Dear Fellow MMDer's:  I have been out of town for a while, but upon my
return discovered that Butterfield's Auction house here in Los Angeles
had included in the past weekend's monthly estate auction a selection
of instruments from Knott's Berry Farm.

Knott's was recently sold by the Knott family and the new owners are
apparently divesting themselves of some of the family's accumulation.
Kim Hunter, of Orange County Piano, informed me that the new owners were
keeping the best instruments and selling off stuff that was either in
bad shape or had been in dead storage.

Although I missed the auction, I got a copy of the catalog from a friend
at Butterfield's. The sale included about 100 lots, including everything
from run-of-the-mill Edison cylinder machines to roller organs, Mira,
Stella, and Regina music boxes.

The catalog was woefully undescriptive, but several of the larger lots
-- including a Nelson-Wiggens Style 7 keyboard nickelodeon with metal
orchestra bells, a Paillarde cylinder music box and a Seeburg nickel-
odeon of unknown configuration -- did not sell and will be offered in
next month's auction with a lower reserve.  Many lots of nickelodeon and
music box parts, discs rolls, etc. were also included.  Did anyone
attend this auction?

By the way, as a late comment on J. Lawrence Cook phonograph recordings:
I recall seeing an early 60s (?) LP in a collectors record store in
which Cook's piano rolls were recorded with live drum and possibly bass
accompaniment.

My question is about his live performing chops. In correspondence with
Larry Givens several years ago, he mentioned having Cook visit his shop
in Pennsylvania during the 1960s, and was shocked to discover that Cook
could barely play. But I recall a Herwin LP called "Ragtime in the
1940s" in which Cook is heard playing a rollicking up-tempo number
called  "Oh Freddie."  Has anyone in our digest ever heard Cook play
live?  He could certainly arrange with the best of them.

Best regards,
Marc Sachnoff