PRESTO
December 15, 1923.
CHRISTMAN
"The First Touch Tells
9 9
PASSING OF THE
ANECDOTAL ERA
Veteran Traveler Recalls Incidents of a Joy-
ous Period When the Raconteur Added
Gaieties to Trade While Talking For
His Line.
REGRETS LOST ART
Claims All the One-Time Good Yarn-Spinners Have
Changed Into Good Listeners and He Names
a Few.
The Christman
Electrically Operated
Reproducing
Grands and Uprights
Meet the Most Exacting Require-
ments of the Most Critical. To be
Satisfactory the Reproducing Piano
must be the best representation of the
Piano Maker's Skill.
The Christman is recognized as the
very highest type of the most ad-
vanced development of the Reproduc-
ing Piano. It has no superior and it
is representative of the
Entire Christman Line
There is no other line that surpasses
this one, and none in which high qual-
ity and popular characteristics blend
in a like degree, to the profit of the
dealer in fine instruments.
CHRISTMAN
Studio Grand
Only 5 Feet Long
It was the CHRISTMAN GRAND that
first demonstrated the truth that size has
nothing to do with the depth and resonance
of a Grand Piano's tone.
Built with a careful eye to the exacting
requirements of the space at the command
of city dwellers and owners of small houses,
the CHRISTMAN GRAND combines every
essential that wins for the grand piano first
consideration in the mind of the artist.
"The First Touch
Tells"
Reg. U. S. Pat. Off.
Christman Piano Co.
597 East 137th St.
New York
In the good old days men on the road sold pianos
in the course of a glad transit through a territory
studded with old friends. It was the jubilant era,
filled with the rattle of new jokes and the dull but
joyless thud of the chestnuts. Everywhere the drum-
mers went the gags were sure to go. All that was
good in the anecdotal era has been preserved by the
veterans who still take in the juicy orders while
handing out the merry jest, the piquant epigram or
the story that is sometimes long and occasionally
even broad.
But methods have changed in the exigencies of a
new day in business. The piano salesman is as kind
as ever, but he is more keen. The lambent flame of
his andecotal genius still flickers and gleams in the
dull places and adds to the joy of life. But the laugh-
producing yarn doesn't turn the trick in these unemo-
tional days. The new ones, the raw ones and the
chestnuts still circulate, and many enjoyable sessions
of yarn-exchanging occur between traveler and
dealers.
But, aside and apart from all that, the men who
skim the cream of orders are those with the story of
good pianos the dealers can sell with a good profit.
The piano traveler's story most eagerly listened to
today is really a line of conversation bristling with
the why-so.
Makes Him Sad.
Jc saddens me to recall the number of my contem-
poraries with a reputation as raconteurs who no
longer enliven groups in dealers' warerooms or
hungry-eared circles in commercial rooms in hotels.
So it doubly gladdens me when I encounter a vet-
eran of equal length of service and listen again to one
of the mellow anecdotes of yesteryear. And it often
takes the presence of a grizzled contemporary to
evoke the story-telling powers of some of these
veterans.
How many of the beginners have discovered the
story-telling genius of George M. Slawson, of The
Cable Co.; Dan Fabyan, of the Poole Piano Co., or
A. A. Mahan of the Packard Piano Co.—any of the
active middle-life or younger ambassadors of good
pianos? The youngsters have continuous experiences
of the yarn-spinning abilities of such veterans as
Frank Hood or Bob Burgess, for the repertory of
those alert gentlemen, preserved from a little earlier
arc often better than any modernized versions.
Eloquently Silent.
Gust Ad. Anderson of the B. K. Settergren Co.,
Bluffton, Ind., has a reputation for anecdotal silence,
hut he has the piano conversational gift that enter-
tains the dealer and at the same time instructs him
in the meritorious pianos the expert manufacturer-
salesman is talking about.
Another man from whom you would expect to hear
a classic is W. B. Williams, eastern man for the Had-
dorff Piano Co., Rockford, 111., but you'd cock your
ear in vain for the mirthful reminiscence from the
gentleman. He is one of the most satisfying listen-
ers I've ever met. But when he talks Haddorff piano
dealers say he can be eloquent in a dozen words. He
hands out the concentrated argument that results in
orders.
Good Listener Rebelled.
In writing about good listeners I am reminded of
the late F. J. Woodbury, who also had the gift of
story telling, although few of his fellow travelers
ever found him in the anecdotal humor. According
to P. E. Conroy, the St. Louis piano merchant,
Woodbury had to be goaded into volubility. One
day while the piano merchants' convention was cru-
soed at Put-in-Bay the traveler singled the St. Louis
man out of a crowd.
