Photo of the Day: Brass Band CF
This photo shows Brass Band CF and Charles Craver in what Americans call (Arab) “native costume”. As this photo shows, Brass was an exquisite mover. I remember my first afternoon at the Cravers in 1999 (it had been raining in the morning and we had looked at stallions inside the barn, but it had stopped raining after lunch and we’d moved to the little arena next to the barn to turn stallions loose). Brass came out and enjoyed his liberty just like the others, but once Charles had caught him, the routine changed. Charles shook the lead line a bit (I remember no other cue), and Brass started to piaffe. My jaw dropped — flies buzzed in and out — possibly I stopped breathing, I don’t recall. Another quiet request, and he halted.
Wow.
Brass passed away this summer as an old horse up at Kim Davis’ Hawk Hill Farm. He left a handsome young son, HH Solstice Krush out of Sarra Al Krushah.
Anyone could ask him to piaffe, actually, and you could put someone on him bareback and ask for it and he’d give them a thrill.
Ambar–there are no flies in my house in the Apennines today because we’ve just had a glorious snowstorm, but if there were flies in here they would be having a party in my mouth because from the moment I came to the site and saw the photo of Brass Band (whose photos I have followed over the years)my mouth has been open.
Thank you for the photo and your delightful comments and thank you Jeanne for your addendum even though it contained the sad news of Brass Band’s death.
Elena
This is somewhat of the topic of Brassband, but on the topic of Charles Craver and “purist” breeding before he gathered together his herd of Davenport mares and Tripoli.
I stumbled on the fact that Archive.org has archived quite a bit of the old GeoCities content that disappeared when Yahoo shut GeoCities down last year.
Anyway, here is the old article by Carol Lyons:
AN INTERVIEW WITH CHARLES CRAVER: December 1, 1987
KHAMSAT Volume Five, Number One January 1988
Produced for the Khamsat by Carol Lyons
Copyright by Carol Lyons. All rights reserved.
Used by permission of Carol Lyons
at:
http://web.archive.org/web/20010606221710/www.geocities.com/Heartland/Estates/3134/InterviewCarol.html
AW — I have that one here: http://ambararabians.com/geocities/InterviewCarol.html
which means it will be posted to davenporthorses.org in the fullness of time (and due to Darlene Summers’ kind offices!)
Wow
What a horse. I would have loved to see him. Stunning!
I am off to check his pedigree!
Only ONE descendant?
That is heartbreaking. Asking Ed Skinner who his all time favorite mare was and his answer was TYREBAH
At least Brass Band CF left a descendant. That’s something to celebrate. I wish I could say the same of, for example, Catalyst, Parnassus, Monopoli, Major General, Hellas, Pendragon, Triplicate, Alchemist, Terah, Ibn Kamil Salan, Au Contraire, CA Shetaan, HB Aurelio, Hawaii, Illyria, Odalisque, White Jade, Io, Lilac, Challis CF, Chalice CF, Meissen CF, HB Soreia, Platinum CF, Arietta CF, HB Caprice, Remanet CF, and Azalea CF. And there are more that could go on that list.
I scheduled that Interview article to go live on the DAHC site on Dec 26. I guess it didn’t. I’ll fix that now.
As RJ knows, there is not enough space and money in the world to allow each horse to leave progeny. There are tears for so many of those….
I must admit I had never heard about most of them before. Au Contraire is the only one that sounds remotely familiar, and I may have seen a picture of Major General.
Well, I don’t want to bump Dharanad off the front page that fast, but I do have a small photo of White Jade, courtesy of Jeanne, that hints at what was missed. I’ll post it later.
Each one has a story that’s different. Starting at the top:
Catalyst was a successful show horse for Tom Neese and Charles Craver. He broke a leg.
Parnassus was a full brother to Audacity and Florentine who was gelded as a youngster, possibly because his owner felt she had too many stallions.
Monopoli was one of the jewels of Fred Mimmack’s breeding but died from an accident as a young horse.
Major General was a riding horse and companion for Judith Franklin for years. Late in his life an attempt was made to breed foals from him, but nothing resulted.
Hellas was a beautiful golden chestnut shown in dressage and jumping. After Joyce Hampshire died, he went to a new owner and died of colic one winter.
Etc.
Chalice CF and Meissen CF actually do have the same story. They both died in an accident that resulted from the emergency evacuation of Craver Farms in 1993 due to the flooding of the Illinois River.
The real story of that flood evacuation, of course, is that almost all the 100+ horses were saved.
There were, blush, 168 head at the time of the 1993 flood. We were able to move close to 90 mares to a big long cattle pasture in the hills not many miles away from the old farm. One night they were spooked by something: cattle, deer, coyotes, and stampeded. Chalice and Meissen broke their necks; Chinoiserie broke her back, leaving only her son Clarion.
In addition, Domina had ribs broken, Wisteria’s mother HB Wadduda had her skull badly fractured, and Aureole had a shoulder paralyzed. These three were saved, however.
It was the worst day of our lives. Chalice and Meissen were two of the very best Haifiyah fillies we ever bred.
Jeanne,
I am so sorry to hear about Brass Band’s passing. I remember Charles on board just before we left for the trip to the airport to send me back to Detroit. He hadn’t been under saddle all that long, but he was still terrific to watch.
They are too soon gone.
Karen
It seeing the picture that breaks my heart. The others are just names, not knowing them.
That’s a perfectly honest reaction, Christine.
It does raise the question of how many foals a horse needs so as not to be heartbreaking. Two? Ten? Fifty?
Perhaps the answer is different for different horses. Owners of the descendants of Bint Dharebah might argue, and indeed at least one of them has, that she was so successful as a broodmare that she was the only foal Monsoon needed to sire to leave his mark on Davenport breeding.
Brass Band CF had a beautiful dark bay sister named Cloisonne CF. Joyce Hampshire told me that when Cloisonne got off the trailer on arriving at Upland Farm, “she was so beautiful it gave me chills.” Unless Cloisonne’s daughter (now rising 20) turns up somewhere, Cloisonne will have left nothing at all to Davenport breeding.
I saw Brass Band for the first time as a yearling in 1984, later watched Charles Craver start working with him under saddle, and in the 1990s had the opportunity to ride Brass myself. I am grateful that Brass had the opportunity to leave a foal.
Brass and Cloisonne had another full sister: Cinnabar CF. Cinnabar was just as wonderful, but a bit different from her siblings. She had three sons and three daughters, and has at least 20 registered descendants to date. Her two living sons are available at stud in Texas and Illinois, and her daughters are just now old enough to be producing.