Presto

January 8, 1920.
NOTED INTERVIEWS
IN PIANO INDUSTRY
Presto Staff Writers Tell of Their Recollec-
tions of Personal Talks with Prominent
Manufacturers of Past and Present
Who Have Made History in the
World of Music.
HOW COL. E. S. CONWAY POINTED OUT
VITAL DIFFERENCES IN VARIETIES
OF EFFICIENCY.
By J. Fergus O'Ryan of Presto Staff.
The interview as commonly understood was in-
vented to give the personal touch to popular dis-
cussions. By means of it the magnetic personages
of the world extend their influence. The interview
is the common medium for administering the word
cure in political and economic ailments. People
are not influenced by facts as much as by some
prominent person's version, of the facts. That is
why the piano trade papers brighten their pages
with interviews when confronted with problems,
thus saving their readers from asphyxiation of the
understanding consequent on swallowing the repor-
torial gases.
The expression of opinion in the first person
singular may be called new and admitedly is of
American invention, but Jhe interview in varied
forms is as old as written language. Many inter-
esting interviews are woven in the narrative of the
Bible. Interviews interpret the news in the daily
papers for us. And the grandest interviewers we
have in our midst are the admen of the piano in-
dustry.
They Make 'Em Talk.
When a bright young man in the advertising de-
partment of the Vose & Sons Piano Company
writes one of the characteristic crisp Vose phrases
about the Vose grand he really interviews the in-
strument; says what it might say itself could it
switch from its own harmonious mode of expres-
sion to Bostonese. Day in and day out, D. Luxton,
who being a good salesman is per se a good adman,
disseminates Vose piano interviews while on his
frequent trips. And the most ingenuous of the
interviewees is Baby Gulbransen, the prodigy Th.
B. Thompson started out to talk playerpiano to a
whole continent.
Charles E. Byrne says for the Steger and Arte-
mis pianos and players what the excellent products
of the Steger industries would modestly voice if
they became endowed with the gift of human
speech. Clever interviews of the Autopiano have
made it the greatest sea-going playerpiano known
to the trade. The Tonk piano has interviewed
itself in half a dozen Oriental tongues and the R.
S. Howard piano has talked in Spanish to millions
of people in Cuba and Central and South America.
Every month the American and foreign piano trade
listens to the forceful interview of the Standard
Pneumatic Action Co. printed in a bright magazine,
although A. W. Johnston, the vice-president, be-
lieves the action itself speaks louder than words.
And so it goes.
Jolts Bring Wisdom.
The first thing the trade paper interviewer learns
is that there is no perfection except in his own
copy. As he grows older, however, he weakens
in that belief. Sometimes his brother interviewers
with the slings and arrows of outrageous comment
will mockingly point out easily discernible weak-
nesses in his stuff. But the trade paper interviewer is
not alone in seeing the necessity for more effi-
ciency in the other fellow. The meaning of the
word efficiency is apparently clear, but it is a poor
efficiency expert who cannot supply a preamble and
a whole flock of reservations and interpretations
to the other experts' efficiency codes.
Groping for Light.
It was my bewilderment over efficiency following
a session at one of the piano trade conventions that
set me out to learn its meaning by means of the
enlightening interview. It was then I found the
important difference between plain and fancy effi-
ciency; that the most proficient men in efficiency
were the least inclined to discuss it or make it the
theme of the vocal essay.
When men of admitted efficiency like Charles
Stanley, superintendent of the P. A. Starck Piano
Co., for instance, find something loose in opera-
tions of some of his factory force, he does not lose
any words in adjusting it. He shows the thought-
less ones the careful way to perform the operation.
E. S. Rauworth, president of the Apollo Piano Co.,
could spellbind a gathering of piano men with an
efficiency talk any time if he wanted to. But even
to the piano trade paper interviewer he is consist-
PRESTO
ently unwilling to do so. Instead he takes them
through the factory and shows them a succession
of object lessons in efficiency.
