The following is a history of two artists very active in the piano
roll industry from the 1910's to the 1960's. I received it with a
catalogue from the Mastertouch Piano Roll Company of Australia, who
have a *massive* selection of rolls.  I think this history would be very
useful to future researchers.

(A quick plug here for their 'Invercargill March' roll --  It has
_nothing_ to do with the fact that the fellow that wrote 'Invercargill'
was a New Zealander and I happen to hail from Invercargill - well, maybe
a little!)

(Jody and Robbie -- I realise this is a little long; you may want to
chuck it in the Archive and just post a little note saying it's there)

 [ No -- this is a great article!  -- Robbie

 - - - - - - - -

EDITH and LAUREL PARDEY

Edith and Laurel Pardey, affectionately known as 'the girls', were duo
pianists.  Both girls received an effective musical grounding at the
convent in Katoomba NSW.  Their mother ran a guest house for people
holidaying in the Blue Mountains.  The Pardey guest house was very
popular because the Saturday night dancing was accompanied by the two
Pardey girls playing duets of all the popular hits of the day.  Edith was
also the organist at St. Hilda's while Laurel was the dinner music
pianist at the prestigious Hotel Carrington.

It was at the Carrington and subsequently at the Pardey guest house that
George Horton first heard Laurel play.  He was so impressed that he asked
her to come to the City Road premises of E. F. Wilks to play the
recording 'pianola' which he had invented.  The event occurred sometime
in 1917 - the date is vague - and the tune recorded is now subject to
some dispute.  Laurel always maintained that it was a popular song of the
day, 'Yarrawonga', which, however, when roll manufacture began in 1919
appeared as the 13th roll released on the then 'Duo' label.

George Horton claimed in his reminiscences that had he taken a shot-gun
and fired it through the paper he would have achieved the same effect as
his recording machine, for as it was, it worked too slowly to record the
correct timing of this dance tune.  Nevertheless, the results of this
first recording session were sufficiently attractive to encourage Eric
Howes (of Howes & Howes Ltd., a gentleman's outfitters in Pitt Street,
Sydney) to put up the capital for the establishment of G. H. Horton & Co.
Ltd., and to send George Horton to America to buy the necessary
machinery to manufacture piano rolls at E. F. Wilk's City Road factory.

Edith and Laurel Pardey, together with the Ludermanns, became George
Horton's first employees in this venture.  Rudy Ludermann became the
first mechanic to help with the installation and maintenance of the roll
machinery, while his sister, always addressed as Miss Ludermann, became
the fore-lady over all the woman, who, because they worked for lower
wages, formed the bulk of the staff.

Unlike the popular recording artists of today, Edith and Laurel were
'nine to fivers', that is, they commenced work at nine o'clock on Monday
morning and finished the five day week at five o'clock on Friday evening.
Initially they were kept very busy 'churning out the pops' to build up a
supply of masters, which could become the basis of a catalogue in
continuity.

Eventually, as more and more 'name' artists such as Max Kortlander came
in to record, Edith, especially, was expected to edit their work -- that
is, these artists simply played their work and went home, Edith did the
rest.  This apprenticeship was to serve her in good stead later in life
when the Horton recording machine had broken down and she was expected to
sit down and simply graph out the music roll arrangement on blank paper,
which she subsequently turned into a master roll by cutting it out, hole
by hole, on the hand cutter!

Edith married Frank Baker Murn, the Director of Post and Telegraph in New
South Wales.  Frank was an extremely sentimental man and outside of his
official work he gave his time to writing poetry.  This came as a great
boon to the roll industry, because, when George Horton gave the edict
that piano rolls wherever possible should have printed words, Frank
obliged by writing lyrics where there were none.  Edith carried on as
recording artist until her son, Pardey Murn, was born.  Laurel then
carried on through the difficult days of WW2.  To maintain the illusion
that a number of artists were recording, the names Edith & Laurel Pardey,
Laurel Pardey, and E. Murn were alternated on the new releases.

So onerous was the task of recording and keeping to productions while
worrying about her husband, John Sullivan, who was away at the front,
that Laurel had a nervous breakdown.  So that roll manufacture could be
sustained through this critical time, Edith returned as recording artist
and began cutting the masters on the hand cutter.  She kept on recording
until her death in 1961, although her task became exceedingly difficult
as more and more of the ancillary equipment fell into disrepair.

Barclay Wright (the current owner of Mastertouch) has memories of Edith
in 1961, sitting at a little wicker table graphing out the master rolls
by hand.  The most astounding thing about this was that the music ruler
she used as a scale had been used so often that all the engraved coding
on it had worn off and she was virtually doing it from memory.  Key
changed, introductions, and endings were traced from old rolls just as
you would trace through a stencil.  So arduous was this activity that no
repeat passages could be 'recorded' and the roll was joined much as
editors now join films, by utilising alphabetical phrasing - i.e. A-B,
C-D, A-B, E-F, etc., until the complete arrangement had been 'recorded'.

One other interesting shortcut Edith used in her hand-cutting was to
record the melody in the right hand, or treble, as a double-octave chord,
through which she would draw a blue line.  As a musical variation on one
passage, the master-worker, when joining Edith's hand-cut master for a
final, was required to leave all the holes above the blue line open,
masking off those below with small pieces of paper as Edith's master
passed over the reading bar on the master machine.

On another passage the master-worker might be instructed to leave those
below the line open and mask off those above.  It was a little like the
children's game 'Fly Away Peter, Fly Away Paul', with embarrassing
results if the master-worker became confused so that on the final roll
the melody jumped up then down an octave in the middle of a phrase!

Over the years Edith and Laurel built up the huge repertoire of waltzes
and fox-trots which to this day remain the 'evergreens' for those who
sentimentally yearn for the good old days of the family sing-a-long around
the pianola.  'The Girls', with their four-handed arrangements, became
masters at converting marches and even sentimental old ballads such as
'Moonlight and Roses' into their now familiar 'pianola style' - a style
which produced the sound now synonymous for most people today with the
very word pianola!