Listen to the Bells

 

It was a big day in our town.
Not too hot, a bit of breeze,
and dry enough for us townsfolk,
though ranchers and farmers might say otherwise.

It looked like everyone turned out
with ladies wearing their best hats
and men in their cleanest shirts.
No surprise that the stores on Main
did some brisk business
especially at the confectionary shop 

but it was probably too crowded for some. 
Mostly it was a time to catch up
with friends and family.

Our band played some lively tunes
that had the ladies singing along.
Then there was some speeches
and more songs too,
before everyone retired to the park
where the churches had laid out a big supper.
All in all it was a grand day for everyone.

You should have been there.

 

This postcard of a large throng of townspeople milling around on a wide dirt road came from Bells, Texas, a small town 70 miles north of Dallas. According to Wikipedia, it was established in "the 1870s when the railroad was extended to that point. According to local tradition, the ringing of church bells to greet the arrival of the railroad caused the name to be selected." In a 1914 gazette for the state of Texas, Bells was listed as having three churches, Baptist, Campbellite, and Methodist; a weekly newspaper, The Bells Chime; as well as a bank; restaurant; hotel; general store; drugstore; tailor; and two grocers. There was a photographer too, the Bows Brothers, who likely took this photo, perhaps out of a second floor window at their studio. Bells' population in 1910 was just 496 residents.

The 16 musicians in the brass band are typical for a small town. The bass drum even has the town's name stenciled on the drumhead though the other letters are unclear. I think they are members of a fraternal order, possible Woodmen Of the World as the word "Camp" and maybe "W.O.W." is visible. The W.O.W. was a group that in 1890 broke away from the larger Modern Woodmen of America and then split again into two versions of the W.O.W.

There is no caption or date for this occasion in Bells, Texas but with the long shadows it looks like a late summer day to me. Perhaps there was a county fair or maybe it was Flag Day (June 14th) though there are no patriotic bunting and flags around the storefronts. But it clearly shows a spirited event that attracted a very large number of people for such a small place. Unfortunately the buildings seen here have not been preserved in 2025 to identify this precise location. 

This postcard was sent from Bells, Texas
on 19 November 1907
to Miss Ruth Goree of Whitewright, Texas.

Bells Tex  Nov 18 –
Howdy –  I thought
I would send you  
a picture of our   
 town  Come up and
   I will show you all
the attractions –     
       Give my love to all
your folks –   George

The way George wrote the name of Ruth's hometown makes it look like Millwright but there is a second faint postmark below that reads Whitewright, a town located about 7 miles south of Bells. In 1910 it was a veritable city with 1,563 residents, three times the size of Bells. In 2020 the two towns are nearly the same size with 1,725 and 1,521 respectively.

But high above the crowd in Bells that day
was one fella who had work to do.
It was important to keep
the lines of communication open.

 

I wonder when George
first used a telephone.
Did he call Ruth's number?

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday

where most folk are just standing around

waiting for something to happen.

White Tie and Tailcoat - The Well-Dressed Cornetist

 

It's a style of formal evening dress
that has never gone out of style.

A white tie and black tailcoat
was once high society's mark of a gentleman.
It implied dignified sophistication,
refined culture, gallantry
and polite manners. 

Today it remains a man's preferred attire 
for attending a graduation, a school prom,
a royal gala, an opera performance.

or that most special occasion—his wedding day.

But a formal white tie and tailcoat
can also be a uniform.
It has been, and remains today,
the required outfit
of male musicians who perform 
in a symphony orchestra.

Today I present 
four very well-dressed cornetists
who once posed for their portraits.
Their names are unknown
but their musical talent still shines through
and the gleam on their instruments
remains untarnished.

My first cornet player hails from Fond du Lac, Wisconsin where he posed for the camera at the photography studio of Kafer & Co. on the corner of Main and 2nd St. He holds a B-flat cornet with a bell embellished with fancy engraving. His mustache is carefully waxed to an impressive handlebar style that would certainly emphasize his embouchure when playing. 

This cabinet card photo was likely taken in the 1890s. Fond du Lac is on the southern end of Lake Winnebago and in the 1880-1900 era was a thriving city with a population of around 13,000 to 15,000. 

* * *

My second cornetist is a young man who opted for a clean shaven style. His pose is similar to the Wisconsin player with a far-off gaze as if watching for a conductor cue to play. His cabinet card photo was produced by the Loryea Bros. of San Jose, California at 26 S. First Street. Back in the 1890s when this photo was probably taken, San Jose was not much larger than Fond du Lac with a population of 18,000.

