The Perfect Tuba: Forging Fulfillment from the Bass Horn, Band, and Hard Work

by Sam Quinones

From National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author Sam Quinones, the story of a demanding instrument, the determined people who play it, and the hope they offer a fractured nation.

The tuba's sound is mighty, emerging, it seems, from deep in the human body. Very little music has, up until recently, been written to play to its strengths. The best the tuba seems to promise is a seat at the back of the band. No stadium shows, no Internet adulation. And yet, this horn--the youngest of all brass instruments--has captured the hearts of an inspired group of musicians ever since its invention in 1835.

In The Perfect Tuba, Sam Quinones embarks on a trek to get to know American tubists. He tells the astounding stories of two men who set out to replicate the “perfect tuba,” an instrument made by York & Sons in the 1930s and never since equaled; of Big Bill Bell, whose 1950s album rearranged the tuba landscape; and of Arnold Jacobs, a tuba guru at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, who studied the physiology of breathing and offered rune-like nuggets of wisdom to his legions of students. Quinones also takes us through the tuba scenes of New Orleans, Orlando, Knoxville, New York City, and, most importantly, Roma, Texas, a dusty town in the Rio Grande Valley where a visionary high school marching band director fashioned a program that now regularly wins state championships and sends its students off to college.

After nearly a decade on the front lines of America's battle with drug addiction, Sam Quinones delivers another story of our nation, this time brought together by the transformative power of shared joy and humble achievement.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, History, Biography Memoir

384 pages, Hardcover

Published September 30, 2025

About the author

Sam Quinones is a long-time journalist and author of 3 books of narrative nonfiction.

He worked for the LA Times for 10 years. He spent 10 years before that as a freelance journalist in Mexico.

His first book is True Tales from Another Mexico: The Lynch Mob, the Popsicle Kings, Chalino and the Bronx, published in 2001, a collection of nonfiction stories about drag queens, popsicle-makers, Oaxacan basketball players, telenovela stars, gunmen, migrants, and slain narco-balladeer, Chalino Sanchez.

In 2007, he published Antonio's Gun and Delfino's Dream: True Tales of Mexican Migration. In this volume he tells stories of the Henry Ford of velvet painting, opera singers in Tijuana, the Tomato King of Jerez, Zacatecas, the stories of a young construction worker heading north, and Quinones' own encounter with the narco-Mennonites of Chihuahua.

His third book was released in 2015. Dreamland: the True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic recounts twin tales of drug market in the 21st Century. A pharmaceutical company markets its new painkiller as "virtually nonaddictive" just as heroin traffickers from a small town in Mexico devise a system of selling heroin retail, like pizza. The result is the beginning of America's latest drug scourge, and the resurgence of heroin across the country.

The book has received rave reviews in Salon.com, Christian Science Monitor, Wall Street Journal, American Conservative, Kirkus Review, and National Public Radio.

Amazon readers gave Dreamland 4.7 stars and called it "a masterpiece" and "a thriller."

"I couldn't put it down," said one. Said another: "This book tells one of the most important stories of our time."

Following Antonio's Gun, the San Francisco Chronicle called Quinones "the most original American writer on Mexico and the border out there."

He has done numerous Skype sessions with book groups that have chosen his books to read.

Quinones also writes True Tales: A Reporter's Blog, at his website, http://www.samquinones.com.

For several years, he has given writing workshops called Tell Your True Tale. Most recently the workshops have taken place at East Los Angeles Public Library, from which have emerged three volumes of true stories by new authors from the community.

For more information, go to http://www.colapublib.org/tytt/.

Reviews

[Kieran · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m not a musician, but luckily that isn’t required of the reader. This book is a collection of stories about tuba players, makers, sellers, and lovers, and about band directors and music educators. Each story honors the passion and discipline that goes into playing great music, and the community that forms around it. On the cover, it’s about a pair of tubas known as “the perfect tubas.” But inside, it’s really about art, creativity, passion, and the sacrifice that creates something beautiful.

Some of the best books I’ve encountered in my adult life were consumed in airports during travel delays, and this fits that mold. Maybe there’s just something about sitting in a plane on the ground for multiple hours, but I’m pretty sure this is a really great book.

[Jeffrey · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a great quote in here: "Strangeness is your friend; sameness is your enemy."

I didn’t expect a book about tuba players to articulate the struggle against Modernity so succinctly.

[Anna Moberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really loved this book. I am not a tuba player, but played in band from elementary school to high school. This book is more than about the tuba, it is about band and music education and the tuba. It had me really wanting to take out my own instruments and play.

