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. 29, 1896, at tb«
Post Office, Chicago, Illinois, under Act of March 3, 1879.
year; 6 months, $1; Foreign, f4.
Payable in advance. No extra charge in United States
possessions, Cuba and Mexico. Rates for advertising on
application.
Items of news and other matter are solicited and if
of general interest to the music trade will be paid for
at space rates. Usually piano merchants or salesmen
in the smaller cities are the best occasional corre-
spondents, and their assistance is invited.
Forms close at noon every Thursday. News mat-
ter should be in not later than eleven o'clock on the
same day. Advertising copy should be in hand before
Tuesday, five p. m., to insure preferred position. Full
page display copy should be in hand by Monday noon
preceding publication day. Want advs. for current
week, to insure classification, must not be later than
Wednesday noon.
Address all communications for the editorial or business
d e p a r t m e n t s to P R E S T O P U B L I S H I N G
Dearborn Street, Chicago, III.
CO., 417 South
SATURDAY. MAY 9. 1925.
COMMISSIONS
May 9, 1925.
_ _
THEY WERE "BRAMBACHS"
I'robably for fear that a little free publicity
might slip by, the press dispatches which last
week told of the delivery in Washington of
two pianos from New York neglected to tell
what particular industry the instruments rep-
resented. Trade papers are not so cautious in
the matter of helping without consideration
of the "milline.' Consequently the music jour-
nals of New York told the whole story, even
if briefly. And Presto would not have ex-
pressed disappointment that the dispatches had
omitted the best part of the story had there
been time in which to get the particulars.
Later it became generally known that the
first pianos to travel by the air route were
Brambachs. They were loaded at Roosevelt
Field. L. 1., under the supervision of Mr. Mark
Campbell, and landed safely in the nation's
capital within a very brief" space of time. The
story is told in this week's Presto.
()f course, the center of interest is that, in
time, it will be the custom to deliver pianos by
airplane, just as people will travel that way.
It will at once end the discussion of the right
of the motor car to all of the city streets, for
the individual air-flivvers will do all that the
four-wheeled machines now do. The world
will look at specimens of the automobile of
today with the same wonder at its cumbersome
proportions, that interests us in the first car-
riage, or the original steam cars.
And the great pianists will travel from city
to city in their private airplanes, with their
pianos beside them, and they will practice far
up in the clouds and feel sure that, when the
next audience gathers, the applause will be
deserved because of the perfect practice and
the pianos in perfect tune. So that the trip
of the two Brambachs from New York to
Washington takes its place in history as the
first to fly through the air in all the world's
fast accumulating wonders.
because the piano business, as others in simi-
lar class, seeks better opportunities and more
elaborate surroundings and conveniences than
the earlier leaders in the trade even dreamt of.
The kind of intelligence by which the Amer-
ican piano has been brought to its place as
first among the world's instruments of music
is reflected in the faces of the group of Mason
& Hamlin workers on another page this week.
There is scientific understanding in the factory
force of the old Boston industry sufficient to
equip a post-graduate school of the theory of
sound in its relation to music.
Just three weeks from next Monday the
biggest music trade convention will begin at
the Drake Hotel, Chicago. It will be the
silver anniversary celebration of your associ-
ation. The rest of the dealers will be there.
Are you coming?
* * *
The advertising department of The Cable
Company, Chicago, deserves a first prize for
the Mason & Hamlin Music Week display in
Tuesday's dailies. It was one of the most
artistic, as well as forceful, piano advertise-
ments of the year thus far. No other piano
house paid finer tribute to the combined at-
tractions of Music Week and the instrument
of music.
30 YEARS AGO IN THE TRADE
Under the head of "secret demonstration'' a
From the Files of Presto
class of salesmen long ago discovered and dis-
credited in the piano business has sprouted as
(May 9, 1895.)
a sort of "regular thing" in some departments
Jesse James' violin is on exhibition in a Walnut
in other lines of trade. It is a kind of bribery,
street music store window in Kansas City. The in-
strument belongs to Charles Atkins, of Pleasant
or fee system, designed to insure public pref-
Hill, Mo. He brought it to Kansas City to sell.
erence for special goods the merchant may find
The fiddle is of ordinary pattern and, while it is still
intact, shows signs of rough usage.
most profitable to sell.
Last week in referring to the old Lyon & Healy
The plan has never been adopted by the
premises at State and Monroe streets, we stated that
under the new revaluations to take place May 1st, the
piano trade in any such proportions as the Na-
rent of those premises. Nos. 158, 160, 162 and 164
tional Housewives' League charges to the de-
State street would probably place the amount of their
annual rental at upwards of $100,000 per year.
