"Seventy-Six Trombones" is a show tune and the signature song from the 1957 musical The Music Man, by Meredith Willson, a film of the same name in 1962 and a made-for-TV movie in 2003. The piece is commonly played by marching bands, military bands, and orchestras.[1][2]
In the musical, it is the primary sales pitch for a boy's band, sung by "Professor" Harold Hill.[3] Hill uses the song to help the townspeople of River City, Iowa visualize their children playing in a marching band by claiming to recall a time when he saw several famous bandleaders' bands in a combined performance. While an average-sized high school marching band might have about 10 musicians playing the trombone, and a large college marching band seldom has more than 30 trombonists, the band that Harold Hill describes to the citizens includes 76 trombones, 110 cornets, "more than a thousand reeds", double bell euphoniums, and "fifty mounted cannon" (which were popular in bands of the late 19th century). The song's opening lines are:
Seventy-six trombones led the big parade
With a hundred and ten cornets close at hand ...
The love ballad "Goodnight My Someone", which immediately precedes "Seventy-Six Trombones" in the musical, has the same tune but is played in 3/4 time at a slower tempo. At the end of the musical, lines from "Seventy-Six Trombones" and "Goodnight My Someone" are sung in alternation with each other.[3] This technique is used in opera, but was unknown in Broadway musicals.[3]
In Willson's hometown of Mason City, Iowa, the song is honored (along with the whole plot of The Music Man) in a building called "Music Man Square", which is located next to Willson's boyhood home.[9] In one large room, there are 76 donated trombones hanging from the ceiling.
In Chile, the instrumental march version (with Leroy Anderson's orchestration) was used as a theme song for radio Portales news show La Revista de Portales. It was used because of an earlier use on the news show La bitácora en Portales.[10]