scar on his head. And he once fell asleep in a room full of freshly varnished furniture, but was luckily found before he succumbed to the fumes.

[Dr. Stephen Cottrell]

I think what we're getting here is a picture of somebody who is energetic getting into scrapes, whether it's falling downstairs, whether it's going to sleep in a room where varnish is drying, whether it's having his head cracked open.

[Roman Mars]

Some of these stories might be apocryphal, but this long list of mishaps is probably why his mother once said that quote, he's a child condemned to misfortune. He won't live. Thanks, Mom.

[Jay Coburn]

She was right about the first part, but not about the second. Because against all odds, Adolf did survive his tragicomic childhood. And as a young adult, he joined his father in the family business making musical instruments.

[Roman Mars]

Adolf's father, Charles Joseph Sachs, had gotten into instrument making because he was a musician himself. His professional training had been as a carpenter. But when he joined a woodwind band in Dinan, he didn't have an instrument. So he taught himself to make one.

[Jay Coburn]

That must have gone pretty well because soon he moved to Brussels and set up an instrument shop. That's where young Adolph Sachs learned his craft.

[Dr. Stephen Cottrell]

I think we have to remember, we're now talking early 19th century. Musical instrument making in Europe at this time was not done in big factories. There was no industrial involved. It was small, artisanal, individual craftsmen. It's much more a craft oriented tradition.

[Jay Coburn]

Young Adolf clearly felt the pull of opportunity. As a teen he was enrolled in the Royal School of Music in Brussels. He was an impressive musician, a virtuoso on the flute and clarinet. When he was about 21 composer even dedicated a Clarinet piece To Adolph Sax.

[Roman Mars]

There was a promising career as a musician waiting for him. But he was lured back to the family instrument workshop. While working alongside his dad, Adolf started experimenting with the instrument he knew the.

[Jay Coburn]

Clarinet, specifically the bass clarinet. The bass clarinet was kind of a quirky novelty at the time. It was difficult to play and sounded kind of nasal. And it was so long that it was difficult to get your fingers in the right place. It looked a bit like a folded bassoon.

[Roman Mars]

So Adolf Sachs experimented with new keywork, the metal parts that you press to close the holes. He also used the science of acoustics to make the placement of those holes more precise.

[Dr. Stephen Cottrell]

People would put these boreholes in more or less wherever they felt it looked about right. He came up with the measurements. He decided to make this a much more scientific operation than previously in determining where the holes actually needed to be cut.

[Jay Coburn]

This improvement meant that each instrument sounded more in tune. And when played together, the bass clarinet sounded more harmonious. And so in 1835, in his early 20s, Adolph Sax took his bass clarinet to an instrument show.

[Roman Mars]

And 19th century Belgian instrument aficionados loved it.

[Jay Coburn]

In fact, the bass clarinets used in orchestras today still owe their design to Adolf Saxon. A wooden tube covered in keys that curves into a metal bell shape at the bottom end. The top end crooks into a mouthpiece with a wooden reed to blow on.

[Roman Mars]

In other words, the bass clarinet looks a lot like the saxophone eventually would.

[Jay Coburn]

With his redesign of the bass clarinet, the name sax was beginning to be known in musical circles. But if he really wanted to make the big Franks, he had to move to Paris.

[Dr. Stephen Cottrell]

Brussels was very small at the time, and Paris was one of the major musical centers in Europe. And Paris was particularly the centre of brass wind manufacture. You had to be seen to be producing your new brass and wind instruments if you were going to be successful.

[Jay Coburn]

In 1843, Adolf Sachs set up a workshop there and got to experimenting. He came up with new families of horns, the sax horns, which were valved brass instruments that looked a bit like upright trumpets, and the saxatrombas, which were valved brass instruments that looked a bit like upright trumpets.

[Roman Mars]

There are videos of people playing these on the Internet. This is the Saxhorn. And this is the Saxo Tromba.

[Jay Coburn]

And perhaps it's worth noting here that Adolf Sax didn't really invent these instruments, so much as improve on things that.

[Roman Mars]

Already existed, and then added sax to the name.

[Jay Coburn]

If you asked Adolf, though, he'd probably tell you this was a mere technicality. Don't be such A sax downer, he'd say. He was here to disrupt the industry, move fast and break things sax style.

[Roman Mars]

Although Adolf was churning out a variety of instruments, none of them had been a big enough hit to make him properly rich. He was one instrument maker among many in Paris, all competing for the attention of orchestras and private buyers.

[Jay Coburn]

So he came up with a plan to secure his own niche in a competitive market. He went after a client so huge, so wealthy, that their business could set him up for life.

