Bugle Music Taps
LOWER HUDSON VALLEYOne feature of Memorial Day celebrations everywhere is the playing of Taps, a tune that has roots in the Civil War and even before. From earliest times, bugle calls have been used in armies to relay commands to troops arrayed in broad battle lines and widespread formations or to signal significant events in large encampments. Among these calls are reveille, mess call, mail call and lights out--the call that marks the close of the military day.
Although he never personally claimed credit for composing Taps as we know it today, the name of Daniel Adams Butterfield is most closely associated with the song. Born in Utica, N.Y., on October 31, 1831, the third son of John Butterfield and Malinda Harnet Baker, after graduation from Union College in Schenectady he found work in the express business, a natural choice. His father had started a lucrative express service transporting goods and valuables between New York City and Buffalo, later expanding to points farther west.
In 1850. Butterfield's express company merged with two other express companies (Wells & Company and Livingston & Fargo) to form the American Express Company. John Butterfield was also the owner of the famous Butterfield Southern Overland Mail that carried letters, freight and passengers between St. Louis and California and back, by way of the Indian Territory (Oklahoma), Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. Passenger fare was $100, payable in hard currency or in gold dust; meals were extra. Passengers were limited to 40 pounds of baggage.
Burdened by debt, John Butterfield sold his Overland Mail company to his principal creditor, the firm of Wells, Fargo and Company, and returned to Utica. His son Daniel continued to work for the American Express Company, where he was eastern regional manager.
When the Civil War broke out in April of 1861, Daniel Butterfield enlisted in Washington, D.C., a short four days after the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter in South Carolina. His rise in the military chain of command was meteoric. Starting as a first sergeant, he swiftly achieved the rank of brigadier general of volunteers by September, no doubt a tribute to his managerial skill and political influence.
In the disastrous 1862 Peninsula Campaign of General George B. McClellan that failed to take Richmond, Butterfield was wounded and earned a Congressional Medal of Honor (belatedly awarded to him in 1892) for seizing the flag of the 83rd Pennsylvania Volunteers at Gaines Mill under heavy enemy fire and encouraging the remaining troops to stand their ground. After retreating, the Army of the Potomac camped near Harrison's Landing, where Butterfield experimented with bugle calls, designing a new call for his 3rd Brigade to avoid using the regulation call for Lights Out, a call borrowed from the French. That hauntingly mournful call was to become Taps.
Gustav Kobbé Creates a Stir
The subject of Butterfield's connection with the song probably never would have been raised had not prolific author Gustav Kobbé written an article, "The Trumpet in Camp and Battle," that appeared in the August 1898 issue of The Century Magazine. Kobbé was a respected music critic, opera expert and author of several delightful local travel guides, including Jersey Coast and Pines and Jersey Central. Writing about the origin of bugle calls in the Civil War, he admitted: "In speaking of our trumpet calls I purposely omitted one with which it seemed most appropriate to close this article, for it is the call which closes the soldier's day, Lights Out. I have not been able to trace this call to any other service." Kobbé then concluded, "If it seems probable it was original with Major Seymour, he has given our army the most beautiful of trumpet calls."
Kobbé was referring to Major Truman Seymour, (later a brigadier general) of the 5th U.S. Artillery, who compiled the bugle calls in the 1874 U.S. Army drill manual on infantry tactics. Taps was still called "Lights Out" in the post-Civil War U.S. Army. Kobbé's attribution of the song to Major Seymour prompted a letter from Oliver Willcox Norton, who said he knew the origin of the bugle call and claimed he was the first to play it.
Writen from Chicago, Norton's letter began: "Mr. Kobbé says that he has been unable to trace the origin of the call now used for taps, or "Go to Sleep," as it is generally called by soldiers. I was a bugler at the headquarters of Butterfield's brigade. When the Army of the Potomac was in camp at Harrison's Landing, General Daniel Butterfield sent for me, and showing me some notes written in pencil on the back of an envelope, asked me to sound them on my bugle."
Norton's letter continued, "I did this several times, playing the music as written. He changed it somewhat, lengthening some notes and shortening others, but retaining the melody as he first gave it to me. After getting it to his satisfaction, he directed me to sound that call for Taps thereafter in place of the regular call. The music was beautiful on that still summer night and was heard far beyond the limits of the brigade."
