A while back I wrote a post marking the 11th year that I have been in charge of this site. I refer to it as curating because a lot of the content on the site comes from and features other places on the internet. I also encourage fellow baritone saxophonists to submit and provide content as much as possible. Quite a bit of the biographical information on this site pre-dates my time at the helm.
According the venerable Way Back Machine, also known as the internet archive, the earliest incarnation of this site was captured on January 29th, 1999 – Exactly 20 years ago today! So happy birthday JazzBariSax.com!
For fun you can check out what the site looked like when it started:
https://web.archive.org/web/19990129031403/http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Delta/8586/
And here is what it looked like 11 years ago after I took it over and established it at the current domain, jazzbarisax.com:
https://web.archive.org/web/20091019002804/https://www.jazzbarisax.com/
The earliest I can remember visiting this website is sometime when I was in High School. I had great teachers, but I did not have access to a teacher that was a dedicated baritone saxophonist so this site really let me explore the world of the baritone, and I was thrilled to be able to take over and continue its work.
The site still receives hundreds of visits daily, and transcriptions from the repository have been downloaded over 200,000 times! I have been very gratified to learn and be told that many young baritone saxophonists enjoyed this site and learned about some of the greatest baritonists for the first time here. I don’t update daily or even weekly but I hope to keep this site alive, and available for all baritone saxophonists around the world to learn about the King of All Instruments.
Here’s to another 20 years,
Andrew Hadro
Curator, JazzBariSax.com