[Roman Mars]

Because since time immemorial, there has been one tried and true way for an entrepreneur to make a ton of money. Adolph Sachs wanted to land a military contract.

[Dr. Stephen Cottrell]

If you could get a contract with the French military to supply brass instruments or brass wind instruments, then that was going to be the backbone of your business. You were going to sell far more instruments to the French military than you ever were going to the orchestras in Paris.

[Roman Mars]

If cannons and cavalry were how a country demonstrated military prowess, then music was how it showed its cultural might. And France was lagging behind.

[Jay Coburn]

Austria and Prussia's military bands were leading the way with fancy new valve technology in their brass instruments, which made for loud, impressive displays.

[Roman Mars]

France's military band, on the other hand, was still dominated by woodwind instruments, which are tuneful and elegant, but not loud enough to fill a parade ground.

[Jay Coburn]

In 1845, the French Ministry of War established a commission to investigate improvements to military bands. And Saxe decided that he was going to hit it big by designing the perfect instrument to lift French military bands out of the toilettes. Adolf thought he could have the best of both brass and woodwinds with a little tinkering. His starting point was this other instrument that was common in bands at the time, called the ophiclyde.

[Dr. Stephen Cottrell]

It's a little bit difficult to describe if you turned a trumpet on its end with the bell pointing up to the sky, and then made it about 30 times bigger. You've got the general shape of an ophiklide.

[Roman Mars]

The ophiclide had this going for it. It was loud, but other than that, it was pretty much a dud. It's a big honking instrument that was difficult to play in tune.

[Jay Coburn]

This is a recording of an offer Clyde I found online. The composer Hector Berlioz, said the quality of these low sounds is rude. It is as if a bull escaped from its stall had come to play off its vagaries in the middle of a drawing room.

[Roman Mars]

The alpha clad was usually part of the low bass end of the orchestra, where the tuba sits today.

[Dr. Stephen Cottrell]

And so Sax saw this area of the bands and the orchestras as needing attention. And he therefore looked at the ophiclide and he experimented with the Ophelia.

[Jay Coburn]

Adolf Sachs borrowed from his earlier project, the bass clarinet, and created a sort of hybrid brass and reed instrument.

[Dr. Stephen Cottrell]

He quite literally took the brass mouthpiece that was on the ophiclyde and replaced it with a bass clarinet mouthpiece. That's what we believe he did in the late 1830s. And the reed mouthpiece would make a smoother, softer sound. It would make a richer harmonic spectrum.

[Jay Coburn]

Adolf also placed the boreholes scientifically, the way he had with the bass clarinet.

[Roman Mars]

Crucially, this wasn't just one instrument, it was a whole family.

[Jay Coburn]

Adolf Sachs was looking to improve the entire ensemble, and so he created families of similar instruments at different pitches. He'd already done this with the sax horns and saxatrombas a few years before. The idea was to create a chorus of instruments working together a little like a choir of human voices, with altos, tenors, sopranos and bass all working together in harmony. And just like his saxhorns and saxatrombas, he named them after himself, the saxophones.

[Roman Mars]

Adolph Saxe patented his family of saxophones in 1846. There are eight figures on that patent, ranged by size and pitch. Some of them are straight, some are more like an opheloclide. But right at the center of that lineup was an instrument with a bell shaped horn, a reed mouthpiece, and an iconic S shape.

[Jay Coburn]

Adolf had created a brand new kind of instrument, one that was light and sturdy. The S shape in particular was easy to hold while marching. It was loud enough to carry over a parade ground, but with the rich harmonics and refined tone of a clarinet. This was the perfect instrument for a military band. And it sounded like this. This is the sound of a saxophone made by Adolf Sax himself in the 1860s. This antique is being played by Dr. Paul Cohen. When I was reading about the development of the saxophone, pretty much every article was either written by or had contributions from Paul. After I called him up, he invited me to visit his saxophone museum in New Jersey.

[Paul Cohen]

When saxophonists come here, it's like a saxophone painting zoo, because they're allowed to play all these instruments if they bring their mouthpieces.

[Jay Coburn]

How many saxophones do you have?

[Paul Cohen]

I stopped counting a while ago, but it's around 250. Some people say that it's the largest private collection in the world.

[Jay Coburn]

The Adolf sax original is a beautiful instrument. The brass has barely dulled with age. It carries Adolph Sax's maker's mark engraved next to some Ornate cursive script detailing the address of his workshop in Paris. How does it feel as a player compared to your modern performance saxophone?

[Paul Cohen]

It's so light and the sound is so transparent. I feel like I'm playing on a cloud and I feel that if I play too hard, I'm going to fall through the cloud.

