Music Trade Review

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AUGUST 20, 1927
The Music Trade Review
11
Kohler & Chase, San Francisco, Open
School of Piano Playing in Warerooms
School Equipped With Thirty Pianos and Under the Direction of W. J. Knox—R. M.
Perry Made Retail Piano Sales Manager—First Registration Heavy
C A N FRANCISCO, CAL., August 11.—A
school of piano instruction has been opened
by Kohler & Chase: "To teach boys and girls
to play the piano easily and quickly—by the
new Fun Method." The first advertisement ap-
peared last Monday in the Call, the paper which
conducted the Music Week piano playing tour-
nament. In a signed statement, George Q.
Chase, president of Kohler & Chase, stated in
part:
"It was my good fortune to be in close touch
with the Call's piano playing tournament during
its progress and up to its brilliant climax at the
Municipal Auditorium when the
finalists
played before an enthusiastic audience of thou-
sands. 1 was strongly impressed with the in-
tense interest in piano playing among the
younger generation and since then a careful
investigation has convinced me that there are
thousands of young people around the Bay who
would like to play the piano, but have had no
opportunity of starting."
Mr. Chase goes on to say that it seemed to
him appropriate for his firm to make it possible
for these young people, and even the grown-
ups who want to play the piano, to make the
proper start.
To assist in carrying out the piano school
idea, Mr. Chase brought two men to San Fran-
cisco. They are R. M. Perry, who, until July 1,
was General sales manager of the Frederick
Piano Co., of Pittsburgh, Pa., and Professor W.
J. Knox, who, for the past nine years, has used
his new Fun Method of playing the piano for
instruction in the school which he has carried
on in New Orleans. Mr. Perry is now manager
of retail sales for Kohler & Chase and Mr.
Knox is principal of the school which is op-
erated in a large schoolroom on the third floor
of the new Kohler & Chase Building on O'Far-
rell street. The school is equipped with thirty
pianos and with large demonstration black-
boards for diagrams, cardboard charts and sheet
music charts. There is also an able and en-
thusiastic assistant teacher. An entire window
of Kohler & Chase is given up to showing the
school with life-sized wax figures of pupils and
teacher. There are also pianos, benches and all
the other accessories of the school.
Mr. Perry concentrates on the business end
of the school, which he said would naturally in-
terest dealers. Lessons, three to six a month,
are charged at the rate of $3 a month with use
of piano at a Kohler & Chase studio for prac-
tice. If the student has a piano at home, this
fee pays the overhead. If the student has no
piano, one is put in his home, if desired for
$5 a month. This includes tuition fee and the
entire $5 is credited to his piano account. Speak-
ing of piano instruction and selling pianos, Mr.
Perry said that the automobile, if no one could
drive it, would be a dead commodity, and if the
piano industry can make it as easy to play the
piano as it is to drive an automobile, it would
not be hard to get a piano into nearly every
home. Piano sales were good from the outset
of the school.
Registration at the new school was heavy
from the time the advertisement first appeared.
In addition to children, many grown-ups have
joined, especially those between twenty and
twenty-five who can play a little by ear and
want to learn to read music. To-day, the third
day, children who had not known a note when
they joined the school, they stated, were cer-
tainly reading from notes and using both hands.
Some of the entrants are parents, two are daily
newspaper reporters, one is a barber who works
long hours but takes time from his noon hour.
Beside the advertisement on the opening day
was an announcement stating that the Call and
Loew's Warfield Theatre "are proud to pre-
sent" George Howard Riekman and Beatrice
Blass, first and second winners respectively in
the recent piano playing tournament, who had
a week's engagement at the theatre. They were
invited to play in order that the public might
hear what talent had been discovered.
It
would be hard to find anything more calculated
to fire the ambition of other young folks who
aspire to play the piano than to know that the
two winners had professional engagements.
Sherman, Clay & Co., the Wiley B. Allen
Co., J. Raymond Smith Co., the H. C. Hanson
Music House and Lee S. Roberts, Inc., all
showed their good will toward the Kohler &
Chase school by carrying piano advertisements
on the same page.
Recent Convention Was Self-supporting
James J. Black, who acted as treasurer, stated
to-day that the recent Western Music Trades
convention was not only successful, but was
also self-supporting. It paid all its own ex-
penses and provided a small surplus which has
been sent to the new treasurer, Frank Grannis,
of the Southern California Music Co. Speaking
of the Wiley B. Allen Co., for which he is treas-
urer, Mr. Black said that the record business
has shown a substantial increase during the first
six months of the present year over the corre-
sponding period of last year. Public interest
is increasing in the electrically amplified
machines. Frank Anrys, vice-president and
general manager of the Wiley B. Allen Co., and
Lawrence Lindsey have returned from a ten-
day vacation at Lake Tahoe which they spent
in golfing and fishing.
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