Hello All,  Larry Norman's thoughts triggered a few experiences
that I wanted to share.  I have been fortunate in my life to have met
folks who have had more experience or expertise than I in many areas
and have been kind enough to share their knowledge with me.  One was
Frank Trotta, a player piano restorer in Chicago who passed away about
10 years ago.

I met Frank when I was 13.  He was always generous in his knowledge
and was also a longtime piano roll collector having started in the
1950s.  And he loved ragtime and jazz.  Living on Chicago's south side,
Frank amassed a sizeable collection of ragtime, jazz and blues rolls
which he kept in various piano roll cabinets in the basement of his
home on So. Kolmar avenue.  When he invited me to his home, it was
like a treasure trove.

Frank let me come by and choose rolls to record on my cheap Sears
cassette recorder.  He also showed me how a player pianist could
really put expression into a roll through pumping accents and using
the other controls, giving a lifelike performance.  Many times, he'd
pump a roll like US "Furniture Man Blues" and I'd hold the tinny
microphone up to the open front of the piano.

When Frank became ill his brother and sister were put in charge of
his shop and made efforts to liquidate his pianos and collection of
nickelodeon rolls and such, but the piano rolls stayed in his basement.
After he passed away, while I was living in Los Angeles, I got a call
from them asking if I wanted to buy his piano roll collection.  They
had not shown the collection to anyone else.  The reason?  Because they
saw over the years how much I loved playing those rolls and how much
Frank enjoyed sharing them with me.

I flew back to Chicago and spent a few bittersweet hours in that
basement choosing over 250 rolls.  Included were Jelly Roll Morton's
"Grandpa's Spells" which Frank insisted on pumping for my cassette
recordings, a number of James P. Johnson and Fats Waller rolls
including the very late "Nobody But My Baby" and over 75 rags and
50 unusual blues rolls, and an almost complete set of Roy Bargy's
Imperial novelty rags.

I cherish those rolls and have marked Frank's name on the bottom of
the boxes.  Many of these rolls I've lent out for copying or scanning
to be shared with others.

A similar thing happened when Irv Ehlers, the pioneering Los Angeles
reproducing and piano roll collector, passed away about five years
ago.  I was introduced to Irv through Wayne Stahnke, and we both loaned
rolls to Wayne for one of his Live Performance LX projects.

Irv lived alone in house up in hills above the Silver Lake area of
Los Angeles.  He literally had a piano in every room of his house
except his bathroom and kitchen!  He'd started collecting in the 1940s
and had a collection of over 5000 rolls, with sizeable amounts of the
three main reproducing systems plus Artrio rolls.  He also had a lot
of old radios, tubes and electric fans which he enjoyed restoring.
In fact, he restored an Atwater Kent radio for me and did a great job.
He was always happy to share his favorite rolls or play the various
pianos throughout his house.

When Irv passed, the person in charge of dispersing his estate
allowed me to go through his 88-note roll collection before anyone
else.  Yes, I was also interested in reproducing rolls, but it was
made clear that my opportunity was in those rolls Irv knew I loved.
I bought several hundred rolls from his excellent collection: dozens
of hot pop tunes, novelty tunes (he was big into Zez Confrey), and
rags and blues.  He also had a lot of recuts which I bought to fill
out my collection or to back up aging original rolls.

I wrote his name on the bottom of every box and when I play them,
I recall how fortunate I have been to know such kind folks.  And
I hope to do the same for someone else someday!

Warmly,

Marc J. Sachnoff
Seattle, Washington