Presto

PRESTO
Presto
T H E AMERICAN MUSIC TRADE WEEKLY.
Published Every Saturday at 417 South Dearborn
Street, Chicago, Illinois.
C. A. DANIELL and FRANK 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 nocn.
Address all communications for the editorial or business
d e p a r t m e n t s to P R E S T O P U B L I S H I N G
Dearborn Street, Chicago, III.
CO., 417 South
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 1924.
INDUSTRY AIDS ART
There is one side of the piano trade ^that
has not received the general recognition it de-
serves. No one disputes that-music, of the
refined order, is the best possible inspiration
to correct living. It even goes a long way in
the making of good citizenship. It stimulates
life, makes the leisure hours productive of
good, and lifts the average man or woman
above the sordid things of existence.
This applies to all walks of life, and it is
this that stirs the public school boards and the
private institutions of learning to increasing
effort in the music departments. Even the ten
commandments have been set to music, and
the Bible is pretty well interpreted in song.
The work of the piano manufacturers and
dealers is not small in the direction of public
understanding of good music. Of late years
it has been the custom with prominent piano
manufacturers to give recitals in which tal-
ented, and often famous, artists have appeared.
In some instances, perhaps, one of the pur-
poses of the concerts, by piano manufacturers,
is to introduce or give emphasis to the im-
proved character of their product—to exploit
some fine piano or reproducing piano. But
that doesn't change the force of the statement
that the piano manufacturers are furthering
the cause of good music.
Among the notable concert-giving piano
manufacturers of recent time the work of the
Aeolian Company, the American Piano Co. and
the Baldwin Piano Co. has been remarkable.
The Cable Company and several others have-
also been almost extraordinarily active in the
same direction. The public presentation of
great performers has been lavish in extent and
often far-reaching in its scope. Of course the
contributions of Steinway & Sons have been
famous for many years.
Of late the Story & Clark Piano Co. has en-
tered the lists in fine recitals under the
auspices of the New York branch of that old
western industry. At very recent concerts
under the Story & Clark direction, some of the
greatest of modern operatic singers have been
heard, and the occasions have reached the
stage where the music-loving New Yorkers
who know fine attainment, in art—and most of
them do—have taken special notice.
The concert room enterprise of the piano in-
dustry and trade is doing as much, and often
more, in certain places, for the development of
an understanding of good music and its inter-
preters than are the professional manager and
impresario. And for this, too, the piano in-
dustry and trade must have credit. It adds
not only to the volume of business in an im-
portant branch of business, but it increases the
capacity of the people for appreciation of all
the other things by which life is refined and
made really worth while.
PIANO NAMES
How would it do, in the avalanche of educa-
tional effort in music's noble cause, to try soms
plan for the enlightenment of the editors? It
may seem preposterous to suggest that the
public monitors need anything of the kind. In
a general way they don't. On most subjects,
whether of art or politics, they know too
much. But everyday evidence drifts in that
the newspapers do not know much about the
traditions of the toilers by whose work
America's immortal pianos were founded and
brought*to their present degree of speechless
splendor.
It is common to find mention, sometimes in
the advertising columns, sometimes in the
critical reviews, and sometimes even in the
profound editorials, which indicates a lament-
able ignorance of the proper names of the
greatest of the piano makers. While it is
true that Jonas Chickering, the reputed "father
of the American piano," holds a niche in the
"Hall of Fame/' about one in every ten who
write about him do not know his given name.
Last week one "large" and one "small" news-
paper—from Dallas, Texas, and Michigan City,
Indiana, respectively—called him "Thomas"
Chickering.
In last Sunday's issue of the New York
Times a big advertisement of Gimbel Brothers
piano department announced the names of six
"famous makes." And of the six four were
badly misspelled—so badly that their posses-
sors would scarcely recognize them. And the
two illustrations of ignorance, or don't-care-a-
damnishness, on the part of both editors and
advertising men, help to prove that it might be
a good idea to run in a piano name day, or
week, in the succession of "Music Weeks,''
singing fests and other festive events designed
to keep alive the love of things worth having.
