Hi, John,  Mark Forer here, very occasional contributor to MMD residing
in beautiful Long Beach, Calif., the temporary berth of the Queen Mary.
I'm emailing you to let you know I have just previewed your brand new
A-Roll confection, graciously loaned to me by John Motto-Ros high up
in the gold country of California.  He lent it to me knowing I'd give
it to him straight!

I put the roll on my Seeburg E with violin pipes not knowing what to
expect (I forgot that you had anything to do with the enterprise!).
I must say that that roll is the cleanest A-roll I've ever heard, and
I've heard plenty of them.  Absolutely no perforating errors added to
the enjoyment of your great hand-played musical interpretations.

I thoroughly relished the extensive use of bass runs not found in most
Clark, Automatic or Capitol rolls, on top of the crisp, bright fingerwork
going on up there in the treble.  The fresh arrangements were as good
as any live performance by a blues/jazz/stride/rag piano master I've
heard.  The tunes you chose are faithful to the Nth degree to the
source material, whether old records or rolls, and that's really saying
something in this age of mediocrity.

You might say it's comparable to listening to archival electric 78s
being cleaned up digitally by experts at Sony and re-released clearer
than anything before possible.  This roll really brought my Seeburg up
to its full potential!  True, a Seeburg doesn't have Ampico
capability, but you have enabled my circa 1927 automatic piano to reach
musical levels hitherto never dreamed of.

Just to see if I was imagining the roll's quality level, I immediately
put on an original Automatic roll, A-786 from 1921 with a James P.
Johnson tune, "Baltimore Buzz," and gave a listen.  What would be
perfectly great -- "BF" (Before Farrell) -- sounded stilted and empty
by comparison.

With all due reverence to the gods of automatic piano music -- the
Wallers, James P's., Cooks, Kortlanders, Robinsons, Wendlings, Confreys
and their counterparts at Capital -- had they access to whatever
wizardry you employ, we'd all be just a little better off both musically
and spiritually were they all around today to have a little rent party
at your place! Luckily, we have you.

Buffs of automatic piano music and jazz buffs alike will appreciate,
flavor-wise, the interpretations found on this new A-roll, which seem to
straddle the late '20s through the '30s and on into the '40s, faithful
to these respective eras and never making the mistake of sounding like
modern-day retro "styling" Pablum -- the depths to which this sort of
material could easily succumb in the wrong hands!  By all means, do not
shirk from owning a copy of this roll.  You will not be disappointed
with the super arrangements contained therein!

In the old Max Fleischer cartoons, Betty Boop would sell a bottle of
"Gippo" from a horse-drawn medicine show cart to some old geezer, who
would drain its contents and immediately throw away his crutches, jump
up, dance a jig, and grow young again.  In automatic piano terms, this
is exactly what you've accomplished with your "magic elixir" of an
A-roll.  May you record many more!

Mark Forer,
Long Beach, California