Presto

Issue: 1925 2045

PRESTO
Presto
THE AMERICAN MUSIC TRADE WEEKLY.
Published Every Saturday at 417 South Dearborn
Street, Chicago, Illinois.
C. A. D A N I E L L and F R A N K 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 the
Post Office, Chicago, Illinois, under Act of March 3, 1879.
Subscription, $2 a year; 6 months, $1; Foreign, $4.
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
departments to PRESTO PUBLISHING CO., 417 South
Dearborn Street, Chicago, III.
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 3, 1925.
REAL BOOSTERS
Whenever a great need develops it is almost
a certainty that nature—human or otherwise—•
seems ready to furnish it. Just now the
cause of music is, in general, in a sense, some-
what chaotic. Interferences and diversions
have twisted the public mind away from the
finer things of life, of which music and the
instruments of music are first.
And so the public needs something by
which to save it from losing the best influence
to pure enjoyment and refined happiness.
And the need is being supplied in a new way.
The state music trade associations are step-
ping into the breach and bringing back again
the enthusiasm and the vigor by which the
American people so long led the world of
music and will continue to lead it.
This year several of the state music trade
associations have met and the influence of
their energy has swept far and wide. The
Ohio convention, at Cincinnati, the Michigan
convention at Detroit, and this week's meet-
ing of Illinois music merchants at Rockford,
prove that there is no shadow of decline in
the enthusiasm of the men whose lives are
devoted to the spread of the instruments of
music.
And there is another factor in the state
meetings which Presto recognizes as of the
utmost importance. It is the personal activ-
ity of men prominent, as both manufacturers
and musicians, who have devoted time and re-
search to the cause of the perpetuation of the
music business as a help to public love and
understanding of the art and its benefits.
A fine illustration may be cited in the
thoughtful and practical address of Mr. W.
Otto Miessner, at Rockford, which is repro-
duced in this issue of Presto. It is by such
presentations of facts and figures as Mr.
Miessner's, by such straight-forward, clear-
cut statements of the purposes of music and
its influences upon the youth of the nation,
that the business of musical instrument mak-
ing and selling is preserved, encouraged and
kept where it must be kept if the art itself
is to remain and flourish.
We hope that no reader of Presto—and cer-
tainly no serious-minded music merchant—
will miss a word of Mr. Miessner's address.
As a musician, composer, director and teacher,
as well as a piano manufacturer, the gentle-
man from Milwaukee is entitled to no small
credit for what he is doing also for the piano
trade, no less than for the schools and music
loving public. Only a love of music can cre-
ate a demand for the instruments that produce
it.
TO ELIMINATE WASTE
The musical instrument industry is among
others in a survey of the Department of Com-
merce to probe charges of waste in manufac-
turing and selling processes. The depart-
ment is now investigating conditions in sev-
eral of the largest business centers. Matters
relating to the dimensions of the lumber used
in factories, and whether they are conducive
to waste in using them, will be subjects of in-
quiry in piano factories and other musical in-
strument manufacturing plants. It is the in-
tention of the government to make the survey
nation-wide.
The faults in marketing and retailing will
also be investigated in the survey, and an at-
tempt will be made to remedy the situation
by showing where services and expenses can
be pruned and the movement of goods from
the manufacturer to the consumer be expe-
dited and facilitated. It is pointed out by the
department that the largest field of waste is
in lack of information on the part of manufac-
turers and distributors, as to the require-
ments of the various sections of the United
States; a lack of knowledge of the problems
of race, occupations, habits, incomes, and pur-
chasing ability.
The result of the survey will be to enlighten
manufacturers and distributors as to the pur-
chasing power of each regional district, so
that sales executives will be able to plan mar-
keting campaigns "on the basis of knowledge
rather than of guesses."
The various regions will be analyzed in a
complete manner that will prove helpful to
the retail music merchant who will be en-
abled to set quotas and plan sales campaigns
in a manner to avert lost motion and blind
appeals to impossible prospects.
The Department of Commerce holds that
when the goods can be placed on the market
scientifically, instead of mechanically, the
market value of each article will show a profit
of proper proportions.
It seems quite possible that one result of
the inquiry may be to help standardize pianos
and accomplish, to a large extent, what the
fight against "stencil" pianos was meant to do
in the virtuous days of the old National Piano
Manufacturers' Association.
