October X, 1927
P R E S T 0-TI M E S
DEMONSTRATES STARR
CHROMATIC GLISSANDO
Music Lovers of Richmond, Ind., Hear Won-
derful Effects of New Device at the
Washington Theater.
THINGS SAID OR SUGGESTED
THE PEP AGE.
It is well for the piano advertising man to realize
the fact that Americans like their impressions given
by assault and battery, so to speak. A leisurely
method of imparting your views and beliefs sets the
readers yawning. The rule holds good, whether you
write stories or write ads. The readers want ginger.
Every day the novel must be short and ever shorter,
the play full of surprises. In the picture people want
a thrill. Even the popular preacher limits himself to
forty minutes, possibly in regard to the traditional
forty winks of his congregation.
Our forefathers spent a solid two or three weeks
reading Clarissa Marlowe or Araminta Smedley and
complacently sat out three-hour sermons; but our
forefathers were content to spend a week traveling
a distance we cover in a day with the Eat-the-Miles-
Six.
"He brief! Speed up!" is the order. The bright
young men of the piano advertising departments gen-
erally hearken to it. A few, however, with inside
information about a piano, try to convey it to the
public by beginning their story at the landing of
Columbus.
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^
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DIGESTING A BOOKLET
The aid the piano dealers get from the manufac-
turers in the way of literature for distribution among
their prospects was the enthusiastic admission of
O. V. Wray, head of the Amarillo Music House,
Amarillo, Texas, during a visit to Chicago recently.
Two other visiting dealers agreed with him and Le
Roy Rankin, a salesman for Mr. Wray, admitted that
the prior perusal of a piano catalog by the prospect
induces the receptive mind when, in due course, the
salesman gets in his personal work. "But recently,"
he added, "I encountered a person unmoved by the
interesting facts told in a piano booklet."
During the summer while Mr. Rankin was actively
seeking piano customers in a remote section of Pot-
ter county, he stopped overnight with an unpleasant
host. He had no other choice. It meant a delay until
he could fetch a mechanic from a village four miles
away to repair a radiator leak in his automobile.
After supper while smoking a pipe in the yard he
tried to get up a conversation with his host, an un-
usually morose old man with a billygoat whis-
ker.
"Well, it's good to see the Yankees shooting some
good ball this season," he ventured as an opening.
Being a New York man he felt that way.
"I ain't heerd nothin' 'bout it. What's eatin' the
Yanks this time?" growled the farmer.
"There's nothing the matter with the Yankees,
lluggins is certain his men are invincible," Mr. Ran-
kin assured him.
"Damn the Yanks. I fit 'em fur four years under
Gin'ral Longstreet and I don't want to know nothin'
more 'bout 'em," snapped the morose Texan.
"How do vou feel on this fundamentalist-monkey
question?" again ventured the piano salesman after a
long pause.
"Nary a feel."
It didn't look as if he could make the evening a
conversational one. He tapped national and interna-
tional topics in the hope of interesting His Gruffness.
Sitting there close to a chin-whiskered sphinx was
getting on his nerves.
"Do you think ex-Governor Ma Ferguson will
come back?" The question was an inspiration.
"Who's she an' whar's she at?"
That was too much for Mr. Rankin. The man's
ignorance of the identity and whereabouts of a fre-
quent front page Texan topic was exasperating.
"For the love o' Pete, don't you ever read the
newspapers?" shouted Mr. Rankin.
"Don't know whoinell Pete is. I useter read the
papers fur quite a spell but they got too funny.
'Bout five years ago I done quit botherin' with 'em
an' sense then I've been readin' this book."
He took a frayed cloth-covered booklet from an
inside vest pocket and handed it to Mr. Rankin, who
gasped as he read the title. The thumbed and worn
pages recited the merits of a piano well known and
esteemed in every state.
"That thar book's writ about a planner, but I ain't
finished it yet."
"Good," applauded the piano man. "Nothing like
keeping the mind open until you get all the evidence."
* * *
A DELIGHTFUL
FIEND.
