Classic Mode

Music Trade Review

Issue: 1922 Vol. 74 N. 5

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10
THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
ST. LOUIS PIANO TRADE REFLECTS GENERAL CONDITIONS
Business Shows Improvement in Some Directions, Though Local Dealers Have to Work Hard
to Close Sales—P. E. Conroy Goes South—Several Visitors in Town—Other News
ST. LOUIS, MO., January 31.—The improvement in
business conditions which began to manifest it-
self week before last became a little more pro-
nounced last week, but the development was
marked by a spottiness that was not altogether
reassuring. It was a spottiness which gave the
impression of a lack of firmness in the improve-
ment, but it might also have been a tendency for
the improvement to progress more rapidly at
some points than at others. Clearing sales at
several of the stores, in which used instruments
were offered at bargain prices, helped to stimu-
late the movement, but the success of these was
impaired somewhat by the continuance of real
Winter weather throughout the week. On the
whole there was a more cheerful feeling among
the music merchants, although they had to admit
that they had to work hard for all that they got
and that the improvement left a great deal to be
desired.
Charles W. Houston, of the A. B. Chase Piano
Co., who hit town at the end of the week after
doing Ohio and Indiana, was happy to say that
the reproducing piano business had been stead-
ily picking up since last August and was still at
it, as evidence of which he mentioned that he
picked up three new accounts on the way out.
Most of the business, he said, was in reproducing
grands and straight grands and the condition
was what he would call a good, healthy increase.
From here he went to Kansas City and was
then going to Omaha and through Iowa and
back home.
About this time every year P. E. Conroy,
president of the Conroy Piano Co., flits to Flor-
ida. He flitted Sunday. For the next five weeks
he can be found at the Royal Palm Hotel, Miami.
or basking in the sun on the sands hard by.
H. R. Dickinson, for the past several months
sales manager of the St. Louis Wurlitzer store,
has been transferred to Philadelphia to take
charge of the piano department of the Wurlitzer
store there.
Sidney N. Mayer, of J. & C. Fischer, New
York, came up from New Orleans and other
parts of the South last week and said conditions
down that way were pretty bad. From here he
went to Kansas City.
C. H. Lennox, of Carlin & Lennox, Indianapo-
lis, Ind., spent part of last week in St. Louis
visiting the music merchants and exchanging
ideas.
Albert Price, of the Price & Teeple Piano Co.,
Chicago, was here Tuesday and Wednesday,
starting on a trip through the South. He was
accompanied by Mrs. Price, who was going with
him as far as Little Rock, where she was to
visit relatives.
Robert Conroy, of the Conroy Piano Co., re-
turned a few days ago from New York, where he
had spent two weeks.
J. A. Kieselhorst, proprietor of the Kiesel-
horst Piano Co., at Alton, 111., is having plans
prepared for the erection of a new residence
there.
Fred Lehman, proprietor of the Lehman Music
House, East St. Louis, left last we'ek for Los
Angeles, Cal., to spend a month.
A. B. Furlong, general sales manager of the
Vocalstyle Music Roll Co., Cincinnati, O., spent
two days here last week introducing new rolls.
From here he went to Chicago.
E. Fred Colber, of William Knabe & Sons,
New York, was in St. Louis during the past
week.
Henry C. Lawrence, of Webster Groves, a St.
Louis suburb, was the winner of the $5,000
offered by the Edison organization for the best
Edison slogan. His offering was "The Fireside
Encore of the Artist." The Silverstone Music
Co. added $500 to the prize in recognition of the
winner being in this territory.
The Possibilities of
Continued Success
are greater when you handle instruments
whose reputation for quality and satisfaction
is internationally recognized. Such are the
EST. 1856
BUSINESS FOUNDED IN
EIGHTEEN FlfTY-SIX
S. SON
Pianos and Player-Pianos
which, established in accordance with the ideals of one
of the piano makers of the old school and always manu-
factured by a Decker, embody all the good qualities of
the old combined with those of a new generation.
"Made by a Decker Since 1856"
DECKER & SON, Inc.
697-701 East 135th Street
NEW YORK
FEBRUARY 4,
1922
DEATH OF WILLIAM H. WESER
Brother of Late John A. Weser and W. S. Weser,
of Weser Bros., Passes Away in California—
Not Connected With the Piano Business
Word has just come from Los Angeles to
Weser Bros., Inc., New York, to the effect that
William H. Weser
William H. Weser, who has been in California
for the past few years, has passed away.