The Leryea Brothers called their studio the Souvenir Gallery and had an elaborate imprinted on the back of the card mount. There is a single name written in the upper corner but I can't make out the first letter. Tamma or Jamma? It doesn't look like a common first or last name. Any guesses? 

* * *

My third well-dressed cornetist is from Hartford, Connecticut where he posed with his instrument at the Stuart photography studio. His mustache has a tiny bit of an upturned curl that I think hints of a Germanic heritage, but that could just be a false twist. In 1890 Hartford was over twice the size of San Jose or Fond du Lac with a population then of 53,230. From 1874 to 1891 Hartford was the home of  Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain so it's possible that Sam might have heard this cornetist play in concert.  

* * *

My final cornetist is a very debonair young man with a trimmed mustache and a fancy engraved cornet. He is from Boston, Massachusetts where his photo was taken by Charles C. Fisher of 74 Meridian St. in East Boston. Boston, of course, was a big city even in the 1890s and arguably one of the most musical places in North America with numerous theaters and many professional musicians. 

The celebrated Boston Symphony was founded in 1881 as the third major orchestra in America.  The New York Philharmonic was the first, established in 1842, followed by the St. Louis Symphony in 1880. After Boston came the Detroit Symphony in 1887, the Chicago Symphony in 1891, the New Haven Symphony in 1894, the Cincinnati Symphony in 1895, the Pittsburgh Symphony in 1895, and the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1900. According to a Wikipedia entry on the San Jose Symphony Orchestra, there was a orchestra there in 1879 that gave occasional performances but a formal symphony association was not formed until 1937. Similarly in Hartford, its symphony orchestra started in 1934. But as far as I know there has never been 

a symphony orchestra in Fond du Lac. 

Other than their formal attire, there really isn't anything in the portraits of these four stylish cornetists that connects them to an orchestra. But it's unlikely that an amateur musicians would wear such an elegant suits or play such first-class instruments. I think it's very possible that they were concert artists or principal musicians as in the 19th century the cornet was the premier solo instrument of both bands and orchestras. 

Very long time readers might remember the Boston cornet player as he was featured in A Boston Love Story which I posted in August 2011. It was my first effort at writing a short fiction based on old photos in my collection. I am rather proud of it, in part because I found this young man a companion, though it was a courtship that was not to be. But I shouldn't give away the ending. Perhaps I should write stories for the other three cornet players and turn them into a romance series!

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday

where a good book can be worth a thousand photos.

Polar Opposites

 

As fair-haired as light? 

Or as dark as a raven?

Brighter than flax?

Or solemn as dusk?

These are family questions of personal style,
fashion, and even genetics
that have no definitive answer.

Today I present
two musical families,
each as opposite as magnetic poles.
Both are professional entertainers,
but one family is positively bright as sunshine
and the other as negatively somber as a thundercloud.

Their salt and pepper contrast is purely accidental,
a coincidence of two different photography studios.
Yet each appealed to a concert style that fit their family.

The first family ensemble is quite large with mother and father presiding over nine talented children—four girls and five boys. They are dressed in matching folk-style costumes with the mother and daughters in Germanic dirndl dresses and father and sons in knee pants and satin vests. 

The youngest is a boy about age 5 who stands center holding a triangle. He has twitched his head just as the photographer clicked the camera shutter. Two slightly older sisters play drums while the oldest girl and another younger sister hold violins. Two brothers on the left look enough alike to be twins. One plays cello and the other a piston valve cornet. On the right the tallest boy, perhaps the oldest child, holds a flute made of blackwood with an ivory headstock. His younger brother in front has a viola, slightly larger than his sisters' violins. At the back is mother with a double bass and a slightly sour or even annoyed expression. Next to her is her husband but he has no instrument, maybe because he is the conductor of his family orchestra.

Their names and date is unknown, but the location of their photo is not. They are in Amsterdam,  capital of the Netherlands. The photographer was P. D. van Rhÿn of Damrak 42 and Utrechtschestraat 47. {The first address is now a chip shop named "Mannekin Pis" (oddly a landmark of Brussels, Belgium) famous for its Dutch fried potatoes, and the second address is now an luxury shoe shop.}  

This cabinet card photo with its wide landscape format is undated but is similar to American and European photographs from around 1890-1900. The family's costumes resemble a Tyrolean fashion like those of folk groups from Bavaria, Austrian, or Switzerland, but they could be Dutch too. I think they likely played a larger assortment of instruments and sang too. 

