February, 1930
' R ESTO-TIMES
ISSUED THE
FIFTEENTH IN EACH
MONTH
FRANK
D. A B B O T T
- - - - - - - -
(C. A. D A N I ELL—1904-1927.)
PRESTO PUBLISHING CO.
Publishers
417 So. Dearborn St.
Chicago, HI.
The American Music Trade Journal
Editor
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ers or dealers such items will appear the issue following.
CHICAGO, FEBRUARY, 1930
OVER THE MOUNTAINS
The piano business has had a stiff climb for two years, but it is
now over the highest mountain pass and can take its course over
the broad expanse of the capacious plain. Ceaseless watchfulness
now instead of ceaseless anxiety is the imperative necessity which
presses the piano dealer. The best resolution for this year's business
is to be resolved at all events to win. This resolution is a sort of
spontaneous generation—a sprouting upward of determination, a
compelling impulse, a mysterious force. Dealers' opportunities are
everywhere. Old dealers must be re-educated; new dealers must be
filled with enthusiastic assurance, with the lure of endless fascina-
tions as they look forward. In young salesmen the employing dealer
will find many diverse degrees of efficiency, and it is only when the
orders are landed that he will discover which young man is possessed
of intuitive understanding of how to make a sale. He will naturally
give more drill to the man who is inclined to make petty misrepre-
sentations about the instruments.
PIANO DISTRIBUTION
*• Wider distribution of pianos is needed just now to speed up trade
—more agencies in the field. In opposition to this there has been
retrenchment, the closing of stores and agencies, a curtailing of
overhead expenses, and some of the best men in the business have
been actually "fired" from their jobs. Export trade has not been sought,
the remote sections of this vast country have not been solicited
for business, and ambitious salesmanship has had a wet blanket
thrown over its head. Pessimists have carped and brayed about "the
piano business going to the dogs" and spread their deterrent propa-
ganda in discourses delivered on irregular occasions. There are
thousands of good piano prospects in the United States who ought to
be approached this year. They have not been canvassed to death;
in fact, the Gulbransen survey of 1929 showed that many of them
had not been visited by a piano man at all. Here is a salient angle
from which the 1930 canvasser can draw courage; canvass every-
ADULT PARTICIPATION
IN ANNUAL MUSIC WEEK
Get the Music Habit Is Suggested by C. M. Tre-
maine's Great Program.
A timely application of the National Music Week
movement to one of the problems of current musical
life is being planned for the seventh annual celebra-
tioiTon May 4-10 next. In that observance an em-
phasis will once more be laid upon the need for a
greater degree of active participation in music on the
part of people in general—not only among the chil-
dren, but especially on the part of the adults. The
rallying call will be: "Make Music Your Friend from
Youth to Age."
The interests of adult education and recreation
justify certain constructive steps toward bridging over
the hiatus between the musical training of our chil-
dren and the proper functioning of that training in
their adult life. The projectors of the Music Week,
while devoting no less attention than before to par-
ticipation by the public schools, are addressing them-
selves to this task of providing a stimulus to adult
music-making such as will cause our people more gen-
erally to "get the music habit."
body whether he wants to play a piano or a sticcado. What a can-
vasser learns on the first trip ought to buttress him up and stiffen
the processes in his spinal column. He will find that he is one of
the prerogatived few; one of the elect who has the entree to the
homes of his newly-made acquaintances—the man who has pre-
empted a territory all his own in which to dispose of a number of
pianos.
AFTER ZERO PASSES
Now that spring is so near, the danger of zero temperature in
the northern states has passed. It is a matter of serious concern to
piano manufacturers in the North to get a piano properly wrapped
for a trip by rail in frigid weather—so covered that the varnish will
not show minute checks as Jack Frost's calling cards. Even when
sent by express, a piano is apt to be exposed to low temperature at
intermediate posts or stations in transit, the choicest instruments
receiving but secondary consideration by transportation men. From
the first of March on until the first of December, shipped pianos
do not run this risk, as zero days are highly improbable anywhere
in the U. S. A. Another zero that has passed—and piano men hope
it is forever—is the low point of fear that the piano is to be super-
seded bv radio or anv other device.
MAGIC OF THE PIANO
Two great pianists, Rachmaninoff and Horowitz, who recently
gave recitals within five days of each other in Chicago, drew audi-
ences that completely filled Orchestra Hall. On the Horowitz recital
the entire stage was used even, as one of the daily papers remarked,
to occupying the organist's bench at the organ console. Such interest
in piano playing is powerful testimony to the strength and popularity
of the piano as the master instrument of music and its magnetic
attractiveness. But the medium employed to convey this great virtu-
osity was the Steinway piano.
MANUFACTURERS' ERROR.
ENGLISH CHILDREN MUSICAL.
James D. Tew, president of the B. F. Goodricli
Co., writing for the Executives Service Bulletin, says:
"We have come to the conclusion that the only reason
for the so-called dealer problem is because manufac-
turers do not understand their dealers' problems.
We, in the manufacturing end, have been just as much
to blame as many of our dealers. We have en-
couraged sloppy dealership by granting price con-
cessions and special considerations of various kinds—
some of us never realizing that there never was any-
thing made that someone else could not make it worse
and sell for less. In this we have not been worthy
of our responsibility, to our dealers."
Joseph A. Dyer, in an article in the Music Art and
Trade Journal, of London, England, mentions "the
bad art so prevalent at present," but offsets this
statement by these encouraging words: "It is a
peculiar fact that in spite of the present decadency
the musical standard among school children is very
high. One has only to attend a series of school
concerts, or refer to the examination results of the
various musical colleges and academies throughout
the kingdom to prove this statement."
-STARR STORE FOR PHOENIX.
E. H. Holt was for several years with the Starr
Piano Co., Pacific division, in the capacity of whole-
sale representative in California, Nevada, Utah and
Arizona. Under the name of The Holt Co. he has
taken over the complete Starr lines for the state of
Arizona, part of New Mexico and also has the Stein-
way for the state of Arizona. He says: "We have
opened a nice new store in Phoenix, which consists
of both a wholesale and retail display room with ade-
quate facilities for warehousing, distributing stock, all
in the same building."
SEEKS A U. S. A. CONNECTION.
A man well-versed in piano construction, as well
as the piano business in general, Albert Gruneau, now
residing in apartado 135, Guatemala City, Guatemala,
Central America, desires to connect with an Ameri-
can piano house, particularly a manufacturing com-
pany. He wishes to locate in some Central American
town or in the United States, with the intention of
returning later to one of the Latin-American coun-
tries.
TUNERS' ANNUAL CONVENTION.
Piano
sembled
of their
the 10th
tuners from Michigan, Ohio and Indiana as-
on February 10 for the annual convention
tri-state association. Sessions were held on
and 11th at Grand Rapids.
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