Search - Keith Brion & His New Sousa Band :: The Original All-American Sousa!

Slow to Fix Mistake

03/28/2000

(3 out of 5 stars)

"A fairly pedestrian but serviceable set of performances by the New Sousa Band. But the real attraction of this CD is the "Historical" section, containing selections from three sessions of the Sousa band from 1917, 1918, and 1923, as well as a short radio speech by Sousa himself from a 1929 radio broadcast. The band recordings are notable for being the only released ones with Sousa himself conducting, among the hundreds of "Sousa Band" recordings. (Arthur Pryor conducted many.) These six were acoustic recordings, of the expected quality. Unfortunately, among them are two -- tracks 16 (Nobles of the Mystic Shrine) and 17 (Dauntless Battalion) -- in which Delos inexplicably has the left and right channels out of phase. This gives a very strange effect on mono material. If you have a preamp with a left-only, right-only, or L-R mono position, use it. Otherwise turn the balance all the way left or right or reverse the leads on one speaker. I wrote Delos about this in 1990, and they said they knew about it and would fix it. I just did so again (March 2000) and it was still not fixed. They say they will fix it when they remanufacture, with no comments on when. This is a shame for such a valuable collection. Delos' enclosed notes are exemplary."