 * * *

My second family orchestra is a group of seven siblings, I think, as there is no one who looks old enough to be a parent of the others. The youngest is a girl about age 6-7 seated in front with a small banjo and a wooden xylophone. Her three older sisters have similar dark hair with long curls let free rather than styled tied atop their head. On the right, one sister, possibly the oldest at over 18, has a mandolin; the next in center holds a piccolo; and the third, seated right, has a violin. The brothers are older, early twenties maybe? They play cello, pocket cornet, and a button concertina. 

They are an eclectic mix made darker because of the men's formal tail coats and sash and the women's long dark gowns. It resembles a "concert party" fashion that was popular in the early 20th century for performances at private society events rather than on a music hall stage. I think they are actually more colorful that they appear, as the sepia tone photo does not really favor their costumes.

Like the group from Amsterdam, the name and date of this ensemble is unknown, but their location is. The photographer was Cooper & Sons of Blackpool, England with a studio on The Promenade, the seaside resort's celebrated boardwalk avenue between Blackpool's North and South Piers. The back of this cabinet card has an fanciful illustration of a young woman, looking like a Grecian goddess, arranging a large wooden camera. I was only able to find a few references to the photographer, Mr. H. Cooper, who with his sons ran a studio in Blackpool from around 1904 to about 1910 before moving on to another town. But they only advertised an address at The Promenade in 1904 and not later. So that seems to narrow down a time for this family orchestra who very likely were performing at a theater on The Promenade. 

Like many of the anonymous photos in my collection there is little more history about these two musical families that I can add. Yet hidden in their respective bright and dark photos are little details of their lives that we can still deduce. That they were professional entertainers is easy to presume as these are not casual snapshots but formal studio photographs of people posing in stage costumes to promote their ensembles. And clearly each family must have had a talented bunch of kids to have learned how to play so many musical instruments. A family band's performance might be as little as a 15 minute turn on a theater stage, or at most, an hour or two long concert at a wine garden or private soiree. Their repertoire was likely not new original music but popular tunes familiar to their audiences. Any act had to sell tickets if it was going to be successful.

But now picture how a large family of seven or eleven entertainers might travel in the 1890s or 1900s. Each troupe surely required numerous trunks and suitcases for their regular clothes and their stage outfits too. Even more cases were needed for their instruments. 

No doubt the mother was responsible for keeping her brood clean, dressed, healthy and well fed when out on the road. She was also in charge of lost drum sticks and gender appropriate dressing rooms. How she managed laundry is another question. 

It was surely the father who managed the show business work, corresponding with theater agents, booking train and ship tickets, and arranging hotel accommodation. And he likely did  all the porter duties, too, lugging the children's cases around. Since most family bands got their start from a father's musical skills, it was he who created their concert programs, arranged parts, and taught his offspring how to play their instruments. 

But how did the children get a proper education? Or even find time to just play outside and make new friends? Those are the questions I wish I could answer. All that's left is to use our imagination.

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday

where every family smiles for the camera.

On the Front Line

It is a frightening sight
that would stop anyone in their tracks.
Soldiers stand in formation blocking a road.
Their steely eyes challenge anyone who advances.

Their weapons are armed and ready.
All their military training 
is concentrated in defense of the front line.
No one will cross.
No one will break through.
Any hostile threat must be repelled at all costs.

Or maybe
they can play a jolly march
and convince their adversaries
to give up and just retreat. 

Once upon a time
these six trombonists posed for a camera.

Their names and the location of their camp are unknown

but they are definitely soldiers and bandsmen
in the United States Army. 

Instead of flashy parade dress

they wear military fatigue uniforms

which unfortunately don't show
any insignia or patches of their unit.

But there is one good clue.

Their canvas leggings match a style
first issued to U. S. Army soldiers in 1907.
This particular uniform accessory was used
in several conflicts in the years before World War One,
but then in 1910 mostly replaced
by leggings with a different design.

U.S. Army M1907 Leggings
Source: The internets

These fellows look like they could spit bullets
as their assault trombones
have rapid slide action.

It's a design that has remained 
standard military issue for several centuries.

Bayonets were reserved for only close quarter combat.

