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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
JANUARY 2, 1926
9
How the Windsor-Poling Go. Turns Music Prestige Into Sales—(Continued from page 7)
Machine Co. and traveled the State of Ohio,
selling records and representing the varied in-
terests of that concern. Month by month, he
made such payments as he could on the debt
back there in Cleveland. Even after his enlist-
ment he kept up those payments—paid 'em out
of his army pay.
On the day he sailed for France the last dol-
lar he owed in Cleveland was paid and the debt
was wiped out. He went into the War broke,
but happy.
When finally the army brought him back
home again he looked for a place to go to work.
His traveling had given him an insight into
hundreds of cities, and he selected Akron, O.,
as being a city with a real opportunity. So, in
Akron he opened a phonograph store, having
arranged for local business men to furnish the
money and occupy all the titled positions.
He started remodeling and painting and mean-
while went to New York to arrange for a line
of credit. "We never heard of your partners,
and we don't know much about Akron," the
manufacturers told him, "but we do know you."
The record he had made in paying up that old
indebtedness in Cleveland stood him in good
stead now.
So, the opening day was set and the manage-
ment appropriated $5,000 for the first month's
advertising. But a bit of last-minute caution
on Poling's part led him to whittle down that
$5,000 one-fifth and to save the other $4,000 to
buy additional merchandise with, as it should
be needed.
Poling doesn't believe in bargain sales. "The
department stores are realizing that 'sales' won't
draw the public any more," he says. "Just now
the big stores are featuring toilet goods at cut
prices, but even that won't bring in customers
forever. There's no substitute for honest values
and hard selling."
That his ideas were correct is evidenced by
the fact that to-day he owns his business out-
right, having bought out his partners. His sales
have grown until to-day he is probably Akron's
largest distributor of phonographs and records.
And, as he says, there's no magic in it. Any
music store, in any town or city, can do what
he has done.
Is there money in all this for Poling? There
ought to be, for he works hard enough. But
along with the excitement and the fun of stag-
ing operas and handshaking with New York
concert stars Poling doesn't forget that he's a
retailer, first and last and all the time. He's
working now to build up his retail sales so that
he can open a second store, or a chain of musi-
cal department stores.
It was Mr. Poling who succeeded in selling
to Marjorie Barkley McClure, the prominent
authoress, of Fairlawn, O., a Bush & Lane re-
prodscing piano with the multi-control feature
that prompted the purchaser to express her en-
thusiasm in the following eloquent letter, sent
to William F. Clevey, sales manager of the
Bush & Lane Co.:
My Dear Mr. Clevey:—At this very moment my piano is
concluding a program of eight rolls that arrived from your
department a few hours ago, and am swept so high upon
the towering waves of sheer sound beauty that I must
express to you—to somebody—my delight in this instru-
ment.
•When I look back to last June and remember the day I
heard of the Bush & Lane Welte-Mignon (Licensee) Re-
producing Piano with multi-control—quietly, without her-
alding of trumpets or superlative adjectives—I do not
wonder that, at the time, I thought my informant must
be mistaken. It did not seem possible that this idea could
be incorporated in the wood and metal of an instrument,
made in my own Michigan, and I not know it.
I had wanted a reproducing piano for so long! I had
looked and inquired but always I knew that in my ex-
ceedingly busy life I would be annoyed 'by the need to
manipulate the rolls. When my mood is for music I want
to forget myself in it, forget the mechanism and have it go
on and on while I dream or think, read or write, uncon-
scious of the machinery that controls the action. To have
to rise after each roll and exchange it for another would
be, for me, a blemish on the joy of it. So I had waited,
letting the hunger go unappeased and then, that June day
I heard through the Bush & Lane Piano Co. of the Multi-
Control.
It was not long after it was installed in our living-room
that I went to Neahtawanta, Mich,., for a brief holiday.
Highest
Quality
I heard at once that Dorothy Miller Duckwitz was there in
her Summer studio, that she was reading my novel, "High
Fires," and wanted to meet me. Through mutual friends
she invited me to an informal musical and I went, eager
to hear her interpretations of Debussy.
Perhaps you, too, have visited that Summer studio and
know the charm of its sylvan simplicity—-set among pines
on the shore of the bay, its walls natural wood, its ceiling
the very roof itself, and everywhere in the shaded light,
as pervasive as sunshine, the bowls and flowers, scarfs and
hangings of goldenrod yellow.
There are windows framed in cretonne and doors wide
open to the Summer life, but the great grand piano of
mirror ebony with its bright orange scarf is the central
point of interest.
I had known of Dorothy Duckwitz a long time but I had
not known she played for the Welte-Mignon, and when I
saw, the first thing almost in her room, your small monthly
booklet with her picture on the cover, I knew we had an
especial bond.