[Jay Coburn]

That is a lovely metaphor. Sax had created and patented a whole line of saxophones and saxhorns. But that didn't mean he'd sealed the deal for the French military contract. He still needed to present his inventions to the military and convince them that these instruments were the key to bringing their band to the next level.

[Roman Mars]

Military bands, like the orchestra can be stuffy, conservative places. You can imagine how they might bristle at a brash young Belgian who slapped his name on a trumpet and called it a saxhorn. Especially when he starts saying that the military should abandon their oboes and bassoons for all these saxtrements that he just made up.

[Jay Coburn]

But like any good entrepreneur, Adolf Sachs did a lot of networking in Paris. And he made friends with some very influential composers and writers who really did believe in the superiority of his instruments. They wrote about Adolf's creations in the musical press, helping him make the case for his vision of a new type of military band.

[Roman Mars]

So there was this ongoing debate in the press about what kind of instruments should be in the French military. Ultimately, the commission decided to let the public settle the matter in the only way a musical debate can be settled.

[Jay Coburn]

A battle of the bands. The French Ministry of War set up a competition to find out whether Sax's instruments could actually outmatch the instrumentation of a conventional military band.

[Roman Mars]

On one side, the sax band, full of saxhorns and saxophones, led by Adolf Sax. His supporters were known as no surprises here, Saxons.

[Jay Coburn]

On the other side, a traditional military band, which at the time was woodwind heavy with 2 oboes, 2 bassoons and 13 clarinets.

[Roman Mars]

Adolph sax did away with those oboes and bassoons, and he kept just seven clarinets. In their place, he had 18 saxhorns and two saxophones, as well as the more modern trumpets and trombones.

[Jay Coburn]

This was a big deal. The press was full of rumors about nefarious forces trying to interfere.

[Dr. Stephen Cottrell]

Now there are stories that people tried to sabotage Sax's bands. They bought off some of his instrumentalists, they tried to find ways in which the saxophones couldn't be played, etc, etc.

[Jay Coburn]

This kind of thing seemed to happen to Sachs all the time. Throughout his career, you can find wild tales of shadowy enemies and their plans to thwart him. There's one story of a bomb being planted in Sachs's bed. I found another story of one of Sachs's top employees being murdered, stabbed through the heart by an assassin who mistook him for his boss. Apparently these stories are possibly true, and lots of them originate in sensational newspaper reports or biographies where the original source was Sachs himself or his close family. But it's clear that he had made a lot of enemies. And on the day of the Battle of the Bands, seven of Sax's musicians really didn't show up. They were apparently, apparently bribed to stay out of the way. But that didn't stop Sachs, who played some of the instruments himself. Apparently.

[Roman Mars]

On April 22, 1845, two bands, two different sets of instruments and one audience showed up at the Champ de Mars, a long public park in Paris. Today the park is home to the Eiffel Tower, but back then its focal point was the Ecole Militaire, the military school. The press had drummed up public interest, so the bands were facing a large crowd.

[Jay Coburn]

Among the audience were members of the military commission, journalists, artists and senior officers. They were there to judge the quality of the sound and how well it carried outdoors.

[Roman Mars]

The two bands played the same pieces of music, one after the other. The traditional woodwind centric band went first.

[Jay Coburn]

Then it was the turn of the rousing horns of the sax band.

[Dr. Stephen Cottrell]

Sax's instruments would have been more homogeneous. They would have sounded better together, in part because he was making most or all of them. And so the brass instruments were all made to his specifications. He added the saxophones in, which would have given more volume to the band. So clearly volume is an important issue here.

[Jay Coburn]

These were louder instruments, probably in closer harmony because of sax's scientific approach, played outdoors by military bands. And the sax band had much more bass presence, thanks to his sax horns.

[Roman Mars]

After four hours of performance, the audience cheered for both bands. But the cheers for Adolph Sax's sax band were louder, loud enough for him to be declared the winner of the battle. That seal of approval was enough for the French military. Adolphe Sachs won that sweet, sweet military contract.

[Jay Coburn]

I've got a properly French quote translated from a newspaper here. A Stradivarius violin compared with a violin from the village. A glass of generous Bordeaux next to an adulterated beverage made in Serene. That's a suburb of Paris. That is the difference which exists between the old music and that proposed by Monsieur Sa.

[Dr. Stephen Cottrell]

He won the contract to supply the French military with instrumentation for their bands. That was more along the lines he wanted. So for A while then, Sachs's business is booming.

[Jay Coburn]

Sachs's victory meant that he had a huge influx of cash and a steady customer. A standard military band was now required to include his inventions. No more oboes and bassoons. Now there were sax horns and saxophones. He even made some technical improvements to the other brass instruments and sold his own versions of those as well.

