Trying to play your wind instrument with chapped lips can be painful at best and almost impossible at worst. Lip balms like Chapstick are supposed to help, but it still seems like it takes a long time to heal. What if you have a performance tomorrow?

Looking at the photo above, you can see the vertical cracks on the lips. Applying Chapstick stretches those cracks apart causing more injury and prolonging healing time. There must be something that will apply easily and promote healing. Well, I found it many years ago out of desperation.

I was playing principal trumpet in District Honor Band my senior year of high school. We started with a Thursday audition and ended 19 rehearsal hours later with a Saturday night concert. Also, there was an audition that Saturday morning for acceptance into the Music School at the University of Georgia. This audition also determined the music scholarships awarded.

Well, it was January in Raburn County Georgia. The weather that Friday night was about 25 degrees with a 30 mile per hour wind. By the time the night rehearsal was over, I had bright red lips with a red ring around my mouth. I didn’t know what to do. Someone handed me a jar of First Aid Carbolated Vaseline and told me to cake it on several times between then and my audition the next morning. So I did just that, caking it in every two to three hours throughout the night and kept it on all the way to Athens. I removed it in the warmup room about 10:00 that morning and took out my trumpet to warm up. I was shocked! No pain at all and I could play everything needed for my audition. What a relief! The audition went well as I was the top incoming Freshman and was awarded the top dollar scholarship that year! I was also able to return to the Honor Band to rehearse and perform the concert. No question this was the best stuff ever!

I still have that jar of Carbolated Vaseline. But it has run out and started looking for another. Well, Vaseline has quit making it and it is no longer available😕. So through research, I found another product that seems to work as well: Petro-Carbo Medicated First Aid Salve. Click/Touch on the name to order from Amazon. Caution: it stings quite a bit for a minute or two when first applied, but calms down after that. But it’s well worth it for the healing it provides.

So get it to have for those cold windy days for the best healing of chapped lips.

Jay Hutcherson