Prelude to the 2025 edition
This story originally appeared as a 2-part story on the Bassic Sax Blog on October 30 & 31, 2011. However, when in 2024 the site underwent some serious trimming, this was one of the articles that got cut.
Like Mike Meyers, Jason, Freddy Kruger, and so on, and so on, like all good monsters, The Reaper was destined to return. I have always been very fond this character I created, and have looked for ways to bring this back in some way. A website dedicated to vintage saxophones was just simply not the forum to do so.
If I ever decide to go into writing fiction regularly, The Reaper might find himself relocated again. Until then, he will happily live here, haunting the testing site of Bassic Sax.
The following is a work of the fiction. No actual people or events are depicted in this story—well except for 1 guy. I apologize in advance for blowing your cover. But you have to agree, it is for the greater good. 😉
The Bass Saxophone
I always wanted a bass saxophone. This had been my dream ever since 1978, when I first saw my dad’s book The Bass Saxophone, by Josef Skvorecky. I immediately fell in love with the picture of the bass with its Nazi swastika.
There was something funny, yet ominous, about this cartoon drawing of a room-size bass, with a its backward swastika, a pair of women’s red shoes and men’s sunglasses. I wanted to play a sax this big. I wanted to fill a room with saxophone sound.
In 1980, during grade 7, I was crushed to find out that I couldn’t learn to play on a bass sax. Sadly, like every other saxophone student in my school, my choice was either alto or tenor.
Luckily, I managed to get a tenor, but I still pined for a bass of my very own. I carried Skvorecky’s book with me in my sax case for years as a reminder to myself of what I aspired to own.
When I made the move to high school, I had a chance to play a bass for the first time. The school had a 1920s Conn that had, as the saying goes, been played hard and put away wet. The last time this bass had been used was likely in the 1950s. Since that time it had been kicked around, and beaten on by more than one student in the school. Little did I know what this horn was capable of.
When I first saw the enormous case in the band storage room, I immediately knew what it was. I asked my teacher if I could play it. Mr. Lewis said, “It doesn’t work, you know. It’s been in its case for years, and people have been doing pretty nasty things with it”.
I pleaded my case, and even pulled out my old, dog-eared copy of The Bass Saxophone.
He said, “Go ahead and give it a try. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.” I couldn’t understand what he meant by that, and I didn’t care. I really wanted to play it.
I ran to the storage room, climbed up to the top shelf, and took down the dust-covered case. As soon as I touched the scuffed, black vinyl, I immediately felt something spread from my arms into my body and down my legs. It was a cold, tingling feeling. I didn’t really think anything of it at the time. All I wanted to do was try the bass saxophone that had been waiting decades for a new player.
Wanton Damage
I carried the case into the band room, and as soon as I opened it I was horrified by what I saw. You expect the outside of a 60-year-old case to look beat up, but this was beyond that. Someone had slashed the purple velveteen to shreds, and they didn’t stop there.
Someone had used something sharp to scratch the finish of this once-lovely horn. Its tarnished, satin silver finish was covered with graffiti-type imagery. Both sides of the bell were etched with obscene words and pictures. The largest etching on the bell were the words THE REAPER scratched down the front of the sax’s bell.
After getting over the shock of what was done to this beautiful old horn, I dug through the case to find the neck. It too was etched with obscene diagrams, and the words THE REAPER.
There was a Conn Eagle mouthpiece and fitting ligature in the compartment with the neck. Surprisingly, the mouthpiece wasn’t damaged. Actually, it was in remarkable shape.
And low and behold, there were even some original bass saxophone reeds in there as well. The box had been opened, but the remaining reeds appeared not to have been played. Luck was with me.
Mr. Lewis stood beside me as I put the horn together, and said, “Don’t get your hopes up. This thing most likely will leak like a sieve.”
Undeterred, I clipped the bass to my neck strap, and thought to myself: This is what you’ve waited for all your life. Just go with it.
As the first sounds came out of this blackened, graffiti-covered bass, the metal under my fingers started to vibrate. The vibration spread throughout the horn and from my head into the core of my body.
As my diaphragm and lungs moved the air through the old Conn, flashes of colour started to appear in front of my eyes. At first I thought I was going to pass out, so I stopped playing. Then I tried again, and the flashes of colour seemed to find a rhythm. I realized that they were appearing in time to the notes I was playing.
And playing I was. The old horn wasn’t leaking. It was playing better than my trusty tenor did. The bass was beautifully playing up and down its entire range. I could play anything I wanted.
Mr. Lewis was dumbstruck. He told me, “No one has been able to play this sax since the 1960s, since we didn’t have the money to get it fixed.”
I replied, “It doesn’t seem to need any work. It plays fine”. “No kidding,” was his reply.
The next few weeks all I did was spend my spare time at school playing the bass. I brought in silver polish and cleaned THE REAPER, as it had affectionately been nicknamed, until it shined nearly as pretty as the day it came from the factory. I pleaded with Mr. Lewis to let me play it in band, but he said “No.” There were apparently no parts for this horn.
After a couple of months, I finally wore Mr. Lewis down. He was going to let me play two songs on the bass for our Christmas concert. I also got permission to bring THE REAPER home to practice on. Finally, I had a bass saxophone in my house. Even if it wasn’t mine, at least there was one under the roof—albeit temporarily.
The bass turned out to be a very popular addition to the Christmas concert, so Mr. Lewis agreed to allow me use it regularly in all the bands I played in. As time went by, THE REAPER and I became very close.
Colourful Light
I found I could play anything I wanted on the old Conn. I just had to close my eyes, and magically my fingers would just move exactly as they should, and the notes would just come out. The colourful flashes of light were a signpost to me of where I needed to go. I followed them exactly.
When I played my tenor, I had no such signposts. I struggled and tripped over my fingers. Mr. Lewis couldn’t figure it out. He joked that the bass must be possessed, and that it’s playing me, rather than me playing it.
In hindsight, this was not a good thing to say. One day during band class, Mr. Lewis started to explain how he wanted the sax section to play their parts. As he walked over towards where I was sitting with THE REAPER, I saw some light coming out of the end of the bell. The coloured light enveloped Mr. Lewis. Mr. Lewis suddenly grabbed his chest and fell to the floor. No one else reported seeing the light, so I kept quiet.
By the time the paramedics came, Mr. Lewis was already dead. They worked on him, and took him to the hospital, but it didn’t do any good. Mr. Lewis died of a heart attack that day, March 1, 1984.