Hello there,  Just saw your MMD posting on "politically incorrect" music
rolls and thought -- being one who issues rolls with controversial
titles and/or lyrics -- that I'd add my own thoughts on the matter.

Artcraft Music Rolls has issued -- for many, many years titles like
"Preacher and The Bear" -- featuring the dialogue of Arthur Collins, set
to accompaniment 'vamp' music, and adapted from the original Edison
cylinder records.  Similarly, we have sold hundreds of copies of Mark
Russell's "Give Me That 'Lectronic Religion" and quite a few Ku Klux
Klan rolls with the original words for "Amer-I-Can That Means The Klan"
(1925).

Our roll of the 1899 Cakewalk "Cinderella Soot" has one of the most
outrageous cartoons of a black stereotype dancer, adapted from the sheet
music cover -- but printed at the end of the roll so that in sensitive
social situations, one can hit the rewind switch before the picture
fills the spoolbox area.  (The original score, of course, had the
controversial -- by today's standards -- caricature on the cover, so it
was impossible to "miss".)

We have a disclaimer stamp at the start of these rolls, containing
the following text:

"Notice:  This music roll has been released with the original lyrics,
for historical purposes.  We do not endorse the political, religious or
ethnic references contained in the song.  - Artcraft Music Rolls"

The rubber stamp appears just before the first notes begin playing,
and is printed on the right side of the music sheet -- where the lyrics
will soon appear.

MMD readers might like to know the extent to which revisionism has
taken place concerning racial references.  At a major concert in
downtown Boston -- where "Linnmania-Marseillaise" -- a 1989 Pianola
composition -- was first debuted, I also introduced a 1933 Duo-Art roll
(played on Peter Neilson's Brewster upright pedal player); this was
Otto Cesana's "Negro Heaven" -- a 'Symphonette'.  (It was released in
an Ampico edition as well.)

I was told by the powers-that-be that the '33 title was "offensive",
so had to give a little curtain speech to introduce the number.  One of
Cesana's pupils had taken a tour I gave -- in the 'Seventies -- at our
museum around-the-corner, The Musical Wonder House.  He told me that
Cesana lived in a penthouse atop Aeolian Hall and that he had
perforating equipment everywhere, no doubt some of the original (jerky)
direct-cutting 'vibrating pneumatic' cutters which had been used in
prior years by the company.  Cesana had been long associated with player
rolls, as I have some 100% mathematically-arranged rolls "played by
Cesana" for Sherman & Clay's C-C-C label in San Francisco, again his own
compositions.  The museum visitor told me that Cesana, who later became
an orchestrator under Erno Rapee at Radio City Music Hall, was highly
interested in Gershwin's 'serious' music and called himself an Italian,
but was a very, very dark-skinned individual ...  suggesting a Moorish
background in my own thought process.  In 1948 Cesana moved to the West
Coast to work for Hollywood film scores and radio, so the man lost touch
with his (vocal) teacher.

Fast-forward to the '89 Boston Pianola concert.  I had to explain
"Negro" -- now an insult in some circles -- when that was a perfectly
acceptable word in the composer's time.  The black organization, NAACP,
refers to "Colored People" in its title ...  and so on.  To this day I
couldn't understand what the 'fuss' was about, concerning "Negro Heaven"
-- since the musical arrangement is one of the best ever created
commercially for the a Pianola.

Having dispensed with a short discussion of what I knew about the
composer (and his dark skin color), I began playing the roll, _which was
the 'important' thing anyway_.

The audience loved the Cesana piece and the finale, Bjorn Linnman's
"Linnmania-Marseillaise" -- the latter of which received thunderous
applause.  Originally I was engaged to play Nancarrow and Stravinsky
rolls, but insisted that I had to balance these pieces with superior
'Pianola music' -- and did.  Were an applause meter present, the
Nancarrow would have barely made the needle twitch, and the Pleyel
"played by Stravinsky" rolls -- with erratic rhythm -- would have done
little to the gauge as well.  When my rolls of Gershwin, Carmichael,
Cesana and finally Linnman began, the audience's enthusiasm swelled.

I doubt if many people 'cared' about the use of "black, "Negro" or
"colored people" in the Cesana title.  To date, I've played "Preacher
and the Bear" -- with its references to "coons" and such -- and never
received a complaint at other public events, including from some
educated black people in the audience.  The humor of "Preacher and the
Bear" is that 'holier than thou' attitude -- and this transcends racism.
Likewise, at our museum, I never got any flack from playing an Edison
cylinder of "Cohen on the Telephone" ... and today, with the voice mail
and computer menus one must use, the difficulty of dealing with a 'phone
call is often far greater, for many people.

I think those who are offended by the titles/pictures/music of the
past should (a) study-up on social history and better yet, (b) sit back
and enjoy the music (which is often very good).

That's the view from my Maine Studio!

Regards,

Douglas Henderson

Artcraft Music Rolls
PO Box 295
Wiscasset, ME 04578
http://www.wiscasset.net/artcraft/