Hello MMD.  About three years ago, in a list of rolls from
Frances Broadway's Post Bid Enterprise postal roll auction which she
operates from London in the UK, I noticed a Parex song roll "Indian
Cradle Song".

Parex was a small and I think cheap brand of standard player rolls
and I was surprised to see this one described as a Recordo roll.
I had never heard of Recordo-coded rolls being produced in the UK and
could not resist putting in a bid for it.  The bid was successful and
eventually the roll arrived here in Tasmania.

It was indeed Recordo-coded and played perfectly well on my Gulbransen
upright Recordo player.  However I began to suspect that it was not
originally a Parex roll.

About twenty-five years ago Bob and Ginny Billings published a huge
six-volume catalog of all known QRS rolls.  Volume 2 was devoted to
QRS Recordo rolls, but since a number of other companies also produced
Recordo rolls, the Billings included lists of as many of these other
rolls as they could track down.  One of these companies was Pianostyle,
but amassing a list of their Recordos proved very difficult.  After
several years of hunting they managed to track down only 19 titles,
so their list of Pianostyle Recordo rolls occupies just one page of
their 381-page Volume 2.

My "Parex" roll had some striking similarities to Pianostyle Recordos.
The tempo indicator was a blue ink rubber-stamped circle with "TEMPO"
printed vertically inside the circle and crossed by "60 80" printed
horizontally.  The roll catalog number, 30682, was printed in the same
blue ink on the right-hand side of the roll about three inches before
the start of the music perforations and just above that the pianists's
name, "B. G. Howard", was printed.

In the Billings Rollography the Pianostyle Recordo roll numbers range
from 24096 to 31235, the Tempo indicator is exactly the same as in
Pianostyle Recordos and B. G. Howard seems to have recorded exclusively
for Pianostyle; well, in Volume 3 of the Rollography, the Billings
credit him with five Pianostyle recordings and no QRS ones.

I believe that my roll is a genuine Pianostyle Recordo that found its
way to the U.K., lost its leader by accident or design, and was fitted
with a Parex leader and labels.  The Parex labels have the details
typed thereon, not printed.  Parex was indeed a low-budget production.

Within a couple of weeks of receiving the Parex roll, I changed to
a broadband Internet connection and began to trawl through the piano
rolls on offer at eBay.  Almost immediately I came across a Pianostyle
Recordo roll, with its distinctive and attractive green label.  It was
not one on the Billings list of 19 titles.  Shortly afterwards I found
another "new" one.

I felt that it was a pity to lose this information and so began to
keep a list of "new" Pianostyle Recordos when they turned up on eBay.
This involved pestering the vendors for the name of the pianist,
because that is stamped on the roll, just before the music perforations
start, and is not printed on the box label.  Sometimes I had to ask
them for other details too, because some eBay photos of the goods on
offer are less than sharp!  I have found that, almost without
exception, these vendors have been obliging and helpful, even though
I explain that I'm asking in order to record the data, and I won't be
bidding for their rolls.

The Billings Rollography has a much bigger list of International
Recordos, but there are still big gaps in it.  Very soon I noticed that
"new" International Recordos were appearing on eBay, so I began listing
those, too.  I decided that when my list of Pianostyle Recordos reached
100, I would offer both lists to MMD.  This happened a few weeks ago
and Robbie Rhodes has stored them in the Archives.  The Pianostyle list
includes the Billings' original 19, whereas the International list
contains only titles that are not in their Rollography.

Why have I assembled these details?  Because there seem to be no
catalogs of Pianostyle  or International Recordo rolls and it's a pity
to let the information fade back into electronic smoke.  I certainly
haven't done it because I'm a fan of either brand of Recordo roll.  If
you look in the Billings Rollography you will see that they are fairly
rude about both brands.  During the past three years I have acquired,
via eBay, a few of either sort and what the Billings say is true.  Most
of the piano playing is quite acceptable but the coding is mediocre at
best.  It's just as well that QRS knew what they were doing.

Finally, I'll mention Majestic 88-note rolls.  Again during a trawl
through eBay, I noticed in a particularly clear photo of a Majestic
label, that at the very bottom was printed "Manufactured by the
Pianostyle Co."  This sparked my interest, so I started looking out for
Majestic rolls.  Not all Majestics are Pianostyle-punched, but of the
roughly 90 titles I have logged, ten have exactly the same roll number
and title as a corresponding Pianostyle Recordo.  The Majestic roll
numbers are prefaced by an "M".  I haven't found any exceptions to this
so I suspect that for some time, at least, Majestic rolls were simply
Pianostyle Recordos with the expression coding omitted.

Compiling these lists would have been impossible for me did the
Internet not exist. I live about as far from the U.S.A. as it is
possible to get without being an astronaut, and ferreting out the
information would have been nigh on impossible.  If any MMD subscriber
has any Recordo rolls of the above two brands and the details are not
in my lists, or in the Rollography, I would be delighted to hear from
them.  If anyone notices any mistakes in those lists, please let me
know.

Regards from John Phillips in Hobart, Tasmania