Old Picture of the Day is my new favorite blog to follow. This weeks mystery person contest threw me, because of the context. Presented in another context, I think just about everyone would get it. But the shotgun shouldn’t be too surprising. From the Wikipedia Article on the March King:
As a trapshooter, he ranks as one of the all-time greats, and he is enshrined in the Trapshooting Hall of Fame.[15] 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’.”
Despite the fact that Sousa believed that “These talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development of music in this country,” there are more than a few recordings of Sousa’s band that have survived. Here’s one of them, pressed on a Blue Amberol Cylinder and played on an Edison Fireside Model A. The model A was introduced in 1909.
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This is pretty freaking cool.
The M1909 Colt was also introduced in 1909. :-)