Dear MMD:

Here is the article I promised you, finally. I got permission from
E.  Pluer to send the picture of De Dulciaan, one of many band organs
his shop has produced.

If you would like the original, glorious, photo (all 277KB) for your
photo section, just let me know.

Bill Kenney
Jamaica, NY

 - - -

                     De Dulciaan Speelt

I have been collecting nickelodeon and band organ recordings since the
sixties, and a few years ago I thought I would go through the LP's
liner notes to see if any of the recordings were now available in CD
format, and maybe pick up some new recordings along the way. The bad
news was that many of the companies were no longer in business and the
envelopes were returned to sender, unopened. The good news was that
the Gay 90's Village (2107 E. Malone, Sikeston, MO 63801), sent a
catalog of cassettes and a list of LP's still available, Clark's
Trading Post (clarkstradingpost.com), had some new recordings as did
Marion Roehl. I also found that Klavier Records (klavier-records.com),
had some player piano and carrousel recordings.

Then in January '98 I got online and continued my search through the
Internet. Miner was now selling Marion Roehl recordings:

    http://www.mrrecordings.com/

Terry Hathaway had some of his orchestrion recordings

    http://www.hathaworld.com/

on CD and Bill Black had a catalog of custom CD's and cassettes of
band organs and other instruments, downloadable from his website:

    http://www.carousels.com/cmusic.htm

or he would mail an illustrated catalog to you.

Another very nice catalog is put out by Nancy Fratti,

    e-mail: musicbox@sover.net.geentroep   (remove .geentroep to use)

specializing in music boxes, but has many band organs, fair organs,
dance organs, museum recordings and books about mechanical music makers.

When I placed an order to Nancy Fratti I received a disk by mistake,
due to the fact that two disks had the same stock number. When I
informed her of this she graciously said that I could keep the wrong
disk while she sent out the correct disk. The "wrong" disk happened to
be De Dulciaan Speelt Klassieck - DR EP 9701, a terrific Dutch band
organ recording. I never would have ordered this disk because the
cover pictured an instrument that looked like it could have been
played by Mozart himself, it was certainly not a band organ. See
Figure 1.  

I decided to use the Internet again to see if I could track down this
instrument. Using the names on the inside I found the website of
E. Pluer

    http://www.bandorgan.com/

the manufacturer of the band organ. On the site were many colorful
pictures of organs E. Pluer had constructed over the years, but as
luck would have it the picture of De Dulciaan was a murky black and
white photo. See Figure 2.

I sent him an e-mail and explained the situation and asked if he had a
color photo he could send me. A few days later I downloaded a lengthy
e-mail from E. Pluer containing a beautiful color photo of De Dulciaan!
See Figure 3.  

A few minutes work with a graphics program produced the finished
product shown in figure 4. My recording of De Dulciaan now had a cover
which did justice to the music.  

William Kenney
rew190@banet.net.geentroep (remove .geentroep suffix to use)

 [ The complete article, with the attached photos is
 [ at:  http://mmd.foxtail.com/Pictures/Dulciaan/dulciaan.html
 [
 [ And yes, I'd love to have the long form of the image(s)  -- Jody