Matthew,

After reading your post on MMD regarding transposed notes, I decided to
go to your online catalog and check the tunes on roll no. 6690, since
you said it was Wurlitzer's last 165 roll.  It was interesting to see
that the first tune, "My Dreams Are Getting Better All The Time," is
credited to composer Vic Mizzy, who later wrote the music for many films
and TV shows, including "The Addams Family."

But in reading your mention of hand-marking the master and then cutting
it with a punch and mallet, I was reminded of our old friend Mr.
McCullough.  In his correspondence with me many years ago, Frank always
maintained that Wurlitzer band organ roll arranging was done on what he
called "recording organs," a hand-playable keyboard device that placed
visible markings on advancing paper as the keys were depressed (not
unlike instruments used in the creation of reproducing piano rolls).
This record was supposedly the basis of the tune and was then edited and
transcribed to a cardboard master.  Or he may have said the "recording"
was written directly onto the master.

Does anyone know if such devices actually were used by Wurlitzer's band
organ arrangers?  Or was this an account of "whole cloth" rather than
perforated paper?

Bill Luca
Salem, MA

  [ Ah yes, Frank McCullough.  The tales he spun, mixing a tiny bit of
  [ truth with enough fiction to make it impossible to sort things out.
  [ He told of Farny Wurlitzer's daughter Fanny, for whom Farny made a
  [ Wurlitzer 153 as a Christmas present and had Frank and other
  [ Wurlitzer factory personnel deliver it, how Fanny used to come over
  [ to the factory in North Tonawanda after school on Grand Island and
  [ listen to the band organs, and how Fanny was still living in the
  [ 1980's on Long Island, where she had her 153 and a complete
  [ collection of all Wurlitzer rolls.
  [
  [ The problem is that Farny and Grace Wurlitzer were childless, and
  [ the high school on Grand Island has no record of any Fanny
  [ Wurlitzer.  I began to suspect Frank McCullough's veracity when he
  [ vehemently denied that music rolls played faster as the paper
  [ accumulated on the take-up spool that pulled the paper.  How could
  [ he not know?  Anyway Frank is dead, and his yarns died with him.
  [ He hated collectors so much that he enjoyed deceiving them.
  [
  [ --Matthew