Wisdom of Col. Conway.
The most interviewed piano man in Chicago was
Col. E. S. Conway because he was both well-in-
formed and always willing to talk with the inter-
viewers. That was why in my perplexity I turned
to the colonel to learn more about the fine distinc-
tions between the various styles of efficiency. He
realized my plight and pleasantly pointed out the
truths and the heresies of efficiency. Not resting with
a clear statement of salient facts that made clearer
my conception of the real and illusory efficiency
he illustrated the interview with one of his appro-
priate stories.
Pointing the Moral.
During one of his winter sojourns in Pass Chris-
tian, Miss., he encountered a professional hermit
who was the star attraction near one of the tourists'
resorts. That hermit was a model of hermit effi-
ciency and it paid him well. His cave was the ex-
treme in primitive housekeeping. His beard was
long and weedy and the hoary locks of his benevo-
lent head flew free in the Mississippi zephyrs. A
length of grapevine about his waist kept the but-
tonless garment made of sacking close to his dirt-
coated hide. Visitors from the hotel flocked to
observe him broil catfish over the embers or brew
a mess of herbs in a stone pot set therein and they
sympathetically dropped coins when he told them
the story of romantic events that sent him her-
miting. But loudest of all was their admiration
of the primeval menage.
But one fateful day along came a gabby young
man who mocked the ancient. It would, he said, be
good philosophy to blend a little modern effi-
ciency with the primitive contraptions. For in-
stance a feed wire of the electric light company
passed a few rods away and he suggested tapping
it and giving the hermit's cave modern lighting in
place of the picturesque pine torch the tourists con-
sidered so much in keeping with the general primi-
tive scheme. The hermit too, said the tempter,
could can the tripod and the stone pot and could
cook his catfish and herbs au casserole in a tasty
way and all at a cost of about one week's dona-
tions from the admiring tourists. The efficiency
expert was a sick talker and the hermit fell for
the scheme.
"That, as you surmise," said Col. Conway, "was
his undoing. That hermit exhibited most efficiency
when dirtiest and most uncomfortable. The in-
stallation of the electric service marked the termi-
nation of the tourist admiration and the end of the
hermit business as a paying proposition."
Finding the First One.
I interviewed my first piano man long years be-
fore I became associated with my brothers of the
American piano trade press or my half brothers of
talking machine journalism. I had been assigned by
the London Daily Graphic to make some sketches
in court during the trial of a famous will case in
the Four Courts in Dublin. The case was one in
which a Collard & Collard grand piano prominently
figured.
When a rich and eccentric old lady died the dis-
appearance of a will alleged to exist resulted in a
grand legal rough and tumble fight among her rela-
tives for her belongings valued at two hundred
thousand pounds, equal to about a million dollars
in the undepreciated value of the British unit in
those days. A beneficent court functionary took
charge of things of course and the legal processes
proceeded. But a new direction was in time given
to events by the dramatic introduction of the miss-
ing will found in the piano by James Frewen, who
had bought the instrument at a sale of the old lady's
effects:
Dressed the Part.
Mr. Frewen's appearance on the witness stand
was my first sight of a bright piano man. He was
a tall, slim man, faultlessly dressed, silk-hatted,
grey-spatted and dress-coated to the queen's taste,
or rather to the Prince of Wales' taste, that princely
personage being the dandy's model in those days.
He wore a drooping straw-colored mustache which
gave him a gloomy look that belied his real joyous
character. He represented the Collard & Collard
piano in Dublin and, as I gathered, was famed
as a successful retail salesman. In later years I
heard a good deal about Mr. Frewen from that cos-
mopolitan piano traveler, Gustav Bolze, who had
known Frewen as a piano manufacturers' agent in
South America, where his resourcefulness and
energy resulted in success.
