I want to thank Erik York for posting the link to Edison cylinder
09615.  I think it may be more important, and a lot less mysterious,
than he may think.  His link was http://www.tinfoil.com/cm-9701.htm 
The Tinfoil web site refers to it as "Cylinder of the Month For January
1997... The unusual Street Piano Medley played by August Molinari."

My impression is that the Edison recording company was based in New
York, so it is most likely that August was a member of the G. Molinari
& Son, New York, family which produced barrel pianos and organs around
1900.  Bowers' "Encyclopedia of Automatic Musical Instruments" has an
advertising cut of one of the company's electrified barrel pianos aimed
at the restaurant/barroom market, and a section on their organs.  Arthur
Ord-Hume wrote a book on the subject as well as including chapters in
several of his other books.

Eric said, "In the recent recordings I have heard of barrel pianos,
the instruments sound far less precise tonally and mechanically than
the above cylinder recording."  The reason that the recording may be
important in its own right is that it is likely that Molinari would
have chosen an instrument in prime condition.  Think of the opportunity
to get national advertising and be paid for it!  I'd guess that it was
in the best tune possible.  This is probably a recording of how the
builders really expected their instruments to sound.

For my own edification, I converted the .RAM audio file of the Edison
cylinder to .WAV format, opened it in Audacity, augmented the bass and
removed noise.  It sure sounds a lot like the Capra barrel piano which I
helped the DeBence Museum, in Franklin, Pennsylvania, acquire last summer.

There is no artificial fade-out at the end.  Most, or all, street pianos
lack the dampers found in keyboard pianos, and each note rings out for
a second or two.  That is a fundamental part of their characteristic
"out of tune" sound.

The first two selections are almost equal in length at 45 seconds.
This fits with street barrel piano practice since each tune must be
pinned on one circumference of the wooden barrel.  The third piece runs
only about 20 seconds, so it was probably stopped in mid-tune in order
to fit the Edison cylinder limits.

No one seems to have developed a really good web page on street pianos,
but a good summary about one typical instrument can be found on
http://www.musicalmuseum.co.uk/tomasso.html 

Several barrel pianos appear on eBay each month.  Most of them are
relatively young ones built in Barcelona, but old French, English, and
American ones are offered regularly.  If you search eBay for "barrel
piano" you will also find cartoons and photos of them from the early
20th Century.

Typical street pianos played 44 to 50 notes.  Most seem to have 10
tunes on a barrel.  An indexing mechanism moves the cylinder to access
the different tunes.  It takes only a second or two to move between
adjacent selections, so there would have been no need to line up three
instruments.  The announcer's voice would have covered the sound of
the operation of a well-lubricated index mechanism.  The notes say
"Co-starring Billy Murray as the customer."  I seem to remember seeing
Murray's name associated with other Edison ethnic comedy routines.

If you really want the full effect of a live street piano, drop in at
the DeBence Museum.  They usually play it as part of every tour.  You
can probably get the opportunity to play the entire set of ten tunes
yourself if you make a donation to the "elevator fund."

Wallace Venable