[Roman Mars]

Military life was hard on instruments, and they needed to be replaced often. All this added up to big business for Sachs.

[Jay Coburn]

But despite his success, Adolf's hubris and his enemies eventually caught up to him. He got tied up in expensive lawsuits over the patents for his instruments. The saxophone patents did hold up, but when France lost the Franco Prussian War, the military downsized its bands. Sachs took on loans he couldn't afford and went bankrupt. Three times he lost his factory, but perhaps more heartbreaking to him, he lost his music.

[Roman Mars]

Adolph Sachs's collection of over 400 musical instruments was taken from him and sold to pay off his debts.

[Dr. Stephen Cottrell]

He would have been collecting those instruments because they really represented what he wanted to know about musical instruments. I think they would have really meant something to him. And so although there was relatively little monetary value in them, emotionally, that would have hurt because he'd spent a lifetime building up that collection, keeping them carefully, and to see them all sold off to other people like that would have probably hurt as much as anything else that happened.

[Jay Coburn]

That final bankruptcy was in 1877. He spent the last 17 years of his life scraping by, begging friends and family for money.

[Roman Mars]

Antoine Joseph Adolphe Sacks died of pneumonia in absolute poverty in Paris on February.

[Jay Coburn]

7, 1894, after a lifetime of work by Adolf Sachs. His instrument was no longer a commercial success, but he still earned a permanent place in history. There are statues of him in Dinant, where he was born.

[Roman Mars]

Those statues probably wouldn't be there if it weren't for what happened next an ocean away. That's after the break.

[Jay Coburn]

Even as the French military was pulling back funding and saxophone sales in Europe were falling off, the instrument was gaining traction in the United States. The saxophone's place in the U.S. however, was not just in the military. It was marketed as a cheap, fun instrument that was relatively easy to play, and people loved it.

[Roman Mars]

In fact, in the early 20th century, the US experienced what became known as a saxophone craze. American saxophone manufacturers churned out dozens of novelty instruments.

[Jay Coburn]

One of them glides like a slide whistle. Another is so small it looks absurd to play. Paul Cohen has quite a few of them at his saxophone museum in New Jersey. I recorded Paul playing a Bunch of novelty saxophones. They sound amazing. I promise you that we'll play them later. There's even one that scares my cat. Pretty soon, these saxophones were being played in circuses, in vaudeville acts, and in people's homes.

[Paul Cohen]

It was marketed as a great social tool. Play the saxophone and be more popular.

[Jay Coburn]

Would it be like, you know, you go around your friend's house and it would be quite likely they'd have a saxophone there.

[Paul Cohen]

More than likely they have two. Home music making was a big deal, and we have many pictures in catalogs and articles that show the family surrounding the piano and the saxophone player looking over the shoulder, playing off the piano part, participating in the musical merriment.

[Roman Mars]

The saxophone craze lasted from 1915 to around the time the depression hit. With less money in people's pockets, there was less demand for wacky saxophones.

[Jay Coburn]

But the saxophones didn't disappear, and all those instruments from the sax craze were still floating around, and they got picked up by and used to pioneer what would become America's defining musical genre.

[Paul Cohen]

When we got to the late 1920s, jazz in a big band form was starting to become the happening music and music ensemble.

[Lakeisha Benjamin]

Depression's here, but we're all still drinking and partying. Right. 30s come along. Now. The band's job is to keep the dancers on the dance floor.

[Jay Coburn]

This is lakeisha Benjamin. She's played saxophone with prince, with stevie wonder and alicia keys, and she's been nominated for six grammys. But like, she's played saxophone with prince, and I feel like that alone is enough of an intro. She says that 1930s jazz was all about getting people moving.

[Lakeisha Benjamin]

It's different when it's your job to keep the party going. And the instrument that they called on for that was a saxophone. They were even sax battles. People would go and just see count basie, band versus Duke, Elaine's event, and they would just completely try to murder each other. This saxophone playing was real raunchy, like a. I'll just sing it, even though it's gonna sound terrible. It'd be real.

[Jay Coburn]

As jazz evolved, the saxophone wasn't just a part of the horn section. It became a soloist's instrument, Commanding the stage and forcing you to pay attention to the player.

[Lakeisha Benjamin]

So I'm not sure if that's. Cause all the men are in the war or wherever they are, but the small group comes and they, I guess. Who's the founder of that? It's debatable. We all say charlie parker, dizzy gillespie, and thelonious monk were the three and they invent this style of music called bebop. So we go from big band to bebop.

[Jay Coburn]

That's Charlie Parker playing Coco.

[Lakeisha Benjamin]

And this is really what we think of the saxophone as really intellectual music. Fast notes, da da da. And they're like virtuosos. And you can say from that moment on, no one ever danced the jazz again.