A good piano name is a great possession. It
is a mighty asset on the credit side .of any
piano store ledger, and to any ambitious piano
manufacturer it is a pearl above price.
And, this being so, why not try to have the
great piano names recognized and kept straight
in the columns of the newspapers? We are
for it. Are you?
Things in the piano business are most de-
cidedly picking up. The outlook has been
growing brighter for some time past, and just
now they are almost brilliant, don't you think ?
* * *
A music trade paper says that President
Coolidge is the first President to encourage
music. That trade paper is as ignorant of
November 8, 1924.
musical history as any Hottentot. From
Washington to the present time, nearly all
American presidents have cherished music and
several of them have put "official" pianos into
the White House.
Speaking of what the piano industry can
do for a man of energy and force, or rather
what a man of energy and force can do for
the piano business, Mr. H. C. Bay, head of
the H. C. Bay Company, one of the largest in
the world, began in a small factory on West
Lake Street, Chicago, little more than twenty
years ago. And see it today at Bluffton, Ind.
* * *
Word of the death of E. R. Wanckel brought
to the memory of many piano men, especially
the older ones, a host of pleasant memories.
For Mr. Wanckel was one of the most genial
of men, and he was a conspicuous member of
the house of Alfred Dolge in the days of its
greatest prosperity.
* * *
If you expect to deliver any pianos for the
coming holidays, you must sell them pretty
soon. The jewelers are selling diamonds on
a small cash payment with the promise to hold
till the gift giving days. So are piano dealers
selling pianos that way.
* * *
Latest report, or rumor, is that a prominent
Chicago piano industry will dispose of its city
factory and take possession of a larger one
on the Michigan shore. But don't believe any-
thing you hear till you know it is so.
30 YEARS AGO IN THE TRADE
From the Files of Presto
(November 8, 1894.)
Mr. E. S. Conway's smile yesterday was one of
the most noticeable things around the Kimball ware-
rooms.
The Piano * ' . Manufacturers' Association of New-
York and Vicinity at a meeting called after the death
of Mr. Jacques Bach passed resolutions and ordered
them printed in the daily papers.
When political landslides are talked about here-
after, that of 1894 must be given close attention. The
Republican prophecies have been fulfilled and the
great Democratic majorities of two years ago have
been completely overturned.
Dispatches from Berlin state that Mine. Fannie
Bloomfield-Zeisler, the Chicago pianist, made a re-
markable success on her first appearance in that city
last week. She received six recalls after her per-
formance of the Rubinstein concerto.
The Wegman Piano Co., of Auburn, N. Y., have
just closed negotiations with Mr. R. O. Burgess,
formerly of the Needham Piano and Organ Co., by
which he will become their traveling representative.
Mr. Burgess (who is a brother of Mr. VV. C. Burgess
of the Wegman Piano Co.) is an energetic traveling
representative.
20 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK
(From Fresto, Novemter 10, 1904.)
George P. Bent emphasizes good advertising inl
these words: "A good article is of little consequence|
to a dealer if no one knows of its value."
George M Slawson, of The Cable Co.'s traveling)
force, whose regular territory is Wisconsin, Minne-j
sota and North Dakota, was in Chicago this week]
He voted in his home district at La Grange, 111.
Charles W Newman, of Newman Bros. Co., rej
turned to Chicago last week from a week's enjoy]
ment in seeing the World's Fair at St. Louis. "Ouj
business is first-rate this fall," said Mr. Newman tc
a representative of Presto on Friday.
There has been a very pretty dispute in Bostoil
over the question of small grands. The Steinerts sel
up the claim that anything smaller than the Steinwaf
Miniature Grand passes the "danger line." The littl]
Steinway grand is 5 feet 10 inches.
Perhaps the most colossal failure in the history
World's Fairs will be recorded with the elos'ng
the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louij
And yet the St. Louis Fair is unquestionably tbj
greatest, with the possible exception of the Colun
bian Exposition, that the world has ever known.
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