On December 30, 1879, he married Jane van Middlesworth Bellis. They had three children: John Philip Sousa, Jr (1 April 1881 - 18 May 1937), Jane Priscilla (7 Aug 1882 - 28 Oct 1958), and Helen (21 Jan 1887 - 14 Oct 1975). All three are buried in the John Philip Sousa plot in the Congressional cemetery. Jane joined the Daughters of the American Revolution in 1907.
Several years later, Sousa left his apprenticeship to join a theatrical (pit) orchestra where he learned to conduct. He returned to the U.S. Marine Band as its head in 1880, and remained as its conductor until 1892.
Sousa organized his own band the year he left the Marine Band. The Sousa Band toured 1892-1931, performing 15,623 concerts. In 1900, his band represented the United States at the Paris Exposition before touring Europe. In Paris, the Sousa Band marched through the streets including the Champs-Élysées to the Arc de Triomphe – one of only eight parades the band marched in over its forty years.
Sousa repeatedly refused to conduct on the radio, fearing a lack of personal contact with the audience. He was finally persuaded to do so in 1929 and became a smash hit.
Sousa lived in Sands Point, New York. There is a school (John Philip Sousa Elementary), a band shell and a memorial tree planted in nearby Port Washington. Wild Bank, his seaside house on Hicks Lane, has been designated a National Historic Landmark, although it remains a private home and is not open to the public.
During World War I, he was commissioned a Lieutenant Commander in the U.S. Naval Reserve and led the Navy Band at the Great Lakes Naval Station near Chicago, Illinois. Being independently wealthy, he donated his entire naval salary minus one dollar a year to the Sailors' and Marines' Relief Fund. After returning to his own band at the end of the war, he continued to wear his naval uniform for most of his concerts and other public appearances.
The marching brass bass, or sousaphone, is named after him.
These operetta which Gervase Hughes calls "notable" (1) also show a variety of French, Viennese and British influences. (In his younger days, Sousa made an orchestration of HMS Pinafore and played the first violin on the American tour of Jacques Offenbach.) The music of these operettas is light and cheerful. The Glass Blowers and Desirée have had revivals, the latter having been released on CD like El Capitan, the best known of them. El Capitan has been in production somewhere in the world ever since it was written and makes fun of false heroes. Still more outspoken against militarism is The Free Lance, the story of two kingdoms becoming united, which found its way to Germany (as "Der Feldhauptmann") by the time the Berlin Wall came down.
Marches and waltzes have been derived from many of these stage-works. Sousa also composed the music for six operettas that were either unfinished or not produced: The Devils' Deputy, Florine, The Irish Dragoon, Katherine, The Victory, and The Wolf.
In addition, Sousa wrote a march based on themes from Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera The Mikado, the elegant overture Our Flirtations, a number of musical suites, etc. He also frequently added Sullivan opera overtures or other Sullivan pieces to his concerts.
A Freemason, Sousa was fascinated by what the group considered mystical qualities in otherwise natural phenomena. According to Sten Odenwald of the NASA IMAGE Science Center, this played a significant role in the selection of the time and date of the performance, April 19, 1883, at 4:00 P.M. Dr. Odenwald points out that Venus and Mars, invisible to the participants, were setting in the west. At the same time, the moon, Uranus, and Virgo were rising in the east, Saturn had crossed the meridian, and Jupiter was directly overhead. According to Masonic lore, Venus was associated with the element copper, and Joseph Henry had used large quantities of copper to build his electric motors.
The " Transit of Venus March" never caught on during Sousa's lifetime. It went unplayed for more than 100 years, after Sousa's copies of the music were destroyed in a flood. As reported in The Washington Post, Library of Congress employee Loras Schissel recently found copies of the old sheet music for Venus "languishing in the library's files". The piece was resurrected recently, in time for the 2004 Transit.
Sousa also composed a march, "Nobles of the Mystic Shrine", dedicated to the high degree freemasonry Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine.
As a trapshooter, he ranks as one of the all-time greats, and he is enshrined in the Trapshooting Hall of Fame. He even organized the first national trapshooting organization, a forerunner to today's Amateur Trapshooting Association. Sousa remained active in the fledgling ATA for some time after its formation. Some credit Sousa as the father of organized trapshooting in America. Sousa also wrote numerous articles about trapshooting.
Perhaps a quote from his Trapshooting Hall of Fame biography says it best: "Let me say that just about the sweetest music to me is when I call, ‘pull,’ the old gun barks, and the referee in perfect key announces, ‘dead’."
In his 1902 novel The Fifth String a young violinist makes a deal with the Devil for a magic violin with five strings. The strings can excite the emotions of Pity, Hope, Love and Joy - the fifth string is Death and can be played only once before causing the player's own death. He has a brilliant career, but cannot win the love of the woman he desires. At a final concert, he plays upon the death string.
In 1905, Sousa published the book Pipetown Sandy, which included a satirical poem titled "The Feast of the Monkeys". The poem describes a lavish party attended by a variety of animals, but overshadowed by the King of Beasts, the lion…who allows the muttering guests the privilege of watching him eat the entire feast. At the end of his gluttony, the lion explains, "Come all rejoice, You’ve seen your monarch dine." Sousa was said to explain the poem as nonsense verse, but there was definitely an egalitarian tone to it..
In 1920, he wrote another work called The Transit of Venus, a 40,000-word story. It is about a group of misogynists called the Alimony Club who, as a way of temporarily escaping the society of women, embark on a sea voyage to observe the transit of Venus. The captain's niece, however, has stowed away on board and soon wins over the men.
Law professor Lawrence Lessig cited this passage to argue that in creating a system of copyrights in which control of music is in the hands of record labels, Sousa was essentially correct. Sousa also was credited with referring to records as "canned music."
Sousa's antipathy to recording was such that he refused to conduct his band if it was being recorded. Nevertheless, Sousa's band made numerous recordings for the Victor Talking Machine Company (later RCA Victor), usually conducted by Arthur Pryor. A handful of the Victor recordings were actually conducted by Sousa, who also appeared with his band in newsreels and on radio broadcasts (beginning with a 1929 nationwide broadcast on NBC). In 1999, Legacy Records released some of Sousa's historic recordings on CD.
In 1925, he was initiated as an honorary member of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, the national fraternity for men in music, by the fraternity's Alpha Xi chapter at the University of Illinois.
In 1952, Twentieth Century Fox honored Sousa in their Technicolor feature film Stars and Stripes Forever with Clifton Webb portraying the composer. Fox music director Alfred Newman arranged the music and conducted the studio orchestra for the soundtrack. It was loosely based on Sousa's memoirs, Marching Along.
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