"The so-called commission evil will disappear from
the piano trade when the dealers form an oath-bound
organization for its eradication," said the piano ware-
room philosopher. "But how many dealers now
consider wrong the expectation of a honarium by the
giver of a good lead. There are dealers to whom the
commission taker is admittedly an angel of light
instead of a vexatious fiend. Without his uninter-
rupted vigilance in the haunts of the prospects the
cold chain of inactivity would hang o'er the piano
wareroom and the nothing-doing sign be written
across the monthly sales reports."
*
•
*
The latest thing in furniture house inducements is
the offer of a Chicago concern to take the furniture
of the connubial nest back if the marriage proves a
failure. Why not make a provision to find another
bride or groom in case of a smash-up and so save
the expense of moving the furniture back to the
store?
* * *
The boys of today have a chance to grow up with
the aeroplane business.
* * •- =
:
To the office boy life has become one football extra
after another.
* * *
The man is too good who hasn't a single redeeming
vice.
BOWEN PIANO LOADER
The Starr Chromatic Glissando, recently intro-
duced by the Starr Piano Co., Richmond, Ind., was
given a public demonstration in Richmond at the
Washington Theater last week.
The demonstration on the chromatic glissando key-
board was given by Duane Snodgrass of Richmond.
The program also includes numbers by the Morton
high school symphony orchestra, students of the
Earlham college music department, members of the
class in group piano instruction in the public schools.
Dr. Arthur L. Foley, head of the department of
physics, Indiana university, spoke on the subject:
"Thirty Sound Experiments in Thirty Minutes."
Its Great Simplicity.
The Starr Piano Company's chromatic glissando
keyboard is extremely simple. A set of rollers are
placed on a level at the back of both white and black
keys. When the fingers of either hand, or both
hands, slide up and down the rollers the "run" is
very easily effected.
It was, therefore, with a sense of justifiable pride
that The Starr Piano Company, manufacturers of
pianos for more than fifty years, announced the first
revolutionary change of the keyboard of the piano
since its so-called standardization generations ago.
Starr chromatic glissando pianos offer the player an
opportunity for performing either ascending or de-
s c e n d i n g chromatic glissaudos sliding effects
throughout the entire keyboard with a perfection of
rhythm and evenness of touch unobtainable on flat
keys.
Fine Musical Effects.
This musical effect has been possible previously
only on instruments of the violin type and in a lim-
ited way on the slide trombone and harp; it has been
more or less artistically used by the makers of player-
piano music rolls and, as thus used, served to bring
into bold relief the need, thus far unfilled, of a piano
keyboard that would make this musical effect avail-
able to the pianist.
Today, through the inventive genius of the Starr
Piano Company, the Chromatic Glissando Keyboard
is a reality unlocking at last the entire musical re-
sources of the piano.
HARRY SCHAAF VERY BUSY.
Harry Schaaf, president of Adam Schaaf, Inc., Chi-
cago, is very busy these days at his headquarters,
319-321 South Wabash avenue. It is men like Mr.
Schaaf who are keeping the piano trade up to its
standards—men whose faith never wavers, and who
like the engineer w r ho makes his run through night
and storm as well as through sunshine and calm, ar-
rive at the terminal station on time with all on board
safe and happy. Mr. Schaaf's organization and instru-
ments are bound to win.
NEW MOLINE, ILL., STORE.
J. R. lluckins, formerly district manager of the
Baldwin Piano Company at Davenport, has been
named manager of a branch store opened last week at
1415 Fifth avenue, Moline. Gunnar Swan of Moline,
who has been with the Arthur P. Griggs Piano Com-
pany for several years, has been made sales manager.
X P S SALESMEN
Outside Salesmen must be equipped so as to "show the goods." The season for country piano selling is approaching. Help your sales-
men by furnishing them with the New Bowen Piano Loader, which serves as a wareroom far from the store. It is the only safe
delivery system for dealers, either in city or country. It costs little. Write for particulars.
BOWEN PIANO LOADER CO.,
Winston-Salem, N. C.
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