Music Trade Review

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REVIEW
THE
VOL. LXXXUI. No. 8
Published Every Satirday. Edward Lyman Bill, Inc., 383 Madison Are., New York, N. Y., Aag. 21,1926
Single Copies 10 C*nta
$2.00 Per Year
Piano Promotion Outstanding Topic
at Michigan Dealers' Meet
Visiting Delegates to Annual Gathering of the Michigan Music Merchants' Association Convention Aston-
ished at Community Interest in Piano Aroused by Greater Detroit Piano Playing Contest
—Finals of Event Main Feature of Gathering—Large Attendance on Hand
D
ETROIT, MICH., August 19.—The De-
troit convention of the Michigan State
Music Merchants Association this year
has so far established a new record for State
organizations, and in attendance and enthusiasm
and real constructive work rivals the annual
gathering of the national bodies. Two things
immediately strike the trade visitor to Detroit
this week. The local music merchants, who
have charge of the trade function, have created
a tremendous community interest in the gather-
ing and have thereby lifted it into this sphere
of a public function instead of a mere gather-
ing of trade members.
The committees charged with the duty of
preparing a program have acquitted themselves
with great skill and have succeeded in securing
the interest and the personal endorsement of all
the public officials here. President Frank J.
Bayley and his associates have got the whole
town, in fact, the entire State, interested in the
doings of the trade.
Everywhere the citizens are talking about it
as if it were to be a national affair, and the
whole State is tremendously interested in the
Detroit public school piano-playing contest,
which is one of the unique contributions of this
State organization to trade history.
Nearly 500 people sat down to the banquet
on Wednesday night and the greater portion are
remaining until Thursday to attend the final
business session. Beginning on Monday morn-
ing the visitors attended an interesting program
outlined for them.
Those who wanted to play golf were taken
out to the Gross Isle Country Club. Another
group spent the morning and afternoon at the
Detroit Masonic Country Club at Lake St.
Clair, where they had lunch, followed by boat-
ing, bathing, dancing, etc. Still another group
spent the afternoon on the Detroit River visit-
ing various Canadian points.
At night the entire crowd reunited to take-
part in the Mardi Gras on Washington boule-
vard in front of the Book-Cadillac Hotel. Sev-
eral blocks of this great street were roped
off by permission of the city authorities and
thousands of people took part in this open-air
fiesta, music for which was furnished by the
Dodge Brothers' sixty-piece band, and every-
body, more or less, danced. The committee
awarded prizes for the Bitost striking costumes
and everybody had a good time.
On Tuesday morning and afternoon there
were business sessions of the Association. At
night they held the finales of the great Detroit
public school piano-playing contest, when the
winners were selected and prizes awarded them.
At midnight the Cheese Hounds put on a won-
derful show and a gorgeous initiation. Wednes-
day there were two business sessions and at
night the banquet and ball of the State Associa-
tion and on Thursday morning and afternoon
there will be also business sessions.
One is struck by the completeness and in-
telligence of this organized effort to show the
world what Michigan can do as a piano center.
The committees without exception were com-
posed of intelligent and energetic members of
the trade who were on the job every minute
find made everybody comfortable, and a new
organization was created to entertain the lady
visitors to the convention.
It is the Detroit Women's Piano Club, of
which Mrs. Frank J. Bayley has been elected
president, and to which the wives of all the
local trade members belong. Not content with
entertaining the ladies who came during the
week, these altruistic Detroit ladies have al-
ready started a program which will greatly
benefit the community and more especially the
children.
They have definitely evolved a plan under
which they intend to provide music teaching
facilities for those children in Detroit and the
neighborhood who have no one to look out for
them. The crippled children at the Shriners'
Home, the children at the reformatories, and
many of the waifs and strays, will benefit b>
the work of these kind-hearted ladies whose
own experience teaches them that the way to
keep a child out of mischief is to help him or
her do something interesting and constructive
in tlie way of learning how to play a musical
instrument. Their well-organized work in this
direction has already been marvelously effective
and it looks like this impetus to a musical at-
mosphere will, like the Detroit public school
piano-playing contest idea, spread throughout
the country.
The first business session opened on Tuesday
morning as per schedule with an address of wel-
come by Jay Grinnell, who spoke in the absence
of Walter S. Jenkins who was scheduled to
greet the delegates.
President Frank J. Bayley then took the chair
and after summarizing the business advantages
and sales profits from the piano-playing con-
test, explained how members of the organiza-
tion had hooked up the propaganda and the
support given the movement by the Board of
Education and the newspapers, to their own
business. Mr. Bayley made the point that when
a piano-playing contest is staged the support of
the public is enlisted through the pupils by a
demonstration of the very instruments the deal-
ers are selling. By exhibiting merchandise in
this manner the trade is securing the strongest
possible endorsement of the claim that a piano
is necessary in every home and has the support
of the children-pupils added to the dealer's
arguments as to why the home should be so
equipped .
"It has proven to be a tremendous advertise-
ment to our trade, of great value to us and at
practically no expense," declared Mr. Bayley,
"because this instruction in the public schools
and these demonstrations in the form of inter-
school contests have been on public property
and with the endorsement and approval of the
educational and municipal authorities who thus
backed our claim that music is a benefit to the
child not only culturally, but as a character
builder and a crime deterrent. To any one who
may be skeptical about its results in selling
pianos, I would gladly refer them to any of the
Detroit dealers who can furnish definite evi-
dence of increased sales from this source."
Mr. Bayley then asked A. W. Elfstrom, of
the Cable Piano Co., to tell the results of an in-
teresting analysis he had made relative to the
business effects of the piano playing contest.
Mr. Elfstrom said: "I have made a rigid an-
alysis of my own sales during the months of
June and July, and out of 58 instruments which
I sold at an average retail price of $575 each,
I found that 64 per cent were directly and
wholly the result of the Detroit piano-playing
contest."
W. Otto Miessner Speaks
The next speaker was W. Otto Miessner,
president of the Miessner Piano Co., Milwaukee,
(Continued on page 7)