Re: 010801 MMDigest, Subject: Ragtime Music Performance Styles

Charles Davis said:

> I won't forget my first exposure to a player piano was in a western
> movie where the player piano was sitting in front of a store (or
> saloon).  It was back in the early 1950s, so some details are not that
> clear.  However I do realize now that if the time period of the movie
> was before 1900, that kind of player was not around.  Am I right about
> this?  That enclosed players did not appear until the early twentieth
> century?

Just. Melville Clark had his 65-note Apollo upright on the market in
1899. He had built a prototype in 1895 (of which I've mentioned a
lengthy article with photos and drawings in a "boys" mechanical
encyclopedia of that year belonging to the collector Benet Meakin,
which is probably now lurking in the vast amount of printed matter his
sons sold off after his death) which was possibly not as easy to play
as the Pianola pushup (in 1895 still a 58-note prototype).

The next built-in player was an Angelus model (I don't know its exact
name) from Wilcox & White in early 1901, which used ideas from Clark's
prototype. Clark came out with the 88-note Apollo Concert Grand late in
1901, which was a literally "stretch 65-note" job with a 15-inch roll.
These rolls are now very rare, suggesting a limited sale. This was still
just ahead of the Aeolian Company's first built-in Pianola Piano, which
I think just missed Christmas 1901. In Europe, Ludwig Hupfeld's first
built-in player came in 1902, still a 65-note at that stage although
their 73-note Phonola pushup with Solodant "theme" dates from 1901.
Chase & Baker's built-in Cecilian didn't come, I believe, until 1903,
although they had had a pushup on sale since 1899. All these dates are
open to correction !

Dan Wilson, London