Baby Beeper

In Norfolk, Va. one day last October, a musician named George E. von Schilling was idly playing an accordion in his sitting room while his son Stanwurt, 3, toddled nearby. On a chair lay an euphonium, a tuba-like brass horn which Mr. von Schilling had borrowed from a friend. Suddenly Father von Schilling heard a soft beep from the big euphonium, saw that Son Stanwurt was not only blowing into it but blowing correctly from the solar plexus rather than from the chest. Von Schilling leaped to a piano, struck an F and B flat which the child immediately echoed. Musician von Schilling cried to his wife: "Mother, I've got a euphonium player!"

Father von Schilling, on & off relief, coached small Stanwurt until the youngster could play a man-sized repertoire without fatigue to his peewee chest, throat, lips, cheeks. In December Stanwurt played the euphonium at a policemen's entertainment in Norfolk City Auditorium. Then he graduated to the biggest wind instrument of all, the Sousaphone (see cut). From H. N. White Co. in Cleveland, Father von Schilling obtained a King Giant Sousaphone with a 28-in. gold bell and the standard-sized mouthpiece. The Sousaphone was mounted on a rack so that Stanwurt could crawl into it, huff & puff, while his father accompanied on the accordion. Convinced of his offspring's commercial possibilities, George von Schilling copyrighted the name "Master Stan and His Sousaphone," induced a costume firm, Lilley Ames Co. of Columbus, Ohio, to provide a $100 cream-&-gold uniform for Stanwurt. Father von Schilling got engagements for Stanwurt and himself at Norfolk clubs, at the local Navy Yard Y. M. C. A., and at nearby Virginia Beach. Last week, with Stanwurt 4 years old, George von Schilling announced that his sole job from now on was to be his son's manager. Turning up at a music store in Utica, N. Y., where the von Schillings' act was supposed to boost sales, he declared that he and Sousaphonist Stanwurt were bound for Cleveland, hoped for engagements at the Great Lakes Exposition.

The von Schillings pleased Utica. Father George furnished most of the melody on a piano-accordion while Master Stan oom-pahed bass runs for Down the Field, Ragging the Scale, Christopher Columbus. Accustomed to learn his pieces entirely by ear, Stanwurt appeared completely at ease when Mr. von Schilling tried to confuse him by varying the rhythm and tempo of Dixie. Expert musicians pronounced Stanwurt's embouchure (placing of the lips on the mouthpiece) as good as his father had claimed it to be. As they moved on through music stores in Syracuse and Rochester, Mr. von Schilling reminded interviewers that his son also plays the trumpet and trombone, proudly declared: "Stanwurt just loves to smear those runs."

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