After returning home from this year's AMICA convention I went back to
work for 2 days then back on the road to pick up my family at the inlaws.
It's been a hectic 2 weeks, but I just caught up with my email and I
enjoyed reading all the MMD's. As I begin to write this Saturday
afternoon, the Mile Music Museum auction should be in full force on its
second day.  The full-page ad in The Antique Trader showed all kinds of
neat stuff, and I know several friends and at least one other MMD'er
(Don Teach) intended to be there.  I understand the smaller stuff was
to sell yesterday and the big stuff goes today.  I thought about driving
down, but the ad says there's a $10 admission for those who pre-arranged,
and $25 at the door (ouch!).  I decided to stay home and relax instead!
If anyone wonders what was sold in the auction, the Trader ad gives this
web address:

      http://www.auctiondirectory.com

and the ad mentions a Cremona J (list as a "Cremona Jay"!!), Mortier,
Bursens, Seeburg KT, Violano Virtuoso; Victor IV and VI phonographs,
music boxes, jukeboxes, clocks, automata, and much more.  I hope we
hear about the prices fetched, but the rumors I heard suggested the
restorations left something to be desired, and that prices were likely
to go higher than they should.

The AMICA convention was great - Robin Pratt & friends deserve major
kudo's for doing such a great job!  I'd like to share some of the
highlights for me, and I encourage other AMICAns to write about their
highlights as well.  Please forgive me for any rambling on that I do.
I don't know how else to give you a sense of how the convention went
for me.

On Thursday we went to Cedar Point, which is a large amusement park on
the lake.  It has over a dozen great roller coasters, a few carousels
with band organs, and a neat 1920's merry-go-round with streamlined
racing horses.  It went a bit faster than any other I've been on, and
the 4 horses in each row moved back & forth relative to each other, so
each row had a winner at the end of the ride.  This had been at that
famous park in Cleveland (I forget the name!) until it was moved in 1969.
We got rained on briefly, but it wasn't bad and the clouds probably kept
the crowds down.  I had a great visit with Richard Reutlinger for an hour
while we waited for one of the coasters, and got to hear the whole story
about his Victorian house in San Francisco, his beautiful furniture, and
his mechanical music collection.  On another occasion we visited with
Janet Tonnesen while waiting for another coaster (Richard was too chicken
to go - admit it, Richard!).  It was a really fun day, and that evening
we had a concert with John Arpin on the piano.  John has recorded dozens
of CD's of music from the turn of the century on, and he is just
overflowing with knowledge about the tunes and composers.  He played
one piece in particular with just his left hand: it had lots of runs
up the keyboard, and he brought out the melody line with such skill
that you'd swear he was using both hands.  I was amazed.  John
autographed CD's and piano rolls after the concert.

Friday was spent visiting a carousel museum in Sandusky, which included
many horses of various manufacture, a carousel, and 2 band organs.  It
was a very nice exhibit, but I'm not enough of a specialist to tell you
what we saw.  After a box lunch we had an organ concert at the
Presbyterian church, on an Allen digital organ.  This machine could play
either classical or theatre organ sounds, and was also very impressive.
The organist was quite talented and put the organ through its paces.
I thought this organ gave very credible results, but of course there
were those who could tell the difference between it and the real thing.
Friday evening we had a footpumper contest, for which I played one of
my favorite Jelly Roll Morton rolls.  I missed most of the contest
because I ran out to buy floppies to feed the Disklavier in the
hospitality room (more about that later).

The best part of this convention for me was the opportunity to visit with
old friends and to meet new ones.  I met fellow-MMD'er Dave Kerr, who
already told you about some of his activities.  I also heard that
Durrell Armstrong (Player Piano Co.) was going to be there.  I've met
Durrell before, and his name came up often when I interviewed Bill
Singleton (the fine piano / Duo-Art restorer from St. Louis) last summer.
I asked Durrell if I could interview him on tape, and he was anxious to
oblige.  I was too tired Friday night, so we got together early Saturday
morning before the seminars and spoke for 2 hours.  We went to Bob
Berkman's QRS seminar (I have spoken to Bob over the phone for years
but this was the first time I had met him)

Next we attended Bob Taylor's session on identifying the differences
between Ampico A and B roll coding.  I hope AMICA can coax Bob into
publishing his material because it was very interesting, well-organized,
and it is an important area of roll collecting that has not received
proper attention.  Bob identified 5 stages of development as the editors
transitioned from Ampico A expression coding to Ampico B.  With Bob's
observations and definitions we collectors will be able to identify
which rolls are coded for A or B pianos - I'm sure we'll find a number
of (classical in particular) rolls which were issued one way then later
recoded.  We had to miss Mel Septon's seminar on Duo-Art rebuilding
techniques and Jeff Morgan's seminar on Ampico operation.

When the seminars were over Durrell expressed that he would rather
get back to the interview than stop for lunch (just how do you think
he stays so thin, anyway?!!).  I certainly wasn't going to turn him
down, so we taped a 3rd hour of conversation and got finished just in
time for the mart at 2PM.  The Saturday night entertainment was William
Bolcom & his wife Joan Morris, who are well known for their music -
Bolcom's piano rags & accompaniment, and Joan's singing.  They went
through a bunch of great tunes, my favorite of which was Lydia the
Tattooed Lady which Groucho sang in one of the Marx Brothers movies.