NEW PIANO CENTERS
partment stores. But no one who is well
Among Chicago's numerous enterprising music
posted will question that, in a small way, the
The remarkable feat of removing in a single trade firms, and one which the trade will hear more
same system of "commissions" has been intro- day the great stock of the Story & Clark Piano about it at no very distant date is the energetic
house of Newman Bro's Co. of Chicago avenue and
duced in the music business. Many years ago Co., in Chicago, marked more than a change in Dix street, Chicago, who are making considerable
the manager of the piano department of a large location of one of the great piano industries of strides towards the pinacle of fame.
Germany, the nation generally credited with a
music house in San Francisco was indicted by music. It started what will probably in time bulk of the musical element, notwithstanding her
his employers for accepting special fees from a be an entire exodus of a famed Piano Row generally phlegmatic nature, has been the heaviest
to our musical needs. This taken in con-
New York piano manufacturer whose instru- from Wabash avenue to Michigan boulevard. contributor
nection with the item recentiy printed in Presto con-
ments it was his duty to sell. The manager There are already five prominent piano cerning the efforts of her musical instrument manu-
to push business in this country, may have
had been sent east to select a suitable line for houses on Chicago's new shopping thorough- facturers
some significance, and is in any event full of interest.
the piano department. Among others he se- fare.
lected a commercial instrument made in New
The first to go from the old piano row was
York, the makers of which had agreed to allow the house of Meyer & Weber. Then followed
20 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK
him a private credit of ten dollars on every the Ampico Studios and Kranich & Bach. The
instrument sold by the house of his employer. Bissell-Weisert Piano Co. began business on
(From Presto, May 11, 1905.)
In some way the facts were disclosed and Michigan avenue when the Fine Arts Build-
The Foster-Armstrong Company has finally grown
trouble followed. The case was tried in court, ing was the center of that district. And now weary of the delays attendant upon the erection of
but with what result has passed from memory. the new Story & Clark building makes a bid their giant factories at Despatch, N. Y., and con-
cluded the purchase of the property in that thriving
And other cases of similar kind have been for others to follow, as doubtless some of them Rochester suburb.
An article in this Presto about a plan for supplying
disclosed. At one time a Chicago department will.
music to householders by electricity recalls an item
house manager was "let out" quietly because
It may seem something of a coincidence that that was going the rounds of the press away back in
It was that Edison was at work on a plan by
he was suspected of accepting secret commis- the larger piano houses of both New York '83.
which music could be furnished by the cubic foot,
sions from New York manufacturers, and his and Chicago have taken on the ambition to just as gas is measured.
interest has been evinced in the trade
case has been duplicated in other cities. But, move into new quarters and to establish new as Considerable
to the will of the late P. J. Healy. The document
as a rule, the piano salesmen are above that piano rows. Fifth avenue is no longer the was filed on Tuesday of this week and the estate,
sort of thing, and the piano managers would great piano trade center in the eastern city consisting entirely of personal property and valued
at $550,000, was left to the children of the decedent,
not consider any such "secret demonstration since Steinway, Chickering, Sohmer, Story & with the exception of two minor bequests.
Following is a list of the gentlemen chosen to
method" as is being denounced by the National Clark and one or two more deserted the once-
deliver addresses at the banquet of the N. P. M. A.
Household League. The more credit there- fashionable promenade in favor of Fifty- of A. at Atlantic City next week: J. Herbert Mar-
fore to the piano trade industry and trade, for seventh street. And in Chicago, where a short shall, of London, Eng., for several years president
of the Music Instrument Trades Protective Asso-
they represent a line of merchandising in time ago there were no ground floor piano ciation of Great Britain; Sir Thomas Wright, of Lon-
which the plan may seem more plausible of stores on Michigan avenue, today there are don, England; William E. Wheelock, Charles H.
Parsons, James C. Miller, Edward S. Conway, E. S.
adoption than in most others.
some of the most spacious and beautiful in the Payson, W. L. Bush, and Ben. H. Janssen.
Enhanced content © 2008-2009 and presented by MBSI - The Musical Box Society International (www.mbsi.org) and the International Arcade Museum (www.arcade-museum.com).
All Rights Reserved. Digitized from the archives of the MBSI with support from NAMM - The International Music Products Association (www.namm.org).
Additional enhancement, optimization, and distribution by the International Arcade Museum. An extensive collection of Presto can be found online at http://www.arcade-museum.com/library/