"Pat," said Woodbury solemnly, "I want you to
listen to my conversation for, let's say, three hours."
"It may seem short at that. But what's the matter,
old fellow?" was the sympathetic question.
"It's this way, Pat," said Woodbury indignantly,
"I've been marooned on this island for two days now
and everybody else has been doing the talking. It's
about got my goat, so I want a good listener and
you're it."
Served His Sentence.
They went to dinner together and between each
course was a long interval of Woodbury conversa-
tion interspersed with piquant anecdote. Then the
pair took a long walk, mounted all the eminences,
descended into all the caves, or at least all the caves
that had no talkative guides, and after the stipulated
period of patient listening, Mr. Conroy pulled out his
watch with the remark:
"F. J., I've listened to you for three hours and two
minutes. Now, what is it you want to say to me!"
Making Over Old Yarns.
The ability to tell a good story well seems to be
combined with the gift of salesmanship. It is the
geniuses among the raconteurs of the road who can
give a new setting to an old story and do it in a
way that imparts the freshness of a new one. W. S.
Golden, the Stultz & Bauer traveler, is like that.
"Billy" Golden can take a medieval bromide and give
it a bobbed hair, skimp-skirted up-to-dateness. The
original version may be pre-Victorian or even archaic,
but when it issues from his lips it has the present
date marked all over it. But, of course, the rouge
of wit and the powder of invention cannot completely
conceal the wrinkles of age.
Tom Remembered It.
Dropping into Aeolian Hall, in St. Louis, one day
I found Golden who had come for a like purpose,
passing the social greetings to Chas. L. DeVine, the
manager. Billy was just concluding a great yarn,
one of the kind with a climax where the laughs of
the hearers follow as appropriately as the amen at
the end of a prayer. Everybody roared. That is
everybody except one salesman, who just smiled
wanly.
"What's the matter, Tom?" asked Mr. De Vine, in
an aside to the salesman. "Are you sick? That
story was a corker."
"He told it well, but I heard it twelve years ago
in Kansas City."
Was Mr. Golden sensitive about Tom's failure to
come on with the hearty ha, ha? Not a bit of it,
and there's where he showed the aplomb of the
hardened story teller.
"What! Heard it before and refrained from blurt-
ing out the freezing fact! Didn't expose the
marks of the cannery! Pretty nice, I'll say!"
M. D. S.
NEW MUSIC FIRM FORMALLY
OPENS IN CANTON, OHIO
W. E. Strassner, Instructor of Music in Public
Schools, Is Head of New Company.
W. E. Strassner and W. F. Custer .are partners in
the new Strassner-Custer Music Co., opened- last
week at 209 Cleveland avenue, Canton, O. Pianos,
talking machines, rolls, records and a line of musical
merchandise will be carried by the firm which al-
ready shows Baldwin pianos and players and a line
of phonographs. Features of the business will be
well-equipped sheet music and rolls departments.
Mr. Strassner is a native of Canton and for many
years has been music instructor in the public schools
there. He is head of a school of vocal music which
has studios in the building occupied by the store. Mr.
Custer is also a native of Canton and a man of wide
business experience, although this is his iirst asso-
ciation with the busines-s of selling music goods.
CHAMBER ON PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE.
Endorsement by mail by the directors of the Music
Industries Chamber of Commerce of the stand taken
by President Coolidge in his message to Congress
with regard to the necessity of a reduction in federal
taxation is announced. The resolution adopted points
out that the present heavy drain of taxation, which
constitutes a barrier to business expansion, is a relic
of abnormal war-time conditions and is not adopted
to the needs of the period of peace and readjustment.
The resolution then urges specifically a reduction of
the higher surtaxes and repeal of the so-called
"nuisance taxes," and closes with an endorsement of
the taxation principles advocated by the President.
NEW SAN JOSE MANAGER.
F. R. Grubbs, formerly assistant manager of the
Thos. Goggan & Bros. Music Co., Houston, Texas,
and well known to the trade, has been made manager
of the Kohler & Chase Piano Co., San Jose, Calif.
Mr. Grubbs is well known to the trade throughout
the middle west territory, having been in the whole-
sale phase of the music business for some years. He
has added a new sales force to the store and the store
in January will be remodeled with Ampico parlors of
the most modern type.
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