How A $725 High School Purchase Turned Into A Priceless Musical Possession
When I was in high school, my dad spent $725 on a saxophone for me to play in the marching band and in college. Little did either of us know that it would become one of the most coveted instruments among professional saxophone players. Here’s the story of how an amateur musician wound up owning the legendary Selmer Mark VI.
I own one of the world’s most coveted saxophones.
In fact, it’s the best one ever made. Whenever I tell a sax player in a band that I own one, he or she pretty much says the same thing: “whoa!”
It is a Selmer Mark VI and this is the story on how I came to own as well as the history of a legendary musical instrument.
I am not a professional musician. I am a journalist. I traded in the keypad for a keyboard.
But I have a Selmer Mark VI alto sax. Original condition. My dad bought it for me in high school.
I was in a high school band and at that time everyone pretty much had to buy their own instrument. We went to the local music store and there was a sax for $500 and one for $725. My dad, who was not rich by any means (we were semi-upper middle class) turned to my mom – a member of the choral society who encouraged my sister and I to take up music and was the reason we were there in first place – said something like “well if you’re going to keep on playing it into college we might as well get the best one.” I couldn’t believe it. I don’t think the salesman could, either.
And yes, I did play it in a college band. One of the best in the land, too, the University of Alabama’s Million Dollar Band. Today, the MDB has all silver instruments it provides to its members. Can you imagine my mood if I showed up with a Selmer Mark VI and had to play some lesser-grade issued silver sax?!
Anyway, after a couple years in the band I moved into journalism and put the sax in a case. I have hardly touched it since. Oh, I have brought it out on certain occasions. I was in a band for a friend’s wedding reception at the “90210 house” in Hermosa Beach, CA, the one used in Beverly Hills 90210 (the groom lived there at the time). I also played in a Jimmy Buffett band at a wild house party in Manhattan Beach, CA.
But for the most part it’s been in its original case, which contains music from my time in the Million Dollar Band, other music collected through the years and two medals I won at high school band competitions in which myself and two other sax players from our band played in regional competitions.
To this day, I own only two things of real value: my saxophone and an authentic tiki bar that’s in my apartment.
I did not realize the full vaue of the saxophone until I took it to took a Manhattan Beach music store to get the pads replaced a few years removed from the Million Dollar Band. I wanted to play it just for fun and getting the pads replaced is standard maintenance for instruments.
When the store owner opened up the case he immediately shut it. He would not touch it. When I asked why he said, and I quote, “it’s like taking a Rolls Royce to a Volkswagen dealership.”
He said there were only two people in all of Los Angeles, the music capital of the world as far as I’m concerned, that would work on it.
So I took it to one of them, a guy named Otto in Studio City. He acted as if I had just brought him the Pink Star diamond. He then proceeded to scold me about its condition, upset that I had not taken better care of it.
Heck, I was in a marching band. I hauled it around football stadiums, not to Hollywood studios.
He told me it would take two weeks but he kept it for a month! Even then, I practically had to pry it away from him. I was convinced he was going around town playing it.
When I finally got it back (it cost almost as much to replace the pads as the sax cost to begin with but several years later those pads still “pop”) I asked him about getting it “dipped.” I had marched with it in the rain, it was dinged up from being in marching bands and I wanted it to look nicer. He said absolutely not, that it would ruin its value. This seemed odd to me but years later watching a few Pawn Stars episodes I learned that is true because the hosts said same thing time and time again, that valuable items are better in their original condition, no matter their condition.
What Makes The Selmer Mark VI Saxophone So Special?
The Selmer Mark VI was introduced in 1954 and discontinued in the mid-1970s.
It is so valuable because of the odd shape of the instrument; it’s impossible to design a saxophone to make every note in tune. So you adjust your embouchure (the position of your mouth on the mouthpiece) to compensate for the flat notes. The Selmer Mark VI fixed all that with the exception of the A note, which is a tad flat.
Now the story I heard is that the people at Selmer thought they had that one flaw fixed and came out with a Mark VII. But my friend, who was always first chair in band and went onto become a professional musician and eventually a music professor at San Diego State, got one and told me it “sucked.” I was told, perhaps by Otto, that Selmer foolishly broke the mold to the Mark VI and could never get it quite right again.
I need to play it more and want to but I live in a downtown apartment. I was fumbling around on it one night and I’m sure my neighbors were saying “what is that noise?” A sax isn’t like an acoustic guitar tho; it needs full lungs to really let it make the music and I don’t have a place to practice.
Like a person, a great saxophone needs to breathe. I’ll eventually find a place. And if you’re my neighbor, be patient. It takes some time to adapt from a laptop keyboard to back to a sax keypad.
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