[Roman Mars]

The way jazz instrumentalists used the saxophone showcased the flexibility Adolph Sachs had aimed to perfect in his instrument. While traditional saxophonists use the big brash tones, some jazz players leaned into the saxophone's ability to be smooth and nuanced, almost mimicking the human voice.

[Lakeisha Benjamin]

I guess I'm such a jazz funk saxophone player that to me I would be inhibiting myself. So a good example of that is classical saxophone. Here's this how my voice sounds. This is how it sounds classical. Hey, how are you? How's everybody doing? I play classical soxmo. But no, this is my real.

[Jay Coburn]

Stop, stop, stop.

[Lakeisha Benjamin]

You see? So like, I felt. I just felt oppressed because I'm just like, why can't I play like this when this is how I talk? Why do you want me to do this? Please, please. I want to play jazz.

[Jay Coburn]

By this point, the saxophone had come a long way from its roots in Europe. It was no longer the brash young upstart trying to make it big in the French military. Over the course of a century, the instrument had woven itself into the fabric of life in the US Traveling with concert bands and hanging out in living rooms across the country. It was an iconic American instrument. And now with jazz, it was a black American's instrument.

[Lakeisha Benjamin]

It gets more political because it was founded by African Americans. So whenever you got a group of people that are founding in music that starts off with them oppressed, it's already the music of revolution.

[Roman Mars]

The saxophone's new associations did not come without pushback. Some mostly white musicians felt that the saxophone shouldn't be debased by jazz. They thought it was a proper instrument for proper people.

[Jay Coburn]

I've got this magazine column here written by a couple of Saxophone purists in 1917. Let me just read a bit. God save us from the hideous catcalling that is so much in vogue at present termed Jassing. The listener who hears some of these Jass players and has never before heard a saxophone, is liable to form some very erroneous opinions of the much talked of instrument. Really, the Jassa should be subject to the same quarantine restrictions as if he had the foot and mouth disease.

[Roman Mars]

In the first half of the 20th century. Jazz, and by extension the saxophone, represented the forbidden. They were synonymous with sin.

[Lakeisha Benjamin]

When prohibition is going on, you go to the jazz place to get the liquor. If you're trying to drink and party and fornicate all night, that's where you go. And the music that's playing for that is the blues and jazz, that's where the Mafia is with. So it's associated with a. And it's funded. For a long time, jazz is funded by people that are doing wrong. Like, even in my own household, my grandmother didn't want me to play the saxophone. She told me, if you're gonna play that in here, you better learn some church songs on this saxophone. So I'm in there trying to practice my Duke Ellington and also playing Holy, Holy, Holy. So I think if you're from that generation, any sound of it or any recollection of it, you just associate with My daughter's going to hell.

[Jay Coburn]

This reputation for being a black instrument, an instrument associated with smoky clubs and sex. It's that reputation that followed the saxophone back to its birthplace in Europe. This association was strong enough that the saxophone ran afoul. When the Nazis came to power in the 1930s, jazz music was considered Negro music. This is Darius Jones. He's a composer, a saxophonist, and assistant professor of music at Wesleyan University. Nazis don't, you know, they want to ban everything. They're not really about the fullness of the human experience.

[Paul Cohen]

And I feel like the saxophone, it.

[Roman Mars]

Really was about that. It was really about this sort of.

[Jay Coburn]

Like, you know, full sense of expression. The Nazis banned what they called entartette music. Degenerate music that included anything with excesses in tempo, Jewishly gloomy lyrics. I am quoting the Nazis there. They even had an exhibition showcasing all the styles of art that were supposedly morally terrible. It was apparently much more popular than the one showcasing fine German art.

[Roman Mars]

There's a poster from that degenerate exhibition showing a racist caricature of a black man holding a saxophone with a Star of David pinned to his lapel. He's playing a saxophone with the German words for degenerate music printed over him.

[Jay Coburn]

The Soviet Union also sent saxophonists to the Gulag for being too bourgeois to Western. The saxophone was excluded from the Vatican and then by churches the world over, including in the U.S. it might be.

[Roman Mars]

Hard to imagine that for a while in the late 20th century, the saxophone was the boogeyman of fascist regimes.

[Jay Coburn]

Then again, maybe it's not. Over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, the instrument had already done some dramatic shape Shifting it had been an obscure money making scheme, a fallen military instrument, a novelty item and a powerful symbol of black American music. So why not enemy number one of several countries and the Catholic church?

[Roman Mars]

But things that were once taboo often eventually go mainstream and the saxophone was no exception. Instead of remaining a symbol of rebellion, it began to ripple out into a variety of genres.

