Hello MMD'ers,  Gary Watkins wrote about MelODee rolls made by Givens
and Gourley in the late 1960s and early 1970s.  I too had purchased a
number of them from the old Lyon and Healy main store on Wabash Avenue
in downtown Chicago in my early teens.  I liked the quality of the
rolls plus the large punch size they used seemed to play better on the
not very tight player piano I had in those days.  I later learned that
they were using the original Ampico perforators so the perforation size
and chaining was the same as on the recut Ampico rolls they were also
producing at the time.

In the 1990s I reached out via mail to Larry Givens and we began a
short exchange of correspondence.  At one point he sent me several
MelODee catalogs and other related paraphernalia.  I also had a short
email correspondence with John Gourley.  It seems that Larry was the
more mechanical of the pair and John the more musical as John was a
professional piano player.  They put out a superior product in terms
of box quality, paper weight and punching accuracy, but Givens wrote
that these elements made their rolls more expensive and therefore less
competitive to QRS and Aeolian and the venture eventually ceased
operations.

While most of the MelODee rolls that featured music of the 1930s and
before were recut from original sources (mostly QRS and Ampico but a
few great rags and blues numbers on other labels as well), a portion
of their catalog was arranged by J. Lawrence Cook after he left QRS.
My understanding is that Cook arranged the newer titles in the catalog:
"Winchester Cathedral", the "Thoroughly Modern Millie Medley", "Frank
Sinatra Medley", et cetera.

In one of John's emails I seem to recall that he mentioned having
approached Cook about doing a pamphlet about arranging piano rolls,
but that Cook got somewhat agitated about not letting others know his
techniques and special skills, so the project was dropped.  That's too
bad as we might have had access to valuable information on how to keep
that craft alive if he had allowed it.  Now Cook and Givens are gone.

The MelODee masters -- mostly the medley rolls -- ended up in the
Klavier catalog.  I would welcome input for others who knew Larry
Givens more directly.

Warmly,

Marc J. Sachnoff