Hauke Marxsen sent in a most interesting snip about the Ludwig Hupfeld
company [990110 MMD], and Robbie said:

 [ What a pity!  Under better circumstances Hupfeld might have built
 [ small player pianos in the 1960s and 70s, when folks once again
 [ were buying Pianolas for nostalgia and the "Good Old Days!".

My reaction is that at least we should be grateful there is any piano
activity at all descended from this once great enterprise.

Curiously, the Communist economy was one in which it would have been
eminently practicable to have made player pianos, since there was
abundant cheap labour and the materials as well as the parts could have
been made on the spot.

The company could have buttered up the regime by selling improved
sing-a-long rolls, and earned Western currency by exporting swing rolls
in the same boxes, complete with the correct labels tucked well inside
the roll, ready to glue on.  There were and are some good paper mills
in East Germany and there was and is abundant pulp from Russia,
although the Germans are now building the Russians some mills of their
own.

On a related subject, there was a most interesting series of radio
programs here in England about a year ago about the activity of jazz
bands in Nazi Germany.  Individual Nazis were not at all sure where
the frontier of decadence and Negro influence came, and in the 1930s
you could get some pretty creditable swing if you knew where to go.

The players of course changed the titles of the pieces -- "St. Louis
Blues" becoming "Ludwig's Lament" and so on -- but now and then some
particularly grim gent in a black leather coat would happen on the
place and there would be a fuss.  They had to be very careful about
broadcasting because Josef Goebbels had a big record collection and
wasn't a chap who could be fooled.  But then, from all accounts, he
was fairly easy on this particular area of low culture.

I think Popper went on making organ rolls well into World War 2.
It would be interesting to know what music they put out.  Traditional
songs would be pretty safe, what with the Nazi weakness for folksy
sentiment.

In England, Universal Music had had their factory taken over for war
work when Sir Herbert Marshall & Co. had a request from the Royal Navy
for some upright players with plenty of sing-a-longs and dance music.

Marshall usually had their "Angelus Artistyle" rolls made by Universal,
but although this source had dried up, some of the better perforators
had been stored under tarpaulins in the works yard and Marshalls bought
two of them, a couple of technicians going from Hayes to set them up.

This was in about March 1940, and for another 15 months or so Artistyle
rolls appeared in the R1000 series: "themed" rolls with the string of
letters making up the interpretation line, the last in the line of the
British old companies' rolls.

There are a lot of these still around, so they must have been busy.
I was told the perforators were still at Marshalls at the end of the
war and were even relocated in 1947 with a view to making a player
again, but nothing came of it.

Dan Wilson, London