Presto

PRESTO
Presto
THE AMERICAN MUSIC TRADE WEEKLY.
Published Every Saturday at 417 South Dearborn
Street, Chicago, Illinois.
C. A. DANIELL and FRANK D. ABBOTT -
• Editors
Telephones, Local and Long Distance, Harrison 234
Private Phones to all Departments. Cable Address (Com-
mercial Cable Co.'s Code), "PRESTO," Chicago.
Entered as second-class matter Jan. 23, 1896, at the
Post Office, Chicago, Illinois, under Act of March 3, 1879.
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in the smaller cities are the best occasional corre-
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Address all communications for the editorial or business
departments to PRESTO PUBLISHING CO., 417 South
Dearborn Street, Chicago, III.
purely "original." He will only create
strained and tortuous tunes, and dress them
in strange and distorted accompaniments.
There have been examples of the kind, but
never a successfulone, in the popular sense.
The writers of popular songs are seldom
musicians. They snatch their waifs out of the
air that has been filled by other singers. They
snatch the melody as it passes, and they can
not examine it closely, or they would have no
time to pass on to the enmeshing of other
colorfully winged wanderers in the land of
lilting tunes.
Popular songs are not plagiarized. They
are all original to their writers. And even the
"composer" of the one-time great "hit,"
"Somebody's Coming When the Dewdrops
Fall," who adapted the second movement of
Chopin's Funeral March to maudlin verse, did
not know where he found his theme until after
the song had made a fortune for the publish-
ers. And then the "critics" told him of it.
So, too, with scores of others.
Nevertheless, the fact that songs are not
stolen doesn't seem to justify the trust formed
by the authors and composers who do not
write "hits" but who want to place a tax upon
the performance of everything that is copy-
righted by them.
AN INSPIRING ITEM
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1925.
SONGS ARE NOT STOLEN
The vivid statements of Mr. Alfred L. Smith
before the House Patents Committee, as re-
ported in this issue of Presto, seem to suggest
that the energetic manager of the Music In-
dustries Chamber of Commerce ha? had little
experience in the mysteries of song writing.
He repeated the ancient charge that popular
songs are merely plagiarisms, and not vital-
ized by originality of theme or melody.
That has always been the notion of critical
inexperience in the practical side of the sub-
ject. As a matter of fact, it is almost never
true that a song is deliberately plagiarized.
If a song is thus appropriated, it is either a
case of unconscious assimilation or it is theft.
In the latter case it is a crime. In the former,
it is only what happens in all departments of
intellectual effort.
The great poets have been charged with it.
So have the great writers and public preach-
ers. Books on the subject have been pub-
lished, and some of the world's mightiest dis-
putes have centered in the seeming similarity
between the intellectual gems of immortal
masters. Perhaps the most conspicuous is the
never-ending charge that Shakespeare did not
write his tragedies, because Lord Bacon did.
And in the minor matters of popular songs,
the writer of this editorial, having himself put
forth several hundred songs, some of which
were charged with being "hits," knows some-
thing about the subject. He has passed upon
thousands of musical compositions, and has
detected similarities between scores of the
lesser works of famous musicians. But he
has never been able to charge a composer with
deliberate theft of a theme or musical subject.
Of course, there is nothing absolutely new
in music, any more than in poetry. The ele-
ments are the same. The treatment varies.
And the writer of simple song who stops to
analyze every theme that may haunt his musi-
cal mind will never turn out a real "hit." He
can not win along the very narrow line of the
The story about a music house, in a com-
paratively small city in the west, is worth all
the space it takes in this issue of Presto. It
is more than an item of trade news. It tells
of the reward, by an appreciative and saga-
cious employer, to employes by whose faith-
fulness success has been wrung from a not too
fertile soil, as perhaps most easterners may
see it.
Bakersfield, California, is in a rich center of
the great State of romance and adventure.
When Mr. Don C. Preston opened his music
store there, there was not a great promise of
anything like large growth. But the music
store man was far-sighted. He knew that by
his own efforts alone he could not get very
far toward the goal of his ambitions. He un-
derstood what, seemingly, not many piano
men understand. He realized that only by
the intelligent support and co-operation of his
helpers imbued with more than the salary-
earning instinct, could he hope to develop be-
yond the average rent-paying, hard-scratch-
ing music store. And within a few years he
has spread out until, besides several branch
stores, in smaller places, he could invest in
still larger prospects in the thriving metropolis
of Seattle.