AN INVESTIGATION
It is not surprising that at last a public
spirited member of Congress proposes an in-
vestigation of the "music trust," as the Hon-
orable MacGregor, of Buffalo, calls the Amer-
ican Society of Composers, Authors and Pub-
lishers. The story of that combination is a
long one. Its purposes are, in the public
mind, confusing, complicated and contradic-
tory. It is time that a clearer understanding
of its methods and limitations—if it has any
should be exposed.
As to whether the often severely arbitrary
October 3, 1925.
rulings of the association have really done
any harm to the cause of art may be ques-
tioned. It is usually the so-called "popular"
kind of music that is affected, and perhaps the
public has been protected rather than hurt by
the free-handed system of taxation which has
been enforced or threatened on every possible
occasion.
But that there is something unfair and
coercive in the association has often been sug-
gested, and many hardships have been experi-
enced by promoters of the concert stage and
others. There is not much real genius in the
popular songs about which most of the copy-
right hue and cry is raised. The average com-
position is devoid of genuine originality, and
often to demand a tax for singing or playing
seems to border upon the grotesque.
Anyway, the trade will agree that for the
sake of the publishers themselves, no less than
the composers, the investigation of the Buf-
falo congressman may serve a good purpose.
At the worst it can do no harm.
Now history repeats itself in the piano
trade. There hasn't been a fall season in fifty
years in which there wasn't the comforting
asurance that "the dealers are getting tired
of crying 'no business/ and hustling for busi-
ness." And it's so this year.
* * *
The dealer who sells most pianos in the
average community between now and Christ-
mas will be the one who gets out after his
prospects in his own way and with the kind
of energy that real piano salesmen possess.
30 YEARS AGO IN THE TRADE
From the Files of Presto
(October 3, 1895.)
The day of the thump-box is already declining.
The painted case of tuneless wires must go.
J. L. Fredrico, a well-known repairer of church
organs, died suddenly, in Cincinnati, as a result of
excessive cigarette smoking.
We read of the "Wonderful Weber Tone," of the
"Crown-on-Top," of the "Marvelous Plectra-phone"
and other things, but none of them surpasses the
pleasant Sohmer smile which greets the wanderer at
Third avenue and Fourteenth street.
Speaking of piano trade in New York, I learned
at Steinway Hall that the aggregate sales of Steinway
pianos Tuesday this week amounted to $10,000. The
average price of Steinway pianos sold from the Stein-
way salesrooms is about $950 per instrument.
In Germany the trade in American pianos and
organs has not grown so rapidly as in England,
partly because there is not the market there, and
partly because the trade is slower to make changes
or to recognize the innovations and popular features
which characterize the American products.
20 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK
(From Presto, October 5, 1905.)
Arthur L. Wessell, of Wessell, Nickel & Gross was
married on Monday of last week to Miss Edith Rich-
ards of Newport.
A foolish man wears his life out trying to write
his name high on the scroll of fame, but the wise man
is satisfied to stencil it on the fall board of a high
grade piano.
All employes of Shimek Bros., organ manufactur-
ers, of 932 and 934 North Broadway, Baltimore, Md.,
went out on strike because their employers had cur-
tailed their daily allowance of beer.
The members of the New York Piano Manufac-
turers' Association received copies last week of the
demands of the union, the only real demand being
one for the closed shop, for which a general strike
was ordered, to go into effect October 1. They de-
cided to refuse the demands, and began preparations
at once for the strike.
E. W. Furbush, of Boston, was in Chicago Monday
and spent part of the time talking over business with
the manager, George J. Dowling. Mr. Furbush ad-
mits modestly that business is good all along the line.
He never tells what his routes are but it is probable
that Mr. Furbush will bob up in one of two other
cities before returning to Boston.
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/
October 3,
PRESTO
MUSIC ROLL PUBLICITY
HELPS THE DEALERS
Q R S Wall and Window Hangers in Colors
for October Have Forceful Sales Appeal
to Trade and Public.
The fall advertising campaign of the Q R S Music
Co., Chicago, has brought out some of the most
effective bits of printed publicity appearing in the
national magazines. The trade-mark, "Q R S," as a
symbol of guaranteed quality, is perpetuated in high-
class publications of large circulation such as the Sat-
urday Evening Post, Literary Digest, Harper's Maga-
zine, Scribner's Magazine, World's Work, Atlantic
Monthly, Review of Reviews and Golden Book.
