The recording industry was a mere babe at the time. But everyone knew someone that played piano or guitar, so the big social occasions featured the 1920s version of our modern karioke. Some would play and others would sing along with the music they all would read from sheets of the popular songs of the day. Of course we still enjoy our karioke -- albeit in a much more modern form -- so it should not be such a foreign idea to contemplate how things worked in music before the age of singing stars and our modern recording industry. Songwriters still drive the music we love, but now, it's more from behind the scenes. The one inescapable truth remains, though: Nothing happens until someone writes a song. Perhaps that's why the individuals we hold in highest reverence as artists are often accomplished both as performers and as writers -- like Nat King Cole, Elton John or Willie Nelson, to name just a couple of the brightest. I'll be getting back to the Conn-O-Sax story now, but I hope you got the point that that no one will buy a saxophone if there is no music they can play on it. And when these F keyed saxophones were first introduced, the days when a computer could easily transpose your music to any key you wanted were generations away.

We know that more Conn-O-Saxes were made than were sold, and that many of these poor 'orphaned' examples were intentionally damaged & repaired over & again as fodder for the Conn repair school students. No one knows for certain how many Conn-O-Saxes actually survived through to today, but the number of these instruments left in existence is rumored by some knowledgeable saxophiles to be as few as thirty. Most of them have found their way into the hands of museums or serious saxophone collectors. It is truly unusual to even see a Conn-O-Sax, much less hear one played.

Did you miss the One-Hand Conn F-mezzo we recently sold?
see our new feature article on this unusual instrument, including added information on Al 'Papa' Miller.

click here to see a super rare one-hand F Mezzo-Soprano