Day is done, gone the sun,
From the lake, from the hills, from the sky;
All is well, safely rest, God is nigh.
If we know the tune at all, we know Taps was written to signal lights out to armies spread across large outdoor encampments. Armies used the bugle because it communicated clearly across great distances. Camping, marching, or fighting, entire armies understood the meanings of the different calls and acted accordingly.
Why is Taps Played on a Bugle?
The earliest horns were just that: horns of large bovines hollowed out and blown through to make sounds. Seaside cultures would have used large conch shells the same way. In 1798, things changed when the brass bugle was invented. It was immediately chosen by militaries everywhere as the ideal instrument for sending short, clear messages to their large armies.
Our bugle comes from the Latin word buculus, a young male bull.
The first bugle was a coiled piece of tubing with a little end where the air goes in and a big one where the noise comes out. Trumpets, essentially bugles with valves, were yet to come. The cavalry’s bugle made sounds without reeds, valves, or slides.
The bugle can play only five different notes and they’re all in how the buglers use their lips. Now I know why the cavalry charge keeps banging away at the same few notes.
Originally, the tattoo was the signal for soldiers to return to quarters and go to bed.
It also told barkeeps to stop serving the soldiers. Later it was played after all the soldiers were already on base and in barracks, with the new meaning “lights out.”
Horns served as purpose-built devices for communication, not for swing bands and hot jazz. Not yet.
Union General Daniel Butterfield gets the credit for writing the tune “Taps” while recuperating from a battlefield wound. Others contend that Butterfield just rearranged a tune already being played at military funerals, and that tune was in turn based upon a French military tune. I’m inclined to go with the French version, because French buglers were bugling ”lights out” to their troops 50 years before the Civil War.
Composer or not, General Butterfield started a trend that went viral and soon everyone was doing it.
I know it means lights out, but why was it named Taps?
Again, more than one explanation. Military historians say it was written to replace the three rifle volleys used to signal “lights out” until someone decided that was wasting ammunition. Musicians favor the percussion theory. It’s based upon the notion that before bugles, military drummers would signal “lights out” with three widely spaced raps as distinct as gunshots. Linguists favor the story that the word “taps” derives from “taptoe*,” a Dutch word that means “close the taps,” the upright handles barkeeps pull to draw draft beers from kegs.
Here’s some bugle calls many of you might know
Reveille is First Call (Prepare to assemble) in the military and Call to the Post at Churchill Downs. Few know that one man has had this Churchill Downs gig for 30 years. Steve Buttleman told Louisville reporters, “When I play the first four notes, that’s all it takes and the crowd just erupts.”
Assembly is the call to gather at a designated place. Every Western movie that had a log fort had at least one call
Charge! is the one we learned either at high school games or from watching Cowboys and Indians and the Cavalry coming to the rescue on television.
—
*Taptoe Through the Tulips was not written by Herbert Khaury.
Bonus
Taps is a sign of respect extended to members of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Coast Guard. Every evening at the Arlington National Cemetery a bugler plays Taps as a tribute to the more than one million everyday people who died for their country before it was a country and ever since. Members of the military come to full attention and hold a salute throughout the playing of Taps.
Did you know?
The Andrews Sisters had a hit with Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy in 1941