To demonstrate the formidable firepower
of a battery of trombones

here is a line up of around 16 trombonists

playing the circus band classic "Rolling Thunder"
a "screamer" composed by Henry Fillmore in 1916.

This performance took place
at the 2023 American Trombone Workshop

and was accompanied by the United States Army Band "Pershing's Own".

 

There is one trombonist who is wearing a uniform that I don't recognize.
This could be a guest artist from some foreign military band
that evidently doesn't do much marching.

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday

where the line starts on the left. 

A Piano Dreams

 

We've all seen that look.
It's an unfocused, often pleasant, gaze

into a distant undefined space.
It's the very essence of any teenager 
pondering their future.

Young ladies can be very thoughtful
when considering the mysteries
of their romantic fortune.
However in my experience
boys are usually not thinking
about anything as remotely profound.

Often these adolescent daydreams
are accompanied by music.
And once upon a time
those reflective soulful melodies
did not come from revolving discs
or streaming digital files
but were created by hand,
played over and over and over.

Long ago in some unknown place
this young woman posed for her portrait
seated at her instrument, an upright piano.
She rests her head on her hand 
with a far-away stare and a Mona Lisa like smile.
What is her dream about?

Orvetta Waltz
 Oliver Ditson Company, Boston, 1892
Source: Lester S. Levey Sheet Music Collection

The sheet music on her piano is carefully arranged and two of the titles are visible and in focus. The piece on the left is the Orvetta Waltz by composer E. B. Spencer. It was published by the Oliver Ditson Company of Boston in 1892, though I found the title in an 1879 musical journal. It was one of thousands of dances and songs composed in the late 19th century for the growing market of amateur pianists. Mr. E. B. Spencer's waltz (unfortunately I've not discovered his forenames.) was later included in piano anthology collections, and evidently the melody is still remembered in the repertoire of country fiddlers. Here is a rendition that I found on YouTube. 

Down Among the Sugar-Cane
 The Gotham Attucks Music Co., NYC, 1908
Source: Lester S. Levey Sheet Music Collection

The centerpiece chosen by the young pianist is a song entitled Down Among the Sugar-Cane

with lyrics by Avery and Hart and music composed by Cecil Mack and Chris Smith. It was published in 1908 by the Gotham Attucks Music Co. or New York City. It's an example of the clichéd "Southland" songs popularized in minstrel shows. Though the lyrics are not overtly racist, it does use a condescending dialect form which was common in this era for most songs that portrayed a sentimental southern culture. The song was recorded in 1909 by the Edison Standard Record Co. with Arthur Collins and Byron G. Harlan performing. Here is that recording uploaded to YouTube.

The song Down Among the Sugar-Cane remained popular enough to be featured in a 1932 Fleischer Studio cartoon with vocalist Lillian Roth. The Fleischer Studios was a pioneer American animation studio founded in 1929 by brothers Max and Dave Fleischer. They produced hundreds of popular cartoons with sound  that played American cinemas. Among the company's many well-known characters were Koko the Clown, Betty Boop, Bimbo, Popeye the Sailor, and the comic character Superman. 

This young lady's name,
her hometown, and personal history are unknown.
All that remains is a picture of her graceful charm
and the echo of the music she once played. 

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday

where uncommon portraits are pretty common.

More Children at Play

I suppose everyone must remember some of the games they played as children. Tag, hide-and-seek, hopscotch, red rover, marbles, jacks, etc., etc. Some games involved lots of kids while others only needed two or three to be fun. What you played depended on the size of your family or neighborhood as well as your location. Wikipedia has a very long list of children's games that makes me feel very left out for all the ones I never played.

Today I feature some of the charming artwork of Hermann Torggler, (1878-1939), an Austrian artist whose postcards I have been collecting for his lighthearted pictures. One of his popular themes were illustrations of children published in series. Back in January 2021 I featured a set called Children at Play, and today I add some more of his clever cards.

This first one shows two girls and a boy playing a game outdoors. The boy is blindfolded and has 'captured' a girl in an embrace. Torggler's title reads Blindekuh ~ Blindman's Buff. The second girl looks back with a look of surprise, maybe envy. I'm not sure of the sender's language. It looks a bit like Italian. But it was sent to a Signurina Babina Serchi in St Moritz, Switzerland from Schuls, (now Scuol) in the Canton of Graubünden in eastern Switzerland. The official language in Scuol is Romansh, one of the four national languages of Switzerland, but spoken only in this part of the country. It currently is the native language of just 40,000 people.