Oliver Norton went on to describe how the next day he was visited by buglers from neighboring brigades who wanted copies of the music. The call was gradually taken up throughout the Army of the Potomac. Later the tune was carried by buglers to troops fighting with General Ulysses S. Grant in Tennessee and rapidly made its way through the entire Union Army and eventually became accepted as a regulation U.S. Army bugle call.
Acting on a suggestion from Oliver Norton, the editor of The Century Magazine wrote to General Butterfield. He replied from his home, "Cragside," in Cold Spring, N.Y., and confirmed the Norton account: "I recall in my dim memory the substantial truth of the statement made by Norton about bugle calls. His letter gave the impression that I personally wrote the notes for this call. The facts are that at the time I could sound calls on the bugle as a necessary part of an officer commanding a regiment or brigade. I had acquired this as a regimental commander."
The fact that Norton says Butterfield "composed" Taps--although General Butterfield could not read or write music--should not call the rest of his account into question. He was recounting facts as he remembered them after the passage of 38 years.
The first time that the "modern" version of Taps was played at a military funeral may have been when Union Captain John Tidball ordered it played at the burial ceremony for a cannoneer killed in action. Not wanting to set off return fire from edgy Confederate troops nearby, Tidball substituted Taps for the traditional three rifle volleys fired over the grave. Taps was also played at the funeral of Confederate General Stonewall Jackson nearly a year later. Army infantry regulations in 1891 required Taps to be played at military funeral ceremonies and is still used to signal "lights out" at the end of the day.
Butterfield Unpopular
As an officer, Butterfield was thoroughly disliked by other officers. He was wounded at Gettysburg in 1863 by a fragment of a spent artillery shell. "Fortunately for him and the joy of all, he has gone home," a fellow officer wrote. His joy was short-lived; Butterfield returned to service after a short recuperation.
When General Joseph Hooker was given command of the army, Butterfield, now a major general, was made his chief of staff. During this period, army headquarters were described as "a combination of a barroom and brothel." Most officers considered the culprits responsible for lax discipline to be the hard-drinking Hooker and the unpredictable General Daniel E. Sickles, who lost his right leg at Gettysburg and who would later kill the son of Francis Scott Key in a duel. There is no basis for the legend that discipline was so lax Hooker's name became a synonym for a prostitute.
Following Butterfield's mustering out of the volunteer forces in 1865, he became a regular army colonel and was put in charge of recruiting in New York City. After returning to private life and the American Express Company in 1870, he was active in veterans groups. He also served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under President Ulysses S. Grant. Successful and wealthy, he lived in grand style at his estate overlooking the majestic Hudson River.
On Memorial Day in 1901, Daniel Butterfield gave a stirring address dedicating the monument he had erected at the Fredericksburg battlefield to commemorate the service of the Fifth Corps of the Army of the Potomac. He died of a stroke a short time later on July 17, 1901, at Cold Spring.
Although not a West Point graduate, Butterfield was buried in the West Point Cemetery. The monument at his grave is one of the largest and most ornate in that cemetery. His wife, Julia Lorillard Butterfield, survived him. She continued to live at Cragside, and died on August 6, 1913, four months short of her 90th birthday. The furnishings of the house were auctioned off in April of the following year. The Butterfield house and grounds eventually passed into the hands of the Fathers of Mercy, a Roman Catholic congregation of missionary priests founded in France. The house was destroyed in a spectacular fire the night of December 20, 1979.
The Butterfield Statue Controversy
An amusing sidebar to the Daniel Butterfield story concerns a statue of him commissioned by his widow. In her will, Mrs. Butterfield had specifically directed the executors "to cause to be erected in the Borough of Manhattan, near or in Central Park, a colossal statue of General Daniel Butterfield, representing him standing with his arms folded sand wearing a cocked hat, as shown in a picture of him in a bronze bas relief in the rooms of the Historical Society at Utica, New York."
While the statue was being created, a running battle began between the executors of the will and sculptor Gutzon Borglum, who would later design and carve Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota. Borglum had been asked to modify the statue so often and so extensively that the easperated sculptor signed his name on the top of Butterfield's head. "That's the only part of the original statue in which they didn't make one change," he commented wryly.