[Lakeisha Benjamin]

In the 80s, especially since I'm from New Yorker, we're going to start to introduce hip hop. So they'll take like a eight bar Donald Bird song and start their song with that. Bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum.

[Jay Coburn]

If Digable Planets and other hip hop artists put saxophone to hip hop, artists like James Brown brought it into mainstream pop music. The 80s were really peak saxophone. The sax became so pervasive that it kind of jumped the shark into cheesiness. It was like of a time like you know, leather pants, like, you know, that image of the ponytail just like playing the sassy's all like slicked up and stuff. Think Careless Whisper. In the end, the scorching sax solo faded out of the fashion and the saxophone was so ubiquitous that it became kind of just another instrument. One you might pick up in music class at school or a bit of extra flavour added to the standard modern rock or pop lineup. Guitar, drums, bass, keys and oh, why not a sax? Still, I'd argue that this image of the saxophone is incomplete. It doesn't do justice to the versatile, flexible instruments that Adolph Sax put into the world.

[Lakeisha Benjamin]

When people think of love and they think of an instrument, they usually think of some saxophone player coming out and seducing somebody. When it's time to really shred and rock out, you could really crank that thing up and take it all the way to Metallica land. So for me it's just the most versatile way to be all your complete self.

[Jay Coburn]

The saxophone's brilliance has always been in its versatility. When Adolph Sax invented the saxophone, he designed it to be a marriage of loud and, and soft, bold and smooth. The saxophone is loud enough to hold its own on any stage, but it's also soft and nuanced enough to rise and fall like the human voice.

[Paul Cohen]

Feel that I'm playing something that is so connected to me internally and physically that it feels like it's an extension of my inner soul.

[Jay Coburn]

The sound on a fundamental level might be made by air vibrating inside a mathematically appropriate metal tube, but how it makes you feel, that's all about the human who's blowing on that reed, pressing those keys and feeling the sax appeal.

[Roman Mars]

After the break, Jay is going to play play us some of his favorite novelty saxophones from Paul Cohen's Saxophone Museum. Here's a typical holiday pattern you tell yourself to be thoughtful. You panic at the last minute and then you buy a gift card. This year, skip the panic and give an Aura Frame. Enjoy unlimited free photo and video uploads. Simply download the Aura app, connect to Wi Fi and start adding memories in seconds. Every gift can be personalized with custom message that appears when it's first turned on, so this is like a thoughtful touch for any occasion. You know the perfect gift connects you to the person you're giving it to. And I gave my mom an Aura frame. I upload photos to it remotely and she gets this extra window into my world. It is lovely. For a limited time, save on the perfect gift by visiting auraframes.com to get $35 off or as best selling Carver Matte frames named number one by Wirecutter by using the promo code Invisible at checkout. That's a U R A frames.com promo code invisible. This deal is exclusive to listeners and frames sell out fast, so order yours now to get in in time for the holidays. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. Make your home effortlessly stylish at an unbeatable price with Article. I have so many pieces of article furniture I don't even know where to begin with how much I enjoy it. The price, the selection, the customer service, the delivery guys. The delivery guys were amazing. I ordered this like outdoor table. It weighed like a million pounds. I'm pretty sure it was a million pounds. They brought it down. Easy peasy. Article offers a curated range of mid century, modern, coastal and scandi inspired pieces that shine on their own and pair seamlessly with other article products so you can easily mix and match and have a space that feels cohesive. I've gotten over 10 years of article furniture. It all all like just fits together. Magically fits together in my house. Article offers fast, affordable shipping across the U.S. and Canada plus a 30 day satisfaction guarantee. Article is offering our listeners $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. To claim, visit Article.com 99and the discount will be automatically applied at checkout. That's article.com 99 for $50 off your first purchase of $100 or more. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the designed to help your business stand out and succeed online. Every dream needs a domain. Squarespace Domains makes it easy to find the best name for your business at one fair, all inclusive price, no hidden fees or add ons required. And with Squarespace's collection of cutting edge design tools, anyone can build a beautiful professional online presence that perfectly fits their brand or business. Start with Blueprint AI, Squarespace's AI Enhanced design partner, or choose from a library of professionally designed and award winning website templates. The fact that a person like me can do all this stuff in one place is why I use squarespace for RomanMarris.com otherwise it just wouldn't be done. Head to squarespace.com invisible for a free trial and when you're ready to launch, use the offer code Invisible to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

[Jay Coburn]

A massage chair might seem a bit extravagant, especially these days. Eight different settings, adjustable intensity, plus it's heated and it just feels so good. Yes, a massage chair might seem a bit extravagant, but when it can come with a car, suddenly it seems quite practical. The Volkswagen Tiguan, packed with premium features like available massaging front seats, that only feels extravagant.