The late William H. Weser had not been ac-
tively associated with the piano industry for
quite some time. His last years were spent in
California in an effort to regain his health. He
is survived by a widow and two daughters. His
brother, Winfield S. Weser, is vice-president
and general manager of Weser Bros., Inc.
IMPORTANT CHANGE IN LANCASTER
Business of Kirk Johnson & Co., Inc., Taken
Over By Steinman Hardware Co., and Concen-
trated in Single Store in Lancaster, Pa.
LANCASTER, PA., January 30.—Although the deal
was consummated October 1, 1921, the announce-
ment is just made that the stores of Kirk John-
son & Co., Inc., with headquarters in this city,
have been purchased by the Steinman Hardware
Co., of which Sylvester Z. Moore is president.
Mr. Moore has become president of Kirk John-
son & Co., Inc., and his brother, Adam Z. Moore,
has become treasurer and general manager. Syl-
vester Z. Moore is a prominent attorney of Lan-
caster, president of the Steinman Hardware Co.,
and has other important local interests.
The Lebanon and Coatesville stores have been
closed and the goods shipped to the Lancaster
store, and the Atlantic City store has been sold.
Kirk Johnson & Co., Inc., has been established
since 1884. The beautiful five-story building
now occupied by the company was included in
the transaction. The building was erected ex-
pressly for the piano business, is complete in all
its appointments and is one of the most up-to-
date and best-arranged piano stores to be found
anywhere.
The firm will adhere to the policy of buying on
a strictly cash basis, is said to have substantial
financial backing and will run the business on a
strictly high-class, one-price system. The com-
plete piano lines to be carried are not entirely
decided upon as yet. The Victor line of talking
machines, however, will be handled exclusively,
as will also the Q R S rolls. The company has
also a sheet music department. Kirk Johnson,
formerly president of the company, has retired
from the piano business.
Adam Z. Moore, treasurer and general man-
ager, said: "It is our aim to carry on the busi-
ness on a strictly one-price basis. We aim to
handle a high-class line of goods which we can
stand back of." Mr. Moore also stated that he
was a firm believer that the reproducing piano
would soon come into its own, and thought that
it would only be a short time before this instru-
ment will be sold in a great majority over ordi-
nary player-pianos and uprights.
Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
THE
FEBRUARY 4, 1922
MUSIC TRADE
11
REVIEW
OurTECHNlCAL DEPARTMENT
CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM BRAID WHITE
THE STRINGLESS PIANO
Mr. McCarthy Talks About the Horrors of
Player-piano Maltreatment
"Dear Mr. White: I am wondering what could
take the place of our present-day piano. The
player-piano is going to stay and so is the Vic-
trola. But the way player-pianos are treated,
kept in tune, kept clean, etc., is a disgrace.
Something else should replace the strings, some-
thing that would stay in permanent tune, so that
only the player action should ever need adjust-
ing. Attempts have been made with tuning
forks, but the range is limited—about three to
five octaves. An instrument of this kind, called
the Dulcitone, is advertised as made by Thomas
Machell & Sons, Glasgow, Scotland.
"Something of this kind should be invented for
player-pianos, to resemble in appearance and
tone an ordinary piano, but at the same time to
do away with the heavy structure, while every-
thing else would remain as before. We are now
living at a time when everything is possible, so
why not talk about this now? Yours truly,
Frank McCarthy, New York, N. Y."
Mr. McCarthy need not imagine that his ideas
are without serious importance. There are, in
fact, two sides to the question, and each of
them has its own importance. In the first place,
the player-piano is, of course, a horribly
neglected instrument in most homes. Much
used, it very rapidly falls out of tune, but it is
not more frequently tuned on that account, as
every tuner well knows. The results are, of
course, musically frightful, and it may be ques-
tioned whether the trade realizes how much
harm is done to the whole music industry by this
sad state of affairs. Unkempt, neglected, out-of-
tune player-pianos abound in every town, almost
on every street. Each of them is a constant
and crying advertiser of two facts: (1) That
the piano tuners have not enough work to do,
and (2) that the people are not educated to
what music means.
All joking apart, if a player-piano were on
the market without a keyboard, with tuning-
fork vibrators and with a player mechanism
locked up out of reach, the musical results would
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in and give it a regular tuning. The job can
be done in from one hour to one hour and a
half.
