John Philip Sousa: Music, Life, & Legend

This is the new standard one-volume resource on America's March King—written by John Philip Sousa's great-granddaughter Nancy Gillon Spivy with co-author Samuel O.J. Spivy (BA, Yale; MA, Oxford). It is the first book in over forty years to combine a complete cradle-to-grave biography with comprehensive, fully annotated catalogs of every musical and literary work Sousa ever created. Written with unique family insight and exclusive access to private archives, it is generously illustrated with 49 photographs—many published here for the first time from the Sousa family's own collection. Readers discover a far more multifaceted genius than the familiar "March King" image: the visionary bandmaster who revolutionized instrumentation and performance practice; the brilliant businessman who ran a global touring empire for thirty-nine years; one of the founding members of ASCAP who fought for composers' rights in the new age of mechanical reproduction; the champion trapshooter and athlete; the patriot who shaped military music traditions; and the prolific writer of operettas, novels, poetry, articles, and his autobiography Marching Along. In clear, engaging prose grounded in meticulous scholarship, the narrative follows Sousa from Civil War-era Washington childhood through his transformative leadership of the U.S. Marine Band to the legendary world tours that made his band the most famous musical organization on earth. The extensive, annotated catalogs of all compositions and writings make this volume indispensable for musicologists, band directors, and performers. Accessible to general readers yet authoritative for academic and conservatory libraries, John Philip Sousa: Music, Life, & Legend combines biographical depth, visual richness, cultural insight, and unmatched reference value. Written by Sousa's own great-granddaughter with her Yale- and Oxford-educated husband, it is the closest thing to an official modern biography we will ever have—the essential Sousa book for new generations.