[Michael Holtz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was a tuba player in junior high and high school. I’m also a fan of Sam Quinones’s previous works on the opioid crisis. His storytelling is compelling and I enjoyed reading about the quest to recreate the York sound set against the growth of band and tuba in Texas. Makes me want to find a tuba of my own and relearn to play.

[Jerzy · Rating 5 out of 5]

p.13: "They also showed me the connection between what kids learn playing the tuba and what they learn in band: focus, patience, perseverance, and sacrifice, all through working with others, yet without so much of the glory, and perhaps without the privilege, accorded to athletes. Maybe that's what made band and the tuba fundamentally healthy pursuits---you did it because you learned that you loved it."

p.44, about a legendary teacher of band directors at VanderCook College of Music: "The sum total of H. E. Nutt's more than forty years of musical life was contained in two hundred pages, now conserved online, each page concisely packed with his accumulated wisdom regarding band and choral directing, or fingering tests for saxophone and clarinet, or '101 discussion topics for band clinics'..."

This seems to be that archive: "The H.E. Nutt Papers (VanderCook College of Music)", via the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI).
I should certainly look over these, as I try to teach my own kids' middle school band with no formal training as a band director myself...

p.71: Mentions another book, Rhapsody in Red: How Classical Music Became Chinese, which sounds fascinating.

[Justin Weis]

A rambling somewhat biographical narrative not only about the York CC tubas, but people important to the tuba world and really the band world at large. I think this is a pretty optimistic outlook on our field from a rambling Atlantic-style writer, whose main expertise is writing about the opioid crisis.

To say that tuba playing (or learning music) is the opposite of addiction (i.e., requires delayed gratification, hard work, patience) neglects all the tuba players who are serious alcoholics, though he briefly mentions that, or the brutal competition and audition circuits, which leave many on different careers paths, lives sidelined or ruined because of a near-psychotic commitment to achieving one of maybe 20 positions amongst a field of hundreds.

All that said, I definitely took inspiration from the stories about the professional players who had something to say and loved doing their craft. I've read Song & Wind, but it's probably a good time to revisit that.

Frankly, I would have loved a bit of a "crunchier" book about instrument development, but understand that such a book would not be widely marketable.

TL;DR, if you're not a musician, this is an acceptable, if not optimistic, introduction into the world of low brass.

[Julien Denis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started out with mixed feelings on this book and generally this topic because it's so unique. Just like one of the main lessons of this book, the delayed gratification of it's conclusion was well worth it. I think the author did a good job finding and sharing so many unique individual stories while balancing the timeline and theme very well. Starting with the lore of the "perfect tuba" then intertwining it with people's stories.

Quinones has written mostly about the opioid epidemic and I appreciated his well timed tie backs to how a seemingly mundane topic about a brass instrument is actually representative of something larger. How in a world of instant gratification, the strongest of passions come from long and hard work with postponed gratification. I really liked page 305 where he references the irreplaceable knowledge that comes with a lifetime worth of tiny steps and trial and error to slowly hone a skill. This relates to me in so many areas as I grow and try to find myself in this world.

Also fun anecdote, I was at a very small antique sale looking at woodworking hand tools and there was a man selling brass instruments, mostly trumpets. He starts chatting us up and was teasing us about buying one. Obviously I was never going to buy one but told him I was reading this book. We chat a bit more and it turns out he works for the manufacturer that bought Zig's tools here in Kansas City! (this was before I got to the part in the book that said Zig's tool were sold to a company in KC also). Outside the themes and motifs of this book, reading about tubas was well worth it because I got to relate and met someone I would've never before.

[Jim Becker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating. I read his previous book titled Dreamland. He is just a very good writer. Fascinating quirky book. I loved it especially since I played trumpet in marching band when I was in high school. Very good read. Hopeful.

[Trena · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book highlights not just the tuba but awesome band directors. High school band directors
work tirelessly. They provide kids with community. Kudos to Sam Quinones for spotlighting these unsung heroes.

[Susan Hyde · Rating 4 out of 5]

Inspirational dedication of tuba players and school/college band conductors have benefited so many young lives. And the tuba - what a foundation for orchestras and bands!