And then he passed to his faithful employees
their share of his prosperity. He made them
partners in the business they had been so
largely instrumental in creating. A story of
this kind, so well told as the one about the
Preston music store at Bakersfield, presents
an inspiring bit of trade history. It will be
read with the kind of interest that stirs the
energies of workers in other music stores and
stimulates employers who can see the divi-
dend-paying values of investments in the kind
of help that builds after the foundation has
been laid.
A country newspaper startles itself by de-
claring that radio is "killing" music of all
kinds. And if that is as true as it might be
important, isn't it equally true that radio is
killing itself? For what could there be of
February 14, 1925.
radio without music, aside from its usefulness
as a new agency and political loud-speaker?
* * *
When the moving picture first appeared it
was quickly followed by the advertising film.
And the public soon revolted with threats of
staying away from the theaters. The same
thing will happen if the radio-senders persist
in announcing "concealed" advertising.
* * *
Fights in ether threaten to become common.
It is almost time the broadcasters hung out
signs warning others to keep off the lines they
have laid out and staked in the atmosphere.
No doubt the mails have been heavy this
week with the Valentines from piano dealers
to manufacturers in full settlement of every-
thing that was past due.
* * #
The cost of crime in the U. S. A. alone
would supply the whole world with good
pianos.
30 YEARS AGO IN THE TRADE
From the Files of Presto
(January 14, 1895.)
The addition to the Lester piano factory, at Les-
ter, Pa., will consist of an additional brick story on
the present building" and also a brick extension to
the plant, making the whole 200 by 80 feet.
Mr. Augustus Beall, a well known piano man, has
become connected with the Cincinnati house of The
John Church Co., in charge of the office of the
piano department. Mr. Beall was for many years
associated with Thomas & Barton, of Augusta, Ga.
"Denny Luxton of the firm of Luxton & Black,
piano dealers, 25 West Swan St., Buffalo, took in
the glove contest last Tuesday night." Possibly
Mr. Luxton, growing weary of boxing pianos,
thought he'd try his hand at boxing matches.
Two personal items of some interest have been
floating about just out of reach of verification the
past week. One says that Mr. John C. Freund has
accepted a position on the New York "Herald," the
other intimates that Mr. R. S. Howard proposes
to take an interest in a music trade paper.
Here is a villainous slander from the Boston
"Times":—"A subscriber to the Theodore Thomas
Guarantee fund in Chicago offered to subscribe
$2,000 more if Thomas would let his orchestra play
Sweet Marie. Why not? $2,000 is a deal of money."
What is this "Sweet Marie" which seems to have
Boston by the ears, anyhow?
20 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK
(From Presto February 16, 1905.)
E. V. Church, of The John Church Co., expects
to arrive at his office in Chicago from his California
trip next Tuesday or Wednesday.
The death of Charles H. Hackley, multimillion-
aire and philanthrophist, at Muskegon, Mich., last
Friday morning removes a notable character from
the piano manufacturing field. Mr. Hackley was ill
three days with heart trouble.
A new small grand made in London is called the
"Lilliputian." This is one of the names suggested
by Presto a little more than a year ago. In adver-
tising the little piano the London manufacturers
use an engraving
showing giant Gulliver holding
the "Lilliputian" 1 in his outstretched hand. The
picture is quite effective.
David E. McKee, manager of The Cable Piano
Company, said that a combination of the regulation
piano and mechanical piano player was the coming
instrument. Recent trust movements indicating the
formation of a gigantic trust by eastern piano man-
ufacturers, who are already featuring the hybrid
piano, inclines Mr. McKee to the opinion that the
combinaticjiii instrument will eventually supersede
all others.
Not even the little god is permitted to escape duty
as a purveyor of Crown piano allurements. Today
the spirit of St. Valentine pervades the Crown piano
industry, and friends of that instrument received a
dainty reminder of the day that suggests to so
many the divine couplet that runs—
"If you love cheese as I love you
No knife shall cut our cheese in two."
The "Crown" valentine runs differently, however,
but it means the same. It is in the shape of a
heart—a red, red heart, cut from Chinese bristol
board and scented like a rire cracker. Across the
heart is a broad band upon which is printed in gold
letters this—
"Won't you be my valentine? My heart strings
respond to your lightest touch. Crown Piano."
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