The star witness in the will case described him-
self as English and spoke with an accent betoken-
ing that fact. But during his testimony little oddi-
ties of phrasing and unconscious tricks of accentua-
tion sounded like a reversion to lingual type to
my Irish ear. The traces of brogue were accounted
LETTER TO C. M. TREMAINE
FROM CONTEST WINNER
An Ambitious Fourteen-Year-Old Girl, Los An-
geles, Sends Thanks for the Clarinet.
Following is copy of a letter received by Director
C. M. Tremaine from the winner of the prize of-
fered by the Bureau for Advancement of Music in
the Music Memory Contest just held with great
success in Los Angeles, Calif. Many newspaper
comments on the subject of the contest also ap-
peared in the Los Angeles papers.
Los Angeles, Calif., Dec. 25, 1919.
Dear Mr. Tremaine: I thank you very much for
the clarinet you gave to the contest and which I
won.
The contest was held December the eleventh
and it surely was a great success. I was notified a
few days after the contest to receive my prize. I
had no idea that I would get such a wonderful prize.
I did work very hard during the seven weeks of
study. I don't regret it as it has been a wonderful
education. The children who didn't win any prize
have learned a great deal towards music in this
contest.
I am fourteen years of age and in the eighth
grade. I expect to graduate this February. I am
then going to high school and take the music course.
My highest ambition is to be a music teacher or
orchestra conductor. Thanking you again for the
wonderful gift.
Your friend,
ANNA WHITEFIELD.
Among the first prizes were a $100 music scholar-
ship donated by a philanthropic local woman, four
Victrolas and a $25 instrument, the money for
which was given by the National Bureau to Pro-
mote Music Appreciation in the United States.
Other prizes are two violins, a flute, clarinet,
drum, cornet, guitar, numbers of phonograph rec-
ords and music rolls and 40 books on music.
The local music trade gave $900 toward the work,
which Miss Stone predicts will be done on a three-
times more extensive scale next year.
Mr. Tremaine has also received a very enthusiastic
letter from Paul E. Beck, state supervisor of music
in Pennsylvania. Mr. Beck has been co-operating
with the Bureau for over a year on a plan for es-
tablishing the music memory contests on a city-wide
scale in Pennsylvania.
A. L. EBBELS RECOVERS HEALTH.
Friends in the trade of A. L. Ebbels—and there
are few who have more of them—will be glad to
know that gentleman has regained his accustomed
health. Mr. Ebbels has been suffering with ill
health for several months past, and until this time he
has not been able to attend to business. No doubt
many of the customers of the American Piano Sup-
ply Co., of New York, have been' conscious of this
fact. Mr. Ebbels wishes also to express his appre-
ciation of the evidences of good will which have
come to him from friends during the period of his
illness Men of Mr. Ebbels kind are never too
plentiful in any line of business, and they can be illy
spared at any time.
PIANO MEN TO DINE.
The Chicago Piano & Organ Association will give
its annual dinner on Thursday evening, January 15
at the LaSalle Hotel. The event will be informal.
for when later he told me his father and mother
hailed from the ould sod.
Mr. Frewen's testimony was an excellent bit of
what you might call "press agent stuff." It was
most important and as it turned out, decisive, but
the bewigged judges and learned councilors were
seemingly unaware of the well-disguised fact that
his evidence in the main was a magnificent spiel for
the Collard & Collard piano. Interwoven in his re-
cital of the discovery of the will in a ledge beneath
the bed of the piano were incidental bits of piano
description meant to impress the hearers with the
merits of the instrument in question.
Always on the Job.
"How many pianos do you think your ingenious
testimony has sold?" I asked him later.
"It was just the pleasant spreading of the seed.
Tomorrow will see the first bit of cultivation," he
replied, opening a notebook. "Here I've got the
names and addresses of all the legal luminaries who
had the pleasure of listening to me in court. Be-
lieve me, my boy, I shall make god use of the
dramatic incident I provided. The good piano sales-
man is never off duty. In fact he can make his
so-called recreation moments profitable. Why I
once sold a fine grand to a surgeon while he was
setting my broken leg."
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/