 

* * *

This postcard shows three youngsters, two boys and a girl, dressed in a very formal style and singing as if they are in an opera. They are roughly the same age as in the previous drawing, five to eight but Torggler has a knack for making them seem much more mature. The children are  very convincing as opera singers complete with dramatic gestures and facial expressions as if they really are performing on a stage. 

The title of this is Terzett ~ Trio. It's an Italian musical term that I have rarely heard or used in my musical career. It's odd that in English musical compositions written in separate parts can refer to a duet, quartet, quintet, sextet, septet, octet, nonet, etc. but for three players it's always a trio. Languages are funny. 

This postcard has a long message written around half the card as in this era the back of postcards  could only be used for the address. In this case it was sent on 27 March 1900 to Fräulein Annei Kolb at the simple address known to the postoffice of hier ~ here, as in Muenchen, Bayern an alternate spelling of München ~ Munich, Bavaria.

* * *

In this drawing Herman Torggeler creates a singular moment just before some children are about to unleash chaos. Three children, again two boys and a girl, are dressed in period costumes for an opera or play. In the background is a forest or woodland garden. The girl carries a tray with a tall cake when a boy grabs hold of her arms. She is pleasantly distracted and the upset cake is about to fall onto another boy who seems unaware of the impending accident. Torggler entitled this drawing: Blinder Eifer ~ Blind Ardor. Both boys carry swords on their costume belts which seems an indication that this is a scene in some theatrical story. 

This postcard was also sent from Muenchen ~ München ~ Munich with a postmark of 3 March 1900 but this time to a Fräulein Fanny Rumpf of Eichstätt, a city north of Munich about half way to Nürnberg ~ Nuremberg. The Germanic Umlaut diacritical mark is a very useful and efficient mark for the German language. But I don't think English translation improved anything by adding two letters or even new pronunciations to common placenames.

* * *

My final postcard of Herman Torggler is one that I used before in my 2021 story on his children series. But that one was covered in a length message and had a postmark of 1901. This one has a message on the back and a postmark of 1909, so it is an example of the long popularity of Torggler's illustrations. Here another trio or Terzett of children, two girls and one boy, are whirling about in a kind of dance. A doll looks a bit alarmed at being pulled apart in the frenzy. One girl looks directly at us as she and her friends take delight at being in motion. The title here is Ringel-Reihe! ~ Ringelet turn!, but in Torggler's identical card in 1901 the title was Kinderlust ~ Childhood. 

This card was sent from Stuttgart on 22 July 1909 to another Fräulein. It's very curious that a  significant number all of the German postcards in my collection, maybe 80-90% were addressed to young women using the traditional  German honorific Fräulein. However since the 1970s many Germans began to feel this term was expressing a "diminutive of woman", and that it implied a Fräulein was not-quite-a-woman. As modern feminism advanced in Germany usage of the word Fräulein was increasingly seen as patronizing and in 1972 it was banned from official government use in West Germany. Now all women in Germany are addressed as Frau regardless of their marital status. 

Similarly the same thing happened in France when in 2012 the honorific Mademoiselle was banned in all official documents. Now the courtesy title of "Madame" is accorded women where their marital status is unknown.

It is said that children are our future. But they are also our past, too. One might say that the essence of what childhood is comes from adult hindsight, reminiscing on the years when we were younger and immature. Children learn to recognize the difference between themselves and adults.  After all every kid strives to grow up one day. And sometimes we older folk get admonished to act our age. But to a child, time is neither past nor future but always in the present. 

Herman Torggler's illustration of these lively cute children were made in an era when, compared to modern times, most children were considered mature at a very young age. Many children left school and went to work at age 10, 12, or 14. Marriage at 16 was common as was pregnancy. And of course in previous centuries, many, many more children succumbed to death caused by industrial accidents and infectious diseases than are killed in the 21st century. 

I think Torggler was drawing on a romantic notion of an innocent childhood filled with wonder and delight. It was a fantasy that clearly appealed to Germans and Austrians since Torggler created so many of them that have been preserved for over a century. What intrigues me is how he slyly drew children with faces that show subtle adult emotions of worry, cunning, and desire. 

In 1900 it was a kind of caricature of childhood that perfectly fit the new medium of the postcard.  I don't know that Herman Torggler was the first artist to create this style but a lot of people bought his cards in order to share a novel sentiment or moment of lighthearted humor. In a way it is no different than how in our time people share a meme video or an emoji when sending a text or email. But in 125 years I don't think anyone will be collecting things like that.