[Roman Mars]

So we're back with Jay Coburn. Jay, I hear you have some weird saxophones to play me.

[Jay Coburn]

I absolutely do. So we mentioned the saxophone craze and I promised you I'd play you some recordings of the kind of weird and wonderful instruments that Paul Cohen has in his sax museum.

[Roman Mars]

I'm really excited to hear weird saxs, but first I want you to paint the scene for me because I'm very curious about Dr. Paul Cohen and his saxophone museum. It sounds like this fascinating place.

[Jay Coburn]

Totally. So the museum is in Englewood, New Jersey, so pretty easy to get to from New York. It's basically just the lower half of his house. And when you walk in, you're just surrounded by saxophones of all shapes, sizes, materials. And you can actually go there too. If you're a bit of a saxophone geek. Just search for Paul Cohen online. You can find his email address and if you send him a message, he will invite you to view his collection too. If you can play, bring your own mouthpiece and he'll let you have a go on all these saxophones.

[Roman Mars]

I love that saxophones shouldn't be just displayed on a wall, they should be played. They should live the life that they're supposed to have.

[Jay Coburn]

Yeah, and as well as being a professor, he is a professional musician too, so he uses some of these instruments himself in his work.

[Roman Mars]

Okay, so I'm ready to hear some saxophones. Some weird saxophones. So what do you want to play first?

[Jay Coburn]

Okay, first up is A slide saxophone. So you've heard of a slide guitar, I'm sure. But there is also a slide saxophone. And so instead of having loads of holes and keys all over it, this is just a straight tube. This one's actually made of wood. And there is just one long hole down the side of it. And the player kind of presses down a long strap, like literally just a fabric strap to make that hole longer or shorter, which means you can do a glissando or a slide. And this is how it sounds. I think it sounds kind of like a theremin. You know, the weird electric instrument.

[Roman Mars]

Totally. Or the fanciest slide whistle you've ever heard.

[Jay Coburn]

Yeah, it's a really expensive kazoo or something.

[Roman Mars]

So what do you have next?

[Jay Coburn]

So I have the extremes of the saxophone now. The biggest and the smallest. So Adolf Sax designed a whole family of saxophones at different pitches. But later on, manufacturers really took the saxophone to sort of almost comic sizes. And Paul has collected, like, all of them. He has this teeny, tiny little guy that honestly looks like a toy, but is actually a one of a kind. Curved sopranino. So that's higher than soprano. And these are usually straight. But the one Paul has looks like a really intricate toy saxophone. And here it is.

[Roman Mars]

That's delightful. I'm picturing, like, his big grown man hands on this tiny little thing. Is that what it looks like? Yeah, that's exactly what it looks like.

[Jay Coburn]

It looks. I mean, this is a respectable instrument, and we should give it the degree of respect that it deserves. You know, I believe that was a solo from a Gershwin piece, actually.

[Roman Mars]

Yeah. No, it's beautiful. It sounded so good.

[Jay Coburn]

It's just delightful. I love it so much. Okay, so at the other end of the spectrum, we have the biggest saxophone. And this is the reason that the study door you can see behind me is actually closed right now. I have two cats, and this one freaks them out. So this is the sub contra bass.

[Roman Mars]

Oh, that's awesome. I can see what that freaks them out, though. It sounds like an old truck idling outside your house when it gets to the lowest levels.

[Jay Coburn]

So that is the subcontra bass. That is the lowest, largest type of saxophone. It goes lower than the lowest end of a piano, and it is huge. Like, this thing is being played on a stand because it's taller than Paul is. And it's gorgeous, though. It's this beautiful black with brass key work. And if you're in the room with it being played, or if you just want to crank your speakers, it Kind of shakes your guts around and makes you reconsider what you had for lunch.

[Roman Mars]

Yeah, yeah, like, it's definitely something you feel in your sternum when it plays. Okay, so blow my mind. What's the weirdest saxophone you saw there?

[Jay Coburn]

Okay, so the weirdest one I found in Paul's saxophone museum was this. Take a look at this picture.

[Roman Mars]

Okay, so this is a black and white photo of a man. He's kind of sitting perched on a little seat and he has a stand where three saxophones are affixed in position. And he seems to be playing them all at once.

[Jay Coburn]

He is. He's playing them all. He's playing one with each hand. And then there's a middle one that he's also blowing that is operated with the foot pedals you can maybe see on the floor there. And he blows them all at once. He was called Billy True. He was a pipe fitter at a steelworks, but he was also known as the one man saxophone section. And Paul actually has this triple saxophone contraption in his museum.

[Roman Mars]

And so can Paul play this thing?