[Katherine Van Halst · Rating 2 out of 5]

Comparing tuba players to the civil rights movement (twice!!) is crazy work.
It doesn't happen often, but since I started working in libraries, every time a book with a tuba on the front comes across my desk I check it out. I've been playing the tuba for over half my life, and I find every opportunity to enjoy a book on such a niche subject alluring. And while there were red flags from the very beginning, I found this one, overall, to be interesting. It put a lot of history in context that you sort of just pick up here and there while studying music, and I think it touched on some really worthwhile conversations.
However, I just can't get behind the overall framing of the book, or really how the story of tuba culture in the US was told. My first indication was the flowery language with which the author writes about tubists. Tuba players are just people, and not even people in a particularly naturally selfless or heroic line of work. Describing them-- us, I suppose, though I didn't feel in any way included in this storytelling-- as heroes is off-putting at best.
Perhaps the most frustrating thing is the complete erasure of women from this story. Trust me when I say I KNOW that low brass is and has always been a boys club. So I understand that for a long time there were not any women tuba greats to write about. I expect you to acknowledge that. I expect you to acknowledge WHY. But even has he moved forward in history, women continued to only be mentioned very sparingly, and only because they were students of these men (which also framed their accomplishments as belonging to those men). He even wrote about current young people playing the tuba-- any girls? Haha, that's so funny, OF COURSE NOT.
I also expect you to write about those male tuba greats with some kind of nuance that recognizes that these dudes kind of sucked as people. Depending on who we're talking about, they were selfish, elitist, borderline abusive to students, anti-social, sexist. The culture was built in environments where women and people of color were either unwelcome, unsafe, or both. So to venerate these men with no mention of any of that... yeah I didn't love it. And I think it lent itself to perhaps the worst quality this book has to offer: the presentation of tuba players as an oppressed class.
You read that correctly. Sometimes I feel like men want to be oppressed so badly they'll just make up any excuse. This is where the phrase 'tuba civil rights movement' came into play, which is so unnecessarily dramatic I gasped out loud both times I read it. And the thing is, I understand the basis for this assumption. In order to be excellent, even just to be good, at the tuba, you have to rise above the fact that no one expects very much. You usually have no one to compare yourself to, no one asks you to do anything difficult, when you're not a very good musician it's sort of accepted as typical. But we aren't relegated to the back of the band as some kind of diss, that's where our sound fits best. Tuba parts aren't just 'easy' they're foundational, and playing them in a way that truly supports the ensemble takes a lot of skill. Not to mention the fact that you LITERALLY CANNOT BE OPPRESSED FOR A HOBBY YOU CHOSE TO PICK UP.
I could say a lot more but I won't. The stuff about instrument design and creation? Interesting. The timeline of creation of tuba culture in the US? Interesting. The individual impact of playing tuba on people's lives? Interesting! The way the book was framed and written? Really disappointing.

[Stephanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a love letter to music and musicians, school bands and their directors, music teachers and their students, and the much maligned and often underrated tuba. The tuba, it turns out, is the rhythm and soul of a band or an orchestra. If the tuba is off, the whole ensemble is off. It takes a certain person to play a tuba; a person who does not want to be the center of attention, who doesn't want to be rich or famous, a person who probably couldn't afford to buy or rent an instrument in school so was directed to a free, big brass instrument bolted to a desk. It's a quirky, historically "new" instrument with an outsized sound, form, and weight — an instrument that frequently chooses people rather than people choosing it. For those who play it, it's often a means to self awareness, confidence, and belonging.

You definitely feel the passion for the tuba in this book, even if the narration hops around a bit. We are invited into the tuba kingdom, aka "tubadom". We get to know well-known tuba teachers/evangelists, famed tuba musicians ("tubists"), tuba designers and manufacturers, and valiant public school band leaders who create community and change teen lives for the better. Any school superintendent who reads this book may finish it realizing the extreme important of music (and the arts) in schools and immediately dig up the funding for it. The arts, along with the standard school curriculum, build a whole person who thinks expansively, expresses their hopes and fears, and perhaps most importantly, strives for something bigger than themselves. If a tuba can help do that, then let's bolt more to student desks.

[Mary Gersemalina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quinones writes a history and an homage to the tuba and it was so much fun to read about. This book is a song to the people so taken by the instrument that it became central to their existence as both instrument and craft - for a period of time or for a lifetime. The book does seem to try to do too much at times, as it connects us to the areas and the people so influenced by the instrument. The Perfect Tuba is at its best when describing the York tubas, their unique sound, and the zealous quest to recreate it, as well as the rise of the tuba players and bands (and band teachers) in Texas. The growing wave of bands' and their communities' commitment to excellence despite challenges of race, class, and geography. It was really good stuff that took me back to my own connections to music, and instrument, and my favorite band teachers who believed in our potential. It also reminded me of the fleeting singular feeling that happens when the band's players merge into one sound. That is magic. Cheers to the band teachers everywhere who lift us up and to those who play for the love of it. Quinones' book shows that our society does not value the arts to the point where most people can make a living through music, though there were moments in time where it was more possible.