The commemorative convention roll was a reissue of the QRS Celebrity
Series roll of Bolcom playing Joplin's Country Club rag (an appropriate
choice, eh?).  The leader included photos of Bolcom & Morris, and they
both autographed rolls for us after their show.  I spoke with Bob Berkman
who said he remastered the roll from the Melville Clark marking piano
masters for this reissue, so it should be different from the earlier
roll.  I wish I had a copy of the earlier release because it would be
interesting to see what he did differently.  The Country Club roll is
just beautiful, and is very easy to foot-pump with nice expression -
it practically plays itself, it's such a good recording.

Another nice benefit of this year's convention was the attendance of
our two honoraries - Ramsey Tick and Hi Babit.  I interviewed Ramsey
last year at the St. Louis convention.  This was Hi's first convention,
and he was a hit!  Hi made rolls for QRS and Aeolian (and Givens'
Melodee label?) from the early 1960's through the early 1980's. He was
a lounge pianist in New York before he took the job at QRS.  His whole
story appeared in the AMICA when he became an honorary, I believe it
was September 1993.  Hi is a charming man of about 70 years, who loves
to entertain and did a great job of doing so!  He recorded over a dozen
tunes on the Disklavier between Friday & Saturday nights, and was basking
in all the attention he commanded.  I shouldn't say this, but I thought
he looked like Chico Marx the late 1950's. He was a lot of fun to visit
with, and I think he was a bit surprised that we couldn't generate
requests as well as he could play them!  Hi lives in Florida now and
is busy entertaining folk there and working on shows that are put on
for various retirement communities.  He seems to be having a ball these
days!  He also seemed to be surprised at the attention he was getting,
but if you could have seen him you would understand why.  He deliberately
mixed tunes with ironic titles, just for a laugh.  I hope Hi attends
future conventions too because he will always be a very welcomed guest.

Now, about that Disklavier.  It was delivered to the hotel without any
disks to play!  Robin brought some later, but they were all sacred and
(in my opinion) very dull.  I made a phone call to Wayne Stahnke from
the amusement park on Thursday and asked him to rush a care package of
some of his Live Performances disks to me at the hotel, and sure enough
they arrived early Friday.  He sent the 2-disk set of Rachmaninoff's
complete Ampico rolls, Dick Hyman plays Fats Waller, Earl Wild plays
favorite Chopin, and Johnny Guarnieri plays Duke Ellington.  I haven't
had a chance to give this feedback to Wayne, but I'm afraid there was
so mugh going on that I didn't do as good a job as I intended on
demonstrating these disks.  I think this topic warrants a full seminar
session, demonstrating a well-regulated Ampico piano playing the original
rolls along with a Disklavier playing Wayne's fine transcriptions.
Perhaps I'll volunteer to give that presentation next year, and to talk
about some of the misconceptions that many AMICAns seem to have about
the Disklavier.  It amazes me how polarized people are on this topic -
they seem to either love the old machines and hate the new (a fear of
the unknown, or a perceived threat?) or vice versa.  I personally love
both.  My Disklavier is probably the coolest toy I've ever bought myself,
and it can do many great things.  It's also a new piano that sounds great
in my house and is a pleasure to hand-play.  On the other hand, nothing
will ever replace my footpumper and a good collection of hot music rolls,
so in my mind it is silly to consider the Disklavier as a threat to my
love of old players.  Once I get my Ampico properly restored I expect
it to have a similar place in my heart, and I'm sure there are some
tricks a good Ampico can do that the Disklavier cannot.

Let's see, what did I forget to mention.  I met Bill Ackman who has been
issuing popular Duo-Art recuts, and is a really nice fellow.  I got to
spend some (but not enough!) time with Liz Barnhardt, Linda Bird (our
AMICA president), and Linda's husband Galen.  Linda did such a great
job of running our Sunday morning annual meeting.  Other organizations
would be lucky to have such an articulate person in charge!  Liz was a
gracious hostess who obviously put  a lot of effort into the success of
this convention.  I won't start listing all the friends I revisited
(including Tony & Paddy Austin from London - oops, I said I wouldn't
do that!), so suffice it to say that we all had a great time and I look
forward to seeing everyone again next summer in Niagara Falls.

Regards,
Rob DeLand

(deland_robert@macmail1.csg.mot.com)

 [ Editor's Note:
 [
 [ I'm really enjoying the reports from the convention.  Thanks!
 [
 [ Wayne's Live Performance diskettes for the Disklavier are
 [ great.  I've put a complete index of them on the MMD Web site
 [ as:
 [
 [      http://mmd.foxtail.com/livep
 [
 [ These are in Yamaha's proprietary format, but will also play
 [ on the Roland SB-55 Sound Brush and the PianoDisc PDS-128 system.
 [ At the risk of being commercial, Wayne has said he'd allow me to
 [ market these.  The proceeds will help keep things going here.  If
 [ you have an interest in any of these diskettes, please send e-mail
 [ to: rollreq@foxtail.com
 [
 [ Thanks
 [ Jody