[Jay Coburn]

No. And I do not blame him for not trying. But I do have a recording of Billy True playing it.

[Dr. Stephen Cottrell]

All right, Billy True playing three saxophones at the same time.

[Roman Mars]

I mean, that one strikes me as more of a ridiculous novelty, you know what I mean? More than anything. But that's great. That's a. That's a wacky sax. I like it.

[Jay Coburn]

Okay, I've got two more that are wacky but are not strictly saxophones. They are not in polls saxophone museum, but they are from the mind of Adolf Sax himself. Because back when our man Adolf was trying really hard for that military contract, he came up with some truly unhinged ideas. And this one is a real. Hear me out. The Saxo Cannon.

[Roman Mars]

I mean, so are we talking about just an instrument here or is this actually like a weapon?

[Jay Coburn]

It's a cannon with sax's name on it. Yeah, like a giant cannon.

[Roman Mars]

He's branching out.

[Jay Coburn]

He's branching out. He's really. He wanted the military contract so much, he was like, look, my tubes don't have to just fire sound. They can also fire balls of metal. And in this case, it was a 30 foot wide shell. So in theory, it would generate an explosion big enough to level a city. Wow. I'm kind of glad he stuck to instruments in the end. Yeah. Okay, so one last absurd sax invention. Also huge. This one is a train with an old organ on the back. It would have been called the Saxo Tonaire, which I believe Translates literally as sax Thunder. Or maybe it's Thundersax.

[Roman Mars]

Why would anyone want or need an organ the size of a train?

[Jay Coburn]

To scare the Prussian army, of course.

[Roman Mars]

Oh, right, yeah.

[Jay Coburn]

You know, why else would anyone want a massive organ? That Prussian army, always causing trouble. The idea was that they'd just. Just blast sound at them like the Scottish did with their bagpipes and the English. And I can say from experience that one worked. I should say that these two sax stories, the Sax Tonnerre and the Sax Canon, bit like lots of Adolf sax stories, kind of shrouded in myth and lacking reliable primary sources. But I have spent a lot of time with Adolf over the last few months and I've got to say, sounds like something he'd do.

[Roman Mars]

Yeah, yeah, like, because he just likes to take an invention and like, make it bigger, more ridiculous. Maybe add some valves and some scientific thinking to it and then just slap his name on the front of it. I mean, that's a definitely. That's an Adolf sax move. Well, this was so much fun, Jay. I enjoyed the story so much and I enjoyed this tour through even weirder saxophones. This is fantastic.

[Jay Coburn]

Thanks for having me, Roman. It's been a joy.

[Roman Mars]

99 Invisible was reported this week by Jay Coburn and edited by Kelly prime, mixed by Martin Gonzalez. Music by Swan Real with Kaylee K. Moi Malloy on saxophone. Fact checking by Graham Hacha. Kathy 2 is our executive producer. Kurt Kohlstedt is our digital director. Delaney hall is the senior editor. The rest of the team includes Chris Barube, Jason De Leon, Emmett Fitzgerald, Christopher Johnson, Vivian Leigh Lach, Madonn, Joe Rosenberg, Jacob Medina, Gleason, Talon and Rain Stradley. And me, roman Mars. The 99% invisible logo was created by Stefan Lawrence. We are part of the SiriusXM podcast family now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora building in beautiful uptown Oakland, California. You can find us on all the usual social media sites as well as our own Discord server. There's a link to that as well as every past episode of [e-mail]. This episode is brought to you by The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. Las Vegas is magical. At night, when the sun sets, Las Vegas transforms. And at the heart of it all is the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, a luxury resort destination where bold experiences unfold. Sip a martini inside the chandelier, discover hidden speakeasies, striking art and unforgettable views of the Bellagio fountains and the Las Vegas skyline from your Terrace suite. From restaurants to cocktail lounges and high energy nightlife. Every moment invites indulgence. It's not just a hotel stay, it's an only invention. Vegas experience Book your stay now at TheCosmopolitanLosVegas.com hey crafters, you're invited to visit the new knit and sew shop at Michaels. Find hundreds of fabrics in over 800 stores and over 100,000 styles on michaels.com Shop your favorite yarn brands, including Big Twist, Caron cakes and Bernat in multiple styles and colors. You'll also find all the machines, tools and notions you need with top brands like Singer, Brother and Pellon, plus essential thread and floss. It's all new at Michaels. When the flu is keeping you up at night, don't try to tough it out. Knock out your flu symptoms with NYQUIL Intense Flu. You got this. It provides powerful relief of your flu symptoms so you can sleep well through the night. NYQUIL Intense Flu the nighttime Sniffling, aching, aching fever Best sleep with a flu medicine Use as directed. Keep out of reach of children.