She played Debussy for me as I had dreamed of hearing
it The glorious Prelude from the suite Pour Le Piano;
the ripple of water about the prow of the boat in En
Batteau; the captivating, haunting Cortege. She played
me Chopin, too, and many of the masters, but it is these
Debussy records that have come to-day, that are peculiarly
dear to me. As the Prelude pours in lovely cadences from
the keyboard, played with every tiniest detail as perfectly
as if Mrs. Duckwitz's hands were doing it again and again
herself, I am thrilled to my very depths. All her expres-
siveness is there exactly as it was in August when I lis-
tened in her studio. And the music brings back the scene
—that land of the sky-blue water where majestic cloud
ships sail above the bay and lay their silver shadows
on the sunlit blue. I can hear the wind that murmurs
through the pines and see the dance and shimmer of the
birch trees' leaves, for the wind touches trees as variously
as life touches* people, it seems to me. Some weep like
the pine, and some sing like the birch When it dances in the
sun.
Here in my living-room, this dark Fall day, my Bush &
Lane Welte-Mignon (Licensee) reproducing piano with
Multi-Control brings me these priceless beauties. I press
eight buttons in a row and sink into a dreaming chair.
Then song begins, song that is the soul, the heart, the
pain and joy of the human kind. Had I the gift of a
Shelley I could write a second "Skylark," but since prose is
my medium I want to believe that in this next book I am
beginning now, something of the glorious sweep and passion
of this music may be echoed. For me, as I write, Conradi
pours out the poignant brilliance of the Moskowski Etude;
for me Grieg himself plays his exquisite Butterfly and Olga
Samaroff, whose mastery of the pjano is one of life's
achievements, gives me the weird, wild harmonies of Peer
Gynt.
I believe you will understand that this letter is prompted
by gratitude. Our days are too prone to be ticked away
on the pendulum of the commonplace, and an instrument
such as this Bush & Lane Welte-Mignon (Licensee) repro-
ducing piano with the Multi-Control that stands ever ready
to lift the human spirit to the heights, is a possession so
priceless that money cannot measure its worth. I love it,
and I want you to know it.
Yours always sincerely,
(Signed)
MARJORIE BARKLEY MCCLURE.
[Marjorie Barkley McClure is the author of "High Fires"
that was a best seller of 1924, and of "A Bush That
Burned," published in September of this year by Minton,
Balch & Co. The New York Times in praising this second
novel expresses gratitude that the scene, as in "High Fires,"
is set in the drawing-rooms of nice people. _ Her prin-
cipal characters are men and women of breeding and cul-
ture and all through her work as in the following letter, is
expressed a passion for beauty, for the high moments
of the heart and mind, that make her praise valuable be-
cause it comes from one who has already demonstrated
her ability to discriminate.]
As has already been stated, there have been
established in Ohio alone during the past few
months nineteen new Bush & Lane representa-
tives, among them what are considered the
cream of the retail trade as a State. These
new dealers, without exception, have proven en-
thusiastic not only regarding the business propo-
sition to the dealer that is offered by the Bust*
& Lane Co., but also the products of the com-
pany offered in a range to meet a great variety
of tastes from the straight upright to the repro-
ducing grand.
Those who are inclined to see the passing of
the upright, but whose beliefs have already been
proven unfounded, will be interested in learning
that this instrument is a particularly important
factor in the Bush & Lane line with an appeal
both to the dealer and particularly to the cus-
tomer, growing out of the development of a tone
quality that is the result of the efforts of the
company itself and which remains exclusive with
it. Then there is an unusually wide range of
models and sizes in the uprights, grands, the
Cecilian players and the reproducing instru-
ments utilizing the Welte-Mignon (Licensee)
reproducing action, together with the exclusive
Multi-Control feature found in the Bush & Lane
products, which provides for the playing from
a control station more or less distant from the
piano of as many as eight rolls in whatever
order desired and without any other effort than
the pressing of a button.
While the Bush & Lane products have by
their own appeal aroused the enthusiasm of the
new dealers in Ohio as they have in other sec-
tions of the country the full share of credit is
T
ONKRENCH
due to Leslie I. King, wholesale representative
of the company in Ohio, who is not only a hard
worker but an ingrained Bush & Lane en-
thusiast.
New Home for Winter Go.
PAINESVILLE,
O.,
December 26.—The Winter
Piano Co., of Erie, Pa., has leased a store in the
McMillan Block on North State street, which
will be utilized as a branch music house. Hun-
ter Darling, who will act as local manager,
states that the Winter concern plans to locate
here permanently and that the quarters will be
remodeled after the Christmas holidays. The
lines of pianos to be carried will include the J.
& C. Fischer, the Francis Bacon, the Foster
and Winter & Sons.
Buys Bellinger Store
WATERTOWN, N. Y., December 28.—J. M. Schaf-
fer, of Gloversville, has recently purchased the
music store of Frederick S. Bellinger, in the
Paddock Arcade, this city, and will operate the
business in the future. Mr. Schaffer announced
that he will enlarge the store and will handle
pianos, phonographs and small goods.
Consult the Universal Want Directory of
The Review. In it advertisements are inserted
free of charge for men who desire positions.
Pratt Read
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