Dem Trombones
By Stefene Russell
Photograph of Mercy High School trombone players by Irv Schankman, courtesy of the Missouri History Museum’s Photographs and Prints Collection
If it had retained its original name, no one would play trombone in high school. Until the 18th century, the thing was called—brace yourself—a sackbutt. Variants included shagbolt and, even worse, sagbutt. What kid would dare carry a “sag-butt” case to school? It was the Italians who came up with the more mellifluous “trombone” (which the French stole, changing its definition to “paper clip”). In America, trombones play bright ’n’ stripy Dixieland jazz, so we forget the instrument formerly known as the shagbolt was originally choral; it symbolized death and the underworld. Though they’d never abide the old name, band kids—who do not play football, who march to and fro across the AstroTurf in vinyl spats and shakos decorated with shredded-plastic plumes—gravitate toward that older darkness. Gargling on angst and hormones, emptying their spit valves, they imagine that long slide as their own cramped spirit unfolding, hoping, even if the sulfuric fumes turn the pennies in their loafers bright green, that one day they’ll escape from hell.
