The Music Came First: The Memoirs of Theodore Paschedag

Paschedag’s career as a flute player in silent movie theaters withered in 1927 with the release of The Jazz Singer, the first talkie.

When the theaters stopped hiring musicians, Paschedag came to West Frankfort, Illinois, as an employee of the C. G. Conn Musical Instrument Company. What he had to do was impossible: prepare 74 untrained children for a concert in one month. A major obstacle was that the Conn salesman had sold 22 alto saxophones but no drums. Astoundingly, the conce…