KARL SCHUESSLER 1915-2005
As a teenager Karl was playing engagements with Evansville Indiana professional bands. At fourteen he was too young to drive, so when music stopped at The Bloody Bucket (a speakeasy) Karl’s older sister picked him up and drove home. He worked with, among others, Fred Rollison’s band during the late 20’s and into the mid 30’s. Fred was an Evansville cornet player who recorded early at Gennett Records with Hitch’s Happy Harmonists. When Bix Beiderbecke left the Wolverines for Jean Goldkette’s Orchestra, Fred travelled to New York City and auditioned for the cornet chair. Nogo. Jimmy McPartland got the gig. (Fred returned to Evansville, led a popular band, and ultimately had a long career in radio.)
Karl told me that his parents fully expected him to attend a Music Conservatory and then pursue a career, playing clarinet in a Symphony Orchestra. Instead he matriculated to Evansville College for undergraduate study and then University of Chicago for graduate work. Except for an interlude in the early 40’s, helping out the US Navy, Karl spent the next forty years in Academia with the Indiana University Department of Sociology.
After his stint with the USN, accompanying assault landings in both North Africa and later the South Pacific, he joined the Indiana University Sociology Department faculty . During his long tenure he was Chairman of the Department, authored a seminal text, earned a Fessschrift while in Germany, and provided decades of excellent instruction in the field. Karl was known for asking prospective candidates of the Sociology Department, during job interviews, what instrument they played.
Karl wrote home, during WW2, instructing his father to sell his instruments. Several decades later, he bought a Selmer clarinet from Rone Music so he could play with the Faculty Five. The instrumentation at that time was Dick Bishop on drums (later George Gaber), F. Reed Dickersen on trumpet, Dean Fraser on helicon and vocals, Karl on clarinet, and Elmer Sulzer (later Frank Gillis) on piano. When the trumpet chair opened up, in 1973, I began playing with the group and so met Karl and Frank. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
(J. Ost)