“Seventy-Six Trombones” is a show tune and the signature song from the 1957 musical The Music Man, by Meredith Willson, a film of the same name in 1962 and a made-for-TV movie in 2003. The piece is commonly played by marching bands, military bands, and orchestras. In The Music Man, the musical, it is the primary sales pitch for a boy’s band, sung by “Professor” Harold Hill. Hill uses the song to help the townspeople of River City, Iowa visualize their children playing in a marching band by claiming to recall a time when he saw several famous bandleaders’ bands in a combined performance. While an average-sized high school marching band might have about 10 musicians playing the trombone, and a large college marching band seldom has more than 30 trombonists, the band that Harold Hill describes to the citizens includes 76 trombones, 110 cornets, “more than a thousand reeds”, double bell euphoniums, and “fifty mounted cannon” (which were popular in bands of the late 19th century). The love ballad “Goodnight My Someone”, which immediately precedes “Seventy-Six Trombones” in the musical, has the same tune but is played in 3/4 time at a slower tempo. At the end of the musical, lines from “Seventy-Six Trombones” and “Goodnight My Someone” are sung in alternation with each other. This technique is used in opera, but was unknown in Broadway musicals.
Songs with Banjo from Harold Hagler
