Beijing Adventures in White Mouthpieces & C-Melody Saxophones

NB: Saxophone gearhead post ahead. Read at your potential boredom or enthrallment.

Paul Dupré 3-Star Conservatoire Tenor Mouthpiece

Saxophonists are serious about their gear in Beijing. I've had the pleasure of hanging out at my friend Mayong's shop, Sheng Lan, on Xin Jie Kou road, where both sides of the street are jam-packed with instrument stores; Mayong is widely recognized as the main go-to place for professional jazz saxophonists and woodwind players, and his shop is one of few here that focuses on carrying high-end vintage instruments. People sure love their Selmer Mark VIs here, although I've noticed that SBAs are starting to gain more traction as tastes move toward darker, more old-school sounds. 

One of Mayong's employees, Liu Yang, is into vintage Martin altos and recently bought a Martin tenor that came with a number of obscure mouthpieces, including the above "Paul Dupré Conservatoire" white plastic mouthpiece, originally marked as a "2" opening (measured as an 0.071" opening, approximately equivalent to a Selmer C*). I tried the hardest reeds I could find (Vandoren V12 3.5, which I'd never come across in the US), but the opening was still a bit too closed to my taste. Liu ended up giving me the mouthpiece, as he had no interest in playing it and didn't want to go through the trouble of selling it, as it was unlikely anybody would be interested in it here, considering the relative popularity of smooth jazz. (Although I could conceivably picture a smooth jazz player wailing on a white Brilhart onstage).

That's a 2 facing. I didn't even know they made those.

Fortunately, mouthpiece maker and refacer Liu Shizhao (pictured below) was in the area with his toolkit and graciously refaced the mouthpiece on the spot, literally squatting at the sidewalk outside the shop with his kit and opening the mouthpiece up to the size of my now-old mouthpiece, a Vandoren T35 (0.090" according to this chart). (Check out this glowing recent review by Steve Neff of Liu's new Pilgrimage MB mouthpiece, modeled after the Guardala mouthpiece that Michael Brecker played).

Liu Shizhao refaces a mouthpiece on the spot.

The sound is more focused and brighter than the T35, but it facilitates a sweet, refined sound that can still carry across a room and sound in the altissimo register clearly. The appeal of the mouthpiece is also historical; although the material makes no perceptible difference in the sound production, white plastic mouthpieces are fairly rare these days, but they make various appearances in the jazz saxophone literature, e.g., Stan Getz and Charlie Parker, not to mention the numerous saxophonists who used Brilhart models that weren't with white plastic.

Fellow Blogger blogger Stuff Sax, who's contributed a wealth of knowledge in his blog on DIY saxophone maintenance, customization, and more, has written extensively on these Brilhart stencil mouthpieces here, as well as more generally on vintage stencil mouthpieces. At the end of the Brilhart stencil mouthpiece post, he posts a photo of two mouthpieces side by side with a clean view of the interior chamber: a Brilhart Tonalin Great Neck, which Young is pictured playing in numerous photographs over the years, and an Emilio Lyon stencil mouthpiece, which was left in the case of Young's last saxophone after he passed away:

It's no wonder that Lester Young used an Emil Lyon white plastic tenor mouthpiece after playing a Brilhart Ebolin for many years.  On the left below is a vintage Brilhart Ebolin Great Neck (with a metal shank band because of the well-founded fear of PMMA cracking).  On the right is not the Brilhart Tonalin Great Neck, but one of the white no-name pieces pictured above with the Emil Lyon style wide chamber.*  I've been over these with my calipers and there isn't a dime's worth of difference between the two.  Just joking.  The pieces are identical but there's actually about $150 difference between the two according to Ebay sales prices.  But not according to Lester Young.  Who ya gonna believe?

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I that it was time to check out Frankie Trumbauer after getting the chance to play a Martin-built C-melody for a while at Mayong's shop, courtesy of Liu Yang. Liu told me this was only the third Martin-built C-melody he'd come across, compared to numerous Conns and Bueschers that are floating around. It took a minute to adjust to the one-step key difference, as well as the complete lack of sidekeys, low spatula keys, and palm keys, but the sound is glorious: sweet, floating, and also eerily similar to the sound Lester and Warne get out of the horn—in particular the wispy, warble-y timbre. 

Looks not too strange?

Perhaps a bit stranger.

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In January, I switched from the 5-digit Mark VI that I'd played for about seven years and bought a Conn stencil "Geo M. Bundy" tenor off of Craigslist. The horn is supposedly a stencil of a Conn Transitional, ca. 1940, and it's one of the lightest horns I've ever played, with very thin metal (and numerous tiny dents, accordingly) and a broad, resonant sound. It came with a large, boxy King case, but the horn has split bell keys (low Bb and B on opposite sides of the bell), which made finding a decent case a bit more of a hassle. Having been a fan of Stuff Sax's blog for a while, I decided to go ahead and try to make my own case. It turned out all right!

DIY modified Sax Pak case, with yellow fleece lining.

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Updated July 7, 2016

Gnome-honey, author of the Stuff Sax blog, commented on this post with some more fascinating insights:

Funny that you should favor a Paul Dupre mouthpiece on a Martin Tenor. That's what I use (under a different trade name). I haven't found out who trademarked the name "Paul Dupre," but it fits in with the names that U.S. music stores and wholesalers were using in the 1930s and 40s for mouthpieces produced by JJ Babbitt. Names like Durand, Dumont, Dubois, Duval, etc. were commonly used as trade names to get a misleading "French manufacturer" look to a U.S. made mouthpiece. On my blog, you can see how Sorkin Music did this with it's "Revere Paris" line of instruments and mouthpieces (made in the U.S. and Germany). St. Louis Music Supply, another large wholesaler, did the same thing with it's "Rene Dumont" line of instruments and mouthpieces. Adding words like "Paris" and "Conservatoire" further mislead the public.  

Suppliers and wholesalers didn't want the public to know the source of the mouthpieces and were perfectly happy when people started making up myths about famous French mouthpiece makers like Paul Dupre, who never existed. Actually, he did exist. People had heard the name of the Frenchman Paul Dupre because he was a famous rugby player who died in World War One. So the name was famous, but nobody could remember quite who the Frenchman was. Perfect for a mouthpiece trade name and starting a rumor.

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Updated July 21, 2016

I came upon this lengthy essay on the C Melody by John Robert Brown, which includes the following quote from Lester Young to Nat Hentoff:

There is no disputing the influence Frank Trumbauer had on Lester Young. Pres told Nat Hentoff: 

"I tried to get the sound of a C-melody on a tenor. That's why I don't sound like other people. Trumbauer always told a little story. And I liked the way he slurred the notes. He'd play the melody first and then after that, he'd play around the melody."

Well, there you have it!