[Drtaxsacto · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an odd book for me. I have a friend who I have coffee with on Fridays and he is a tuba player. I also have come to enjoy Norteno music which often has a tuba as part of the ensemble. I found Quinones' book online and it turned out to be an interesting cul-de-sac. The book traces the history of the Tuba and then presents some interesting stories about how the Tuba actually works and what defines a "perfect" tuba. Finally if offers vignettes of major tuba players (Tuba Fats and others who I actually saw in the Sacramento Jazz Festival) and band directors who developed great tuba players. I especially liked the chapters on the niche in the Rio Grande Valley where the tuba became a place to promote opportunities.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve probably never thought about the tuba more than five minutes in my life. Although the author refers to his book as an “admittedly strange project,” The Perfect Tuba almost literally blew me away. Wow.

•••••

“Kids will rise to the level you set. If you set it low, they’ll get there. If you set it high, they’ll get there—you just don’t tell them it’s hard.”

“If you care a lot about what things cost or how much time they take, you don’t do anything that’s fun or interesting.”

“We all come to be who we are as the result of a lifetime of experience that others can’t fully comprehend.”

“When they get to experience (a sense of discipline in their lives), it gives them purpose and they become motivated with that purpose.”

•••

4.5⭐️

[Marc · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting detailed delving into a subculture of the Tuba and the inspiring effect learning the instrument and participating in band in general gives to student and oldsters alike. Found the part about the concentration of tuba players in Florida courtesy of Disneyworld employment in the 80s and 90s interesting which of course as all things when the suits get involved, ended. Some of the themes got a bit repetitive but still worth a read to enjoy people obsessed with a passion for something even if not really of interest to you.

[Steve Mochel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sam has a unique gift in telling stories, both heartwarming and heartbreaking, in such a way that really makes you feel like you’ve known these people personally all your life.

If you were in band at anytime of n you life, you will love this book.

If you have a passion in your life that no one else understands, you will love this book.

If you need a little balm for your soul in these troubled times, you’ll love this book.

And who knows, you may just find YOUR Perfect Tuba.

[Alicia Wolff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tuba Woodstock? ✅
Tuba Christmas? ✅
A home addition meticulously constructed to result in the perfect tuba acoustics? ✅

New-to-band kids: “I wanna play the trumpet!”
Tuba: “Hold my beer”.

This read explores the mighty Oom-pah-pah of the low brass instrument. From Illinois to Texas and LA, learn how the tuba, and music education through marching band, impacts lives.🎶💕

[Marie Raffl · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book ! I have previously enjoyed Sam's books and am delighted that he has seen the transformative power of music . I am not a musician but I can appreciate music. I really enjoyed reading about the Chicago connections, Chicago Symphony's tubas, VanderCook School of Music and the Indiana U school of Music. This book reads like a series of short stories.

[Peter McDermott · Rating 5 out of 5]

The kind of creative non-fiction America does so well. I've never read Quinones' drug policy books -- because drug policy is my thing and you've read one book on the opioid crisis, you've read them all. But this book was fantastic. I have no interest in brass bands or tuba but Quinones brings to life a whole new world of obsessive people who make the world a better place.

Loved it.

[Joshua Claytor · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought sam wrote mainly about the opioid epidemic and that's on me that is what I am familiar with from him. however this book made me laugh cry inspired me and reminded me of friends that I have lost in the tuba world. must read not just for tuba players.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

My favorite line: "The only instrument that uses more air than the tuba is the flute". This book is a series of loosely connected articles about tuba making, playing, school band programs, music education in America, and marching band.

[Steven Holmberg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely about the tuba, but would be interesting to any artist, especially anyone who ever played in band! Big focus on music education, plus everything you ever wanted to know about tuba history in the United States. Done through intimate stories of people and places.

[Cindy McCormick]

The perfect book for tuba lovers! A charming story of the tuba and the folks who play them. Engaging and fun!

[Jerry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes, 5 stars for a book about tubas!!!

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have a great appreciation for music and musicians. Wish I had a better understanding of instruments and instrumentation.