Seventy-six Trombones
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"Seventy Six Trombones" is the signature song from the 1957 musical play The Music Man, written by Meredith Willson. The song also appeared in the 1962 film and 2003 TV movie adaptations.
Seventy Six trombones led the big parade
With a hundred and ten cornets close at hand ...
One of Willson's arrangements of the song seamlessly integrates other popular marches at the time, such as "Stars and Stripes Forever", and "The Washington Post" by John Philip Sousa (in whose band Willson played), "The National Emblem" by Edwin Eugene Bagley, Swedish "Under the Blue and Yellow Flag" by Viktor Widqvist and "Second Regiment, Connecticut National Guard" by D.W. Reeves.
"Professor" Harold Hill uses the song to help the townspeople of the fictional River City, Iowa visualize their children playing in an enormous marching band. An average-sized high-school marching band might have 10 musicians playing the trombone, and a large university band seldom has more than 30. The band that Harold is describing includes 76 trombones, 110 cornets, "over a thousand reeds," and "fifty mounted cannon" (actually quite popular in bands of the time); if such a band actually existed, it would be at least a tenth of a mile long.
The love ballad "Goodnight My Someone," which immediately precedes "Seventy Six Trombones" in the musical, has the exact same tune but is in 3/4 meter with a much slower tempo.
In Willson's hometown of Mason City, Iowa, they honor this song (and the rest of The Music Man) in a building called Music Man Square, located next to Wilson's boyhood home. In one room they have 76 donated trombones hanging from the ceiling.
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