The forceful advertising of the Q R S Music Co.
has always proved the most effective kind of stimula-
tion for the playerpiano. The Q R S music rolls
themselves are irresistible inducements for arousing
and perpetuating interest in playerpianos. The per-
sistent publicity of the Q R S Music Co. calls atten-
tion to the timeliness of the rolls and the artistic
character of the recordings. The Q R S advertising,
provided for the dealer's local use, is of the kind to
enable the dealers to profitably tie up with the widely-
read national advertising of the Q R S Music Co.
Widespread, generous advertising has kept and still
keeps Q R S rolls selling; preserving, in the face of
great distractions, playerpiano owners' joy in the
pleasure possibilities of their instruments.
The Q R S Music Co. is now as forceful in its
advertising of the Q R S Red Top Tube-for radio as
it has been for the Q R S roll. The company be-
lieves that the playerpiano, because it plays the piano
itself and is not just a reproduction of piano music,
will never permanently suffer from the inroads of
radio in the sphere of music, beyond the amount of
money radio buyers spend now that otherwise might
be spent on playerpianos. Radio owners will still
buy a playeroiano when they are able to do so. In
the meanwhile they will buy radio tubes for their
radio.
The response to the initial announcement of the
Q R S Red Top Tube has exceeded the expectations
of the company. It is the opinion of energetic deal-
ers that the radio tube holds the same relation to
radio that the roll does to the playerpiano.
A great number of dealers, faithful to the Q R S
roll, are now handling the Red Top Tube, even
though they do not handle radio sets or parts. They
find that their roll department can sell radio tubes.
The Q R S dealers do not hesitate to stock Red Top
Tubes. They feel assured that the radio tubes are ex-
changeable for rolls. They know they cannot lose
and the most timid feels that it is worth trying.
The Q R S Music Co. has prepared its October
wall-hanger and, in addition, a window hanger, of
the combination Q R S player roll and Red Top
Tube. Both are effective bits of publicity and the
hanger is prepared in the characteristically artistic
style of the company. The rolls and the tubes are
mutually helpful and the advertising is evidence of
the company's understanding of that fact.
orations are by Willy Pogany, famous Hungarian
artist and decorator, who in addition to preparing
many panels in his New York studio, spent more
than a month in personal work in the theater. In
appearance, charm, and convenience it shows the
$1,000,000 that has been put into it.
At the dedication, Ex-Lieut. Governor Beidelman
of Pennsylvania, Mayor Hugentugler of York, and
other notables made addresses. The musical feature
was John Steele, American tenor, with Mabel Staple-
ton at the Weaver grand piano, and John DePalma
at the $40,000 Wurlitzer Hope-Jones organ. Both
of these instruments were purchased as part of the
permanent equipment of the Strand Theater.
NEW MANAGER FOR BRANCH
OF LIVELY KENTUCKY FIRM
Howard Dolph Announces Ambitious Plans for
Branch Store of McLaughlin's Music Co.
Howard Dolph, of Paducah, Ky., has taken charge
of McLaughlin's Music Store at Hopkinsville, Ky., as
manager, and is planning to make the store one of
the best of its kind in Western Kentucky.
Some of the old lines are being closed out, and in
the future the store will carry complete lines of all
the newest ideas in musical instruments.
Mr. Dolph, who has been connected with McLaugh-
lin for several . years, thoroughly understands the
music business, and is expected to be very successful
there.
Mrs. Anna Poppenheeusen, a member of the
McLaughlin firm, has taken charge of the office in
the Elkton, Ky., store. She has been office manager
of the McLaughlin store in Paducah for several years.
LEWIS H. CLEMENT'S CONCERT.
The Symphony Orchestra, of Toledo, O., will open
its sixth season October 27 with a concert in the
Auditorium Theater, where the winter series of six
programs will be given. Conductor Lewis H. Clem-
ent, formerly prominent in the retail piano trade, has
devoted much time to planning the new season's con-
certs and promises symphony patrons some inter-
esting novelties as well as the usual quota of works
from the standard composers. Even a few of the
modern experiments in jazz will be included in one
of the programs.
A WASHINGTON EVENT.
