Conn Ltd" - a useful dating clue to identify instruments made before or after 1915.) Greenleaf expanded Conn, adding to the company a repair school, a proper assembly line, a research laboratory, and an organ production facility, and he laid the foundations for the US national school music programmes. (The new owners added the abbreviation "Ltd" to the company name, to make "C.G. Conn himself netted $1 million, an enormous sum at the time, and retired to California. In 1915 Charles Conn sold his company to a group of investors headed by Carl Dimond Greenleaf, a successful flour mill operator. At this time Conn dropped its Wonder line of instruments in favor of the New Wonder and New Invention models. Another fire, this one in 1910, destroyed another of Conn's factories, and a new plant was built nearby. Around 1900 Conn ran a short lived dedicated retail outlet in New York, and a patent for the new Conn Connqueror cornet was granted in 1901. In 1888, the same year that Conn introduced its first saxophone, the company's plant foreman Gus Buescher left to form the Buescher Instrument Co, and in 1907 Henry Martin's three sons left Conn to re-activate the Martin Band Instrument Co. After Gilmore died in 1892, Lefe/bre became the saxophone soloist in Sousa's band, a position Lefe/bre held until his own death in 1911. Following his collaboration with Conn in the late 1880's (it has been suggested, quite believably, that the Adolphe Sax instrument he brought with him to the US formed the basis of the first Conn saxophones), Lefe/bre also worked as a demonstration artist for Conn. Gilmore's band usually featured a three man saxophone section playing baritone, alto and soprano. Moving to the US in the 1850's, Lefe/bre joined Patrick Gilmore's famous 22nd Regiment Of New York brass band in 1873, and did much to popularize the still novel saxophone in the US. Born in 1834 in France, Lefe/bre was a clarinet virtuoso in his native country before his 20th birthday, and upon meeting Adolphe Sax fell in love with the saxophone and soon became a virtuoso on that instrument as well. Lefe/bre, and added saxophone models to its Wonder line, including soprano, alto, tenor and baritone. In 1888 Conn made the first US built saxophone, designed by Eduard A. In 1886 Conn opened a second plant at Worcester, Massachusetts, in the former Fiske instrument factory this lasted until 1898. Soon Conn claimed the largest factory of its kind in the world, employing some 300 workers (many of whom were brought to Elkhart from France and England). Sousa later worked with Conn to design the sousaphone. Conn introduced the Wonder line of models at this time, and endorsers would include the famous wind bandleader John Philip Sousa, whose band was at one time kitted out with a complete set of gold plated Conns. It was, in effect, these early events that would lead to Elkhart becoming the brass and wind capital of America, a position that it still holds today (the city produced some 60 per cent of all the wind instruments sold in the US in 1997).īack in 1883 the Conn factory suffered a major fire, burning the building to the ground, but the city of Elkhart provided a large loan to help Conn back into business Conn had been voted the city's first Democrat mayor three years earlier.
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The Conn-Dupont operation lasted until 1879 when Conn regained full control of his company. They subsequently formed the Conn-Dupont company, and started production of the Conn Four-In-One cornet, playable in four different keys. In 1876, convinced that he needed specialist help, Conn persuaded a skilled French instrument maker, Eugene Dupont, to leave his employ at the Distin company in England and bring with him a small team of craftsmen. Having developed a process to vulcanize rubber to metal, Conn soon started manufacturing his mouthpieces, at first in humble premises over a drugstore in Elkhart, Indiana. The story goes that Conn devised his original mouthpiece after suffering a split lip in a bar brawl and, wanting to continue to play cornet in a local band, came up with a rubber rimmed mouthpiece ("a cushion for the lips," Conn called it) that enabled him to play comfortably. As a 21 year old Civil War veteran, Conn invented a brass mouthpiece in 1874 for which patents were soon granted. Charles Gerard Conn was born in upstate New York in 1844.