Dear MMD,  I've noticed some inadvertent errors on your Music Media
pages.  On your page about Aeolian you have listed Artist, Artistyle
and Echo rolls.  [ See http://mmd.foxtail.com/MMMedia ]

Artist and Artistyle rolls were made (presumably according to the
evidence) from Aeolian masters at the Aeolian roll plant, but were
marketed specifically by Herbert Marshall as their own 88-note roll
label.

Herbert Marshall were manufacturers of pianos, and dealers and fitters
both of the Angelus and latterly the Ampico systems.  Broadwoods, the
UK piano makers also had a very extensive range of rolls produced just
for them.

Aeolian made rolls in the UK under several different names at various
times as the roll division was effectively split from the parent
company.  Artist rolls are essentially Aeolian / Universal song rolls
with an Artist leader -- an extension of the Herbert Marshall Artistyle
roll range.  Herbert Marshall also had a range of hand played rolls
under the "Celebrity" label which were hand played rolls from the
Aeolian hand-played series which in turn were generally Duo-Arts
without the codi!

Echo rolls have nothing to do with Aeolian whatsoever.  My
understanding is that they were an entirely independent outfit with
their own recording piano and perforating equipment.  They represent
probably the only UK-outfit to have commercially produced hand played
rolls.  These were made with both live performances and also via
(Aeolian) rolls performed onto the recording piano with a push-up.

To get around the fact that the originating roll was not their own they
made their own performance of it.  Rolls appear both on spools with
metal end and on spools with black Bakelite ends, identical to Aeolian
/ Meloto rolls of the period.  65-note and 88-note rolls were produced
and were sold widely and cheaply.  The best known (these days)
recording artist was Billy Mayerl, whose recordings date from when he
around 20 or 21 years of age and therefore generally pre-date his
uniquely styled novelty piano compositions.

The Meloto range utilized Aeolian masters throughout and was
two-pronged.  They are the same whether they were made by the Universal
roll company or the Meloto Company.  The range was split into dance
rolls and standard rolls.  The dance roll catalogue featured 3 or four
different label varieties over the years.

In the UK the Regent dance roll brand was issued in a mirror series of
the Meloto range for Herbert Marshalls essentially and the brand uses
the same serial numbers.  Meloto rolls use Aeolian masters, Duo-Art
dance roll masters without the coding, and also UK-issued dance
material that never appeared in the American catalogues.

Generally Meloto rolls were issued without Metrostyle printing or any
dynamic line to follow although some are marked with "mf", "pp", etc.
The early Meloto dance labels indicate Themodist status by having four
dots arranged in a square either side of the words "Dance Roll" on the
label.  Rolls without dotted labels are non-Themodist generally.

On my website are pictures of some of the other UK Aeolian-clone
labels.  I've also recently added some pictures of the UK Artistyle
labels whose design and color generally evolved from the Wilcox &
White label design.  Hope this is all of some use.  Can any other
reader provide some details as to the Universal and Meloto companies
and how and when they were derived from Aeolian, as my two typing
fingers are both tired now. ;)

Yours sincerely

Adam Ramet
http://website.lineone.net/~agr/index2.html

 [ Thanks for the information, Adam.  I will amend the MMD Media
 [ site.  Especially important to me is to identify the different
 [ number sets from which roll numbers were drawn.  (Duo-Art is
 [ confusing, Ampico is maddening, while QRS simply numbered
 [ sequentially, and so on.)  -- Robbie