I'm sitting here listening to the Pearl recording of Ohman and
Arden.  The first few cuts are of pure piano duo music -- #1 with
Max Kortlander.

Aside from being a lot of fun, the thing that is most striking is
that many times I'm bouncing back and forth between saying "Gee,
that's what the 88-note rolls sounded like", and "Gee, O & A sure
sound like 88-note rolls".

It would seem that O & A either defined the duo-piano sound of
player rolls, or the player rolls influenced O & A.   I think it's
the former.   They defined the style, which makes sense since Arden
did arrangements for QRS at the time that the QRS sound was being
solidified.

On another note, while I was browsing in HMV, I was look for some
Mechanical Music CD's.  Alas, there is no pigeon hole for them,
so it winds up that one searches thru all the bins in all the
categories.   The O & A record was in the "historical" bins of the
classic section.   Along with that were many recordings of Duo-art
rolls reported as played by great (read big-name/recognizable/saleable)
artists of the past, and other silly puffery about Reproducing
Pianos being the "Digital recorders of their time" etc.

It's nice that Commercial America has discovered old rolls, but I
sure wish there were more records available in places like HMV of
the better pop rolls.  Probably a pipe dream though since Milne,
Erlebach, Billings, Fairchild etc. simply don't have the name
recognition on a CD to generate the kind of bucks that companies
need to get them interested.   Maybe we should bring them out under
a label something like "GERSHWIN RECORDS", to get audience attention.
It worked for the O & A record ("Keyboard Wizards of the **Gershwin**
Era").  Or how about "Rhapsody in Blues" as the big type eye-catcher.
No, better yet, 20's flappers dressed up in grunge-rock costumes on
the cover, or the "Piano Perfesser" with dreadlocks and a ring in his
lip --  that would do it.

GB