Dave Kerr comments on some hand-played Voltem rolls he has. I have a
few of these and they are patently a product of the fairly brief period
when Wilcox & White and the Aeolian Company both had plants in Meriden,
Connecticut and shared a roll-cutting facility there (I'm not quite sure
whose it was but Rex Lawson has done the research and will know).
Voltem rolls are close cousins to Aeolian's Metro-Art series which were
effectively Duo-Art minus the code perforations, plus dynamic and
Metrostyle lines. Notice that Charles Spross, at least, was a Duo-Art
artist.
Later on, Aeolian's subsidiary in England the Universal Music Co. made
hand-played rolls for other companies under labels such as Celebrity
and Perfecta, some of them even sharing the same stock numbers as
Universal's own Dxxx "Hand-Played" series. Most but not all of these
performances appeared as Duo-Art rolls as well. Voltem, I'd guess, was
a similar tie-up. (What's Voltem backwards ... Metlov ... Metro-Art
Lover ? ...)
Dan Wilson
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