Borglum's statue was cast by the Gorham Company and erected on February 23, 1918, not in Central Park but in New York City's Sakura Park, to the west of Grant's Tomb. The park had been opened in 1912 and was planted with with cherry trees ("sakura" means "cherry tree" in Japanese) as a gift from the Japanese people.
The sculptor had agreed to erect the statue for $54,000 and had been paid $21,600. Claiming that the sculpture was not artistic, did not resemble General Butterfield and was not colossal, the executors of Mrs. Butterfield's will refused to pay the balance, so Borglum sued. A year and a half later, a jury, which had viewed the statue and returned the verdict that the sculptor had complied with the terms of the contract.
Other Authorship Claims Surface
According to a widely circulated account, the song was born in 1862 when Union Captain Robert Ellicombe heard a soldier moaning near the battlefield at Harrison's Landing, Virginia. He decided to investigate and found that the soldier, who had died, was wearing a Confederate uniform. To his horror, in the light of his lantern, Captain Ellicombe discovered that the dead soldier was his son, who had been a music student in the South. He had enlisted in the Confederate Army without telling his father.
In his son's jacket, he found a scrap of paper on which a staff and 24 music notes had been penciled. Captain Ellicombe's request that his son be given a full military funeral was denied. Instead of a military band, he was allowed one musician, a bugler, who played his son's song at the funeral. Thus, the bugle call Taps came into being, and the tradition of playing it at military funerals and memorial ceremonies began.
This touching story has become an intriguing urban legend--but it's just that, a legend. Unfortunately, like so many legends, it's one with little or no basis in fact. No evidence exists that a Captain Robert Ellicombe ever served in the Union Army of the Potomac. Ironically, cartoonist and author Robert L. Ripley died on May 27, 1949, after filming a segment on the 13th episode of his TV program, "Believe It or Not." The segment was a retelling of the Ellicombe story.
Still Another Version of the Taps Story
This account claims that the song was indeed written by a Butterfield--Milton Butterfield, a Confederate soldier from Alabama. As a bugler on leave at home in Alabama, he regaled relatives and friends with an account of how he had composed "burial music." Following the fall of Vicksburg, he told of being asked to play an appropriate song at the burial ceremony. He demonstrated the song for his family by playing the song he had composed. It turned out to be the song we know today as "Taps."
After Milton Butterfield rejoined his unit, it was sent to Chickamauga, Tennessee, where he served as clerk of the Court Martial Court. In a letter to his family, he reported that a meeting had been arranged under a flag of truce for him to visit with Union General Daniel A. Butterfield. During this meeting, he told General Butterfield of his "burial music." When the general expressed interest in it, he wrote the simple tune on the back of an envelope and gave it to him.
Milton Butterfield, who was attached to a scouting party was killed during the siege of Atlanta and is buried at Stone Mountain, Georgia. As so often happens with legends, substantiating proof in the form of documents, including the letter from Chicamauga, conveniently was destroyed or lost in family moves after the war.
Research Reveals the True Story
Musicologists familiar with the development of military music have traced the development of the 24-note bugle call we know today as Taps. On the surface, the story of Butterfield's creation of Taps seems to be the true history of the origin of the bugle call. The truth is that Butterfield did not compose Taps, but instead merely revised an earlier bugle call.
Taps actually existed in an earlier version of the call Tattoo, used to notify soldiers to stop the evening's drinking and return to quarters. Tattoo was sounded about an hour before the final call of the day to extinguish all fires and lighting devices like candles and lanterns. Tattoo and Taps thus are alterations of the obsolete word "taptoo," derived from the Dutch "taptoe." Taptoe was the command "Tap toe!" meaning to shut the tap of a keg.
The mournful melody actually predates the Civil War. The earliest known version that can be positively identified as Taps is in a tactics manual, A Concise System of Instructions and Regulations for the Militia and Volunteers of the United States, published by Samuel Cooper, later the senior general of the Confederate Army. But Cooper's version was not original. His manual copies, note for note, an entire 1832 French Infantry Manual. Other military manuals that reflect the early origins of Taps are Winfield Scott's , dating from 1835, and William Gilham's of 1860. Gilham was a professor at the Virginia Military Institute. The Scott tattoo was used in the U.S. Army between 1835 and 1860.