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday

where things may get a bit sticky this weekend.

Music with Guitar

 

In the age before electric amplification the guitar was a relatively quiet instrument. It provided useful chords to accompany a melody sung by a vocalist or played on an agile treble instrument but guitarists were never the front man in an ensemble. They usually sat at the side strumming along to keep the music moving. The placement of a guitar in this trio is typical. The two lead musicians play a mandolin and a zither, a string instrument played flat on a table which helps amplify its sound. The group had other instruments to add color: a violin, likely played by the mandolinist as it has the same string tuning; a wooden folk xylophone called a Strohfiedel or Straw Fiddle; and a collection of wine glasses improbably standing on a near vertical tray. They were tuned by filling with water (or even spirits) so that they vibrated at different pitches when stroked by the player's fingertips. There is one more instrument if you look carefully. As a clue, it is from the percussion family.

This unknown trio were photographed seated outdoors, possibly at the wine garden where they performed,  by a photographer from Dresden, Germany. Their colorful bow ties and satin trimmed coat collars are typical of professional musicians in the 1900s. The postcard was sent from Dresden (Altstadt), on 18 April 1910 to someone in Breslau, Germany which is now known as Wrocław, Poland. The handwriting is a peculiarly neat penmanship with completely indecipherable cursive letters that run together. Take a look at the third line — mnmnmnnm.Who could translate that? I believe the writer was the guitar player as he is marked with a discrete X. His signature looks like M. (or W.) Lappitsch.

* * *

Sometimes a guitar defines a group's style even though it isn't the lead instrument. These four young ladies are the Original Damen Schrammel Quartett from the "Jankowski" Kozert Ensemble. The guitarist here plays a contraguitar called a Schrammel guitar which is an instrument associated with the light folk music of Wien or Vienna, Austria. In addition to the standard six strings the Schrammel guitar has a second, fretless neck supporting as many as nine bass strings that are tuned to a scale. This player accompanies two violinists and a button accordionist as they sit in a photographer's studio, but they very likely performed at a wine garden like the previous trio. 

The postcard has no postmark or date but is addressed to someone in Wilhelmsburg on the the Elbe river, a district of Hamburg. There is a faint imprint of a variety theater named Hohenziller(?). The card was printed in Leipzig, Germany probably in around 1910. 

* * *

My last guitar photo is unusual as the guitarist is seated front and center of the ensemble. In this case it is a brass quintet with rotary valve instruments in five different different sizes, left to right: baritone horn, alto horn, bass tuba, tenor trumpet, and soprano trumpet. Needless to say, a brass band really has  no use for a guitarist, especially one with a guitar that looks a bit smaller than a standard modern acoustic guitar. Another odd thing is a small fir tree behind the tall trumpet player on the right. Perhaps this group is playing for the Christmas season. 

The photographer left an imprint on the back of this unposted postcard, R. Fuchs of Kurort Wörishofen. This place was a Kurort or "cure resort" in Bad Wörishofen, a spa town in Bavaria, Germany that is known for a water-cure or hydrotherapy developed by Sebastian Kneipp (1821–1897), a Catholic priest who once lived there. Many of the town's hotels and boarding-houses still offer their guests treatment using Kneipp's methods. 

I wonder if the guitarist is a spa guest who has joined with the health resort's band for a souvenir photo. He is neatly dressed in a nice suit with a small corsage in the lapel and some of the musicians have one too. Maybe he is a bridegroom celebrating his wedding day. But what amuses me is that the man's shoes are polished while the brass players' shoes could use a good cleaning. Evidently this guitarist did not march in any parade.

Did you spot the triangle in the first trio?

Since I don't often feature photos
of musical wine glasses, i.e. a glass harp,

here is a demonstration of one  by Anna Szafraniec from GlassDuo.

She plays an arrangement of a well known guitar piece,
the Spanish Romance by an anonymous 19th century composer.

This piece is a standard of any guitarist's repertoire
so I looked for another version played on guitar for contrast.
There are thousands of renditions of it on YouTube
but I found one that is played on a harp guitar,
an instrument very similar to the Schrammel guitar.
Here is the same Romance de Espana
performed by Canadian harp guitarist Jamie Dupuis.

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday

where some guitarists always attract a crowd.