The featuring of fine pianos and finer furniture is
the double task of the De Moll Piano Co., Wash-
ington, D. C, in its regular annual September sale
now in progress. In addition to the large stock of
artistic furniture recently installed, the company rep-
resents the lines of the Aeolian Company, Victor pho-
nographs and records and radio.
FINE TRIBUTE TO
MERITS OF CLARENDON
California Man Travels Three Hundred Miles
to Replace Clarendon Used Seven Years
and Recently Destroyed in Fire.
The following letter to the Clarendon Piano Com-
pany, Rockford, 111., from F. C. Hendricks of the
Hendricks Music House, Santa Barbara, Cal., is
short, but the convincing facts it contains make it
more forceful than a page display. The proof of a
piano is in its preservation of the tunefulness that
first prompted the customer to buy. That is the char-
acter of durability. There is a quality in the Claren-
don that at once asserts itself. It is the volume of
the tonal values and the ability of the instrument to
retain this enthuses owners and makes them Claren-
don fans for ever:
Santa Barbara, Cal., Sept. 16, 1925.
Clarendon Piano Company,
Rockford, 111.
Gentlemen:
Just wired you for three pianos, the two in mahog-
any to be shipped to Santa Barbara, the walnut to
be shipped to Mr. P. D. Van Nceman, Taft, Cal.,
Box 9.
Mr. Van Neeman bought a Clarendon piano from
me seven years ago. but his home was destroyed by
fire a few months ago and he lost the piano. He was
so satisfied with the piano that he traveled three hun-
dred miles to purchase another one from the Hen-
dricks Music House.
Yours truly,
HENDRICKS MUSIC HOUSE.
F. E. HENDRICKS.
NEW LOCATION FOR PAGE
ORGAN CO. STILL UNDECIDED
There Is Strong Possibility That Plant May Be Lo-
cated in Lima, Ohio.
The Industrial Development Division of the Board
of Commerce at Lima, O., met with the officials of
the Page Organ Company, of Defiance, O., last week
in an effort to co-operate in locating the organ fac-
tory in the former city.
A meeting of the stockholders of the organ com-
pany was held last week to decide whether the plant
shall be moved from Defiance. The Page Organ
Co.'s plant was partially destroyed by fire several
months ago, which made a move of some kind
necessary.
It is expected that the board of directors will be in-
vested with the authority to choose the site for the
new factory. A number of sites besides Lima are
under consideration.
MASON & HAMLIN FOR COUNTRY CLUB
WEAVER GRAND PIANO
FOR YORK THEATRE
Appell Amusement Company Again Shows Its
Preference for York Instruments in Its
Choice of Piano for Strand Theater.
The Appell Amusement Co. has purchased a
Weaver grand piano for the Strand Theater, York,
Pa. The admiration of Jonn DePalma, the Strand
organist, led him some time ago to purchase a
Weaver grand piano, made by the Weaver Piano Co.,
Inc., York, Pa., for his own home. The Appell
Amusement Co. has had years of experience with
Weaver pianos in the Orpheum and Opera House.
In this, the Amusement Company have but confirmed
the admiration of many of the world's leading artists
and of those everywhere who are competent to judge
a piano impartially and purely on its merit.
The opening of the Strand Theater, York, Pa., re-
cently disclosed the finest theater of its kind in the
eastern part of the United States. The Nathan Appell
Enterprises, Inc., operate vaudeville, theater and
movie houses in a number of cities of the East, and
Mr. Appell was very largely responsible for the
formation of the Combined Theater Managers' As-
sociation, which includes nearly all the cities of
under 100,000 population in the United States.
The building was designed and constructed under
the supervision of E. C. Horn Sons, architects and
engineers of New York City, who specialize in theater
planning and construction. It is an excellent example
of Italian Renaissance architecture. The interior dec-
The Olympia Fields Country Club, near Chicago,
not only supplies to its members one of the most
beautiful golf courses in Illinois, but makes a feature
of unusually attractive musical entertainments. Espe-
cially notable are its Sunday concerts. The splendid
ballroom and concert hall has just been furnished
with a superb Mason & Hamlin grand supplied by
The Cable Piano Company, of Chicago.
This clubhouse is one of the most beautiful in the
country, close to a million dollars having been ex-
pended on the house furnishings and an additional
half a million in laying out its beautiful grounds.
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/

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