Still another clue to the pre-Civil War origins of Taps can be found in a manual published by Elias Howe, inventor of the sewing machine, and entitled The United States Regulation Drum and Fife Instructor. Printed by a number of publishers in Boston in 1861 and 1862, it contained bugle calls "To Extinguish Lights (or Taps)" for the cavalry. And so it seems that the identity of the actual composer of Taps and the date of its authorship are probably lost in the mists of history. But most certainly it was not Daniel Butterfield, who admittedly was not a musician and could not read music, much less write it.
In addition to Miss Bobo, Jay's teacher Hall of Fame (He also has a Teachers' Hall of Infamy, but is sparing you that for now) includes the late William T. Slaughter. An accomplished organist respected for his technically superb and musically inspired renditions of Bach fugues, Mr. Slaughter taught band instruments in all six (!) grades at Aiken Junior and High schools. He was a one-person staff - no assistant teachers back then - ably assisted at the High School by a student staff that included (ta-da!) Jay.
Mr. Slaughter taught all the instruments. Reeds, flutes, percussion and brass. Glockenspiel and timpani, oboe, clarinet and saxophone. French horn and trombone. Maybe he knew and played stringed instruments, too, but he didn't teach them, referring interested students to teachers in nearby Augusta, Georgia.
He gave private lessons in a back room of his house in downtown Aiken, and Jay, who stuck with band from Seventh to Twelfth grades, was one of his students, a half-decent one in his later years. Jay played cornet, the "symphonic" version of the trumpet. At the outset of band class in the Seventh Grade, Mr. Slaughter examined the facial structure of each new student in turn and recommended an instrument that suited them. He probably skewed the choices to what instrumentation the high school band would need three years into the future, but he never let on. Jay's choices were cornet or French horn, the latter of which, Mr. Slaughter warned, was quite difficult to play.
Easy choice, really. Jay took the path of least resistance, with blessings from his father, whose disliked music in general except for the military bugle call "Taps." After an impressively inauspicious start, Jay caught on to getting a sound out of the instrument, moved up to shaky scales and the occasional arpeggio, and kept at it, even practicing occasionally as whim and necessity dictated. When Mr. Slaughter recommended private lessons, Jay's parents footed the bill, and Jay's father even sprung for a silver Conn Connstellation cornet. He'd already bought a baby grand piano that took up much of the livingroom.
Jay's hero list took on new musical entries. Harry James, of course, because he was still the rage in the early Sixties. And Bourbon Streeter Al Hirt, who had popular tunes in the Top Forty of the day.
Jay's love affair with music started even earlier, as his Sainted Mother insisted he have piano lessons. She so wanted to be able to play the piano herself, but didn't take lessons. Instead, she dutifully pursued a mailorder self-study course in which the middle piano keys were numbered on a cardboard overlay. The course ignored basics and moved right into songs. Eventually, she learned to play her favorite piece, "The Merry Widow Waltz," quite well, but after that she stopped studying.
On the other hand, Jay flopped at piano. He learned to read music and count rhythms, but never got the knack of reading both treble and bass clef lines at the same time. When he figured out that he could improvise the music by reading only the treble clef, that was the end of piano studies. After exhausting only two piano teachers, the first being one of his cousins, he got stuck on "Flow Gently Sweet Afton," and gave up, turning his attention to the cornet, which only entailed one clef at a time. He took up piano studies many years later and learned to play a few of his favorite classical pieces - long after giving up all hopes of professional musicianship.
Jay played first chair cornet in the Aiken High School Bands and helping to organize the Pep Band at the University of South Carolinia (slash) Aiken. That was pretty much the end of his career, however - although at the urging of a colleague at the newspaper where he worked, he played hymns and carols with the Salvation Army Band on Main Street a few times. Decades later (see the picture and don't laugh at the hot pink hat), Jay again had delusions of musical adequacy and relearned the cornet, but that episode was cut woefully short by health and other troubles.