"But I for one will not put a piano up to
pitch without being asked to. The people in
Chicago do not want to pay an extra dollar for
the work. They do not have their pianos tuned
regularly. They have them tuned once every
year or every ten years. So 1 refuse to be the
goat. Respectfully yours, F. J. Schulze, Chi-
cago, 111."
Quite so, Brother Schulze. You are perfectly
right in refusing to be the goat. The people
emphatically do not want to pay a dollar, or
any fraction thereof, for any extra work. They
have the piano tuned only when (a) it refuses
to operate or (b) the neighbors complain. The
remedy, of course, is education, Brother Schulze,
but education is a name for a process which
is at once slow and uncertain. If you do not
believe me, brother, let your mind travel back
over the days when you were at school and an
extraordinary hodge-podge of undigestible data
was being crammed into you by the culture-
forcing machine in which you had been placed
by a wise and benevolent school board. Do you
remember learning anything about tone? Do you
recollect that any one ever got you interested in
the composition of musical sounds, or that you
ever learned one single interesting fact, of any
sort at all, regarding the secrets, the wonderful
and beautiful mysteries of music? You may
have had some so-called "public school music,"
but did that teach you anything about tone, or
tune, or pitch, or temperament, or pianos, or
fiddles, or organs? The answers to these ques-
tions are, I venture to suppose, in the negative.
And there, Brother Schulze, is the trouble.
How can you expect the people, the ordinary
PITCH RAISING
men and women of your great city or of any
Mr. Schulze Declines Justly to Be the Goat
other place, large or small, to know or care
for Stingy Folks!
whether a piano is in tune or out of tune when
they have never had the slightest opportunity in
"Dear Mr. White: I was interested in two childhood to acquire the needed knowledge to
letters from J. M. Bowman and A. D. Chalker. enable them to judge for themselves? You need
In regard to putting pianos up to pitch, there are not expect this, but if you do you will show
many good ways, but I think I have a better way. yourself to be a very sanguine person, indeed.
So I shall put in my two cents' worth, and
The National Association of Piano Tuners
here goes.
will have to agitate for a reform in education be-
"I start with the lower A string and pull that fore it can get very far with any reform of this
up to A sharp, then A sharp to B, B to C, and sort, and the music industries in general will
so on all the way up to the highest C. Then have to join in. Meanwhile, agitate!
when I get the piano up into rough tune I start
Mr. Schulze on Pitch-raising
The method for raising pitch which Mr.
Schulze outlines is, in essential, similar to the
scheme suggested by Mr. Maitland, of Phila-
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delphia, some years ago, to which I have on
more than one occasion adverted. The prin-
ciple on which it is based may be easily under-
8er1es "One Seventy"
stood. The process of raising the pitch of a
A-440. Bb-466.2 and C-528.S
series of strings to the extent of, say, a semi-
(A-435 If desired)
PRICE, 60c. EACH
{Continued on page 12)
probably be less distressing than they usually
are now, despite the fact that the instrument
v/ould not in reality be any sort of a piano. I
do not in the least suppose that the consumma-
tion desired by Mr. McCarthy will be realized,
but some time, with all due respect to my tuner
friends, I wish it were within the bounds of
possibility.
Of course, the idea of a tuning-fork piano is
capable of practical application. The Dulcitone
is a very well-known instrument. Its makers, the
big music house of Machell, in the city of Glas-
gow, have been working on it for many years
and have made it perfectly successful, so far as
I know. I have had the pleasure of reading
the interesting pamphlet in which Messrs.
Machell set forth the evolution of their tuning-
fork vibrators and the striking action which they
developed for them. The Dulcitone is provided
with five octaves of tuning forks, each of which
is attached by a fine steel spring, like a piece
of fine clock-spring, to a sound board. The
action consists of a very ingenious adaptation of
the ordinary movement of the grand piano, being,
in fact, a downstriking grand action, with the
hammers reversed, under the keys, and striking
downward upon the tuning forks. The instru-
ment is small, compact and ingenious. Its tone
is harplike and quite adequate for a small room,
a camp, a yacht or for tropical countries where
ordinary pianos cannot be used.
I have seen other models of "stringless pianos,"
but have not heard of one being in actual practi-
cal use. The Dulcitone, on the other hand, is
well known abroad and much used in tropical
climates and where the ordinary piano cannot
conveniently be used.
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