"Honky Tonk In Hi Fi", LP Westminster WP6033
  recorded at Deansboro Musical Museum

Hello all,  since I mentioned this LP record in my previous post about
Nelson-Wiggen 7 orchestrions [140715 MMDigest], I figured it would be
only fitting to devote another post to a review of the LP, one of my
favorite automatic musical instrument records of all time!

This album was recorded sometime in the 1950s at the Musical Museum in
Deansboro, New York (now defunct, auctioned off in 1998).  Despite the
out-of-tune nature of some of the instruments on the album, they all
play rather vigorously, and when recorded likely were still playing
(somewhat) to the original factory specs and adjustments, although of
course you folks more familiar with these instruments, and familiar
with this record, can please debate this.

I am not sure who picked the music rolls and tunes for the recording
session, but they picked some really great tunes and fantastic
arrangements!  The liner notes to this LP were written by the late
Mr. Ben Hall, a well-known theatre and theatre organ enthusiast.
Although certainly not 100% accurate, they are surprisingly close and
readable, considering how few reference books on the subject were
available at that time!

The catalog number of this LP is Westminster WP 6033, in case anyone
is curious.  This is still one of my favorite records of all time and
I have a couple of copies of it (the record, I mean), since I've nearly
worn out my first one.  The LP contains 12 tracks, six on each side,
with the Nelson-Wiggen Model 7 orchestrion being the star of the album,
getting a whopping six tracks to itself!

Here's the track list, showing the other five instruments featured on
the album as well:

1. Who's Sorry Now? - Seeburg K or E coin piano with xylophone

2. You Know You Belong to Somebody Else [mis-labeled as "Georgia Cabin
Door" on the LP] - Seeburg KT Special orchestrion

3. All Alone - Link 2-E or E coin piano with xylophone

4. What's the Use - Nelson-Wiggen 7 orchestrion

5. Lonely Hawaii - Nelson-Wiggen 7 orchestrion

6. Valiant Volunteers - Link 2-E or E coin piano with xylophone

7. The Natchez and the Robert E. Lee [mis-labeled "Waitin' for the
Robert E Lee" on the LP] - Nelson-Wiggen 7 orchestrion

8. Ma (He's Making Eyes at Me) - Nelson-Wiggen 7 orchestrion

9. The Sheik (of Araby) - Seeburg KT orchestrion with xylophone

10. Baby Face - Wurlitzer Pianino coin piano

11. Tuck Me to Sleep in My Old 'Tucky Home - Nelson-Wiggen 7 orchestrion

12. Lullaby of Broadway - Nelson-Wiggen 7 orchestrion

The numbers given are track numbers, with tracks 1-6 on side 1 of the LP
and tracks 7-12 on side 2.

Now, here's my analysis/critique of the album, track-by-track, grouped
together by instrument in order of appearance:

  Seeburg K piano with xylophone (possibly an E, but likely a K):
1. "Who's Sorry Now?" (Ted Snyder, 1923) - probably a Clark or
Automatic roll from the QRS 88-note roll.

  Seeburg KT Special orchestrion (horrendously out-of-tune here):
2. "You Know You Belong to Somebody Else (So Why Don't You Leave Me
Alone?)" (James V. Monaco, 1922) here mis-labeled on the LP as
"Georgia Cabin Door".  This tune appears to be derived from Gus
Drobegg's super-snappy Columbia 88-note roll.

  Link 2-E or E coin piano with xylophone:
3. "All Alone" (Irving Berlin, 1924), and
6. "Valiant Volunteers" (march, by Mabel Metzger-Wright, 1924) -
both arranged by G. Raymond Deyo, AKA Ray Deyo.  The "Valiant
Volunteers" roll is still the greatest, raggiest Link roll arrangement
I've ever heard.  Mr. Deyo rags the hell out of this march and the
results are simply fantastic.

  Seeburg KT orchestrion with xylophone (one of the noisiest
orchestrions I've ever heard!):
9. "The Sheik of Araby" (Ted Snyder, 1921) - possibly derived from Gus
Drobegg's exciting and very creative Columbia 88-note roll.

  Wurlitzer Pianino:
10. "Baby Face" (Harry Akst, 1926) - probably a Wurlitzer arrangement,
and a nice one for 44 notes.

  The Nelson-Wiggen 7, on the other hand, gets the following:

4. "What's the Use?" (Isham Jones, 1930) - sounds derived from the QRS
version (Max Kortlander? J. Lawrence Cook?) - very snappy!

5. "Lonely Hawaii" (Fisher Thompson, 1922) - marimba waltz arrangement,
could be derived from QRS or Columbia.  A very nice marimba arrangement
which sounds great played on the single-stroke xylophone on this
Nelson-Wiggen.  I think the marimba roll arrangements sound better on
instruments with a xylophone or marimba, than on just a straight piano.

7. "The Natchez and the Robert E. Lee" (L. Wolfe Gilbert, 1921) -
derived from Pete Wendling's 1922 QRS word roll, in my opinion, the
hottest roll Mr. Wendling made for QRS! (although I still have not yet
heard them all).

After swinging through the medium-tempo fox-trot verse and chorus in
the best 1922 Pete Wendling manner, he suddenly shifts gears and
delivers the hottest version of "Waiting for the Robert E. Lee" I've
ever heard, at a super-fast ragtime one-step tempo.  Anybody who can
play this roll by hand (accurately, at tempo) will win any ragtime
piano playing contest, guaranteed!

All I can figure is that Mr. Wendling probably got to play this tune
a lot in vaudeville when it first came out (1912), and probably played
it a whole bunch while appearing at the London Hippodrome in 1913 for
a (then) record-breaking length of time for a solo pianist, and, he
was probably frustrated for almost a decade, at not being asked to
record this tune, ever since he had started making piano rolls of
current hit pop tunes in 1914 (for Rythmodik).

I would guess that this QRS roll of a then-current tune ("Natchez and
the Robert E Lee") offered him a golden opportunity to finally commit
this version of "Robert E Lee" to paper for posterity, using every
ragtime piano trick he'd learned in the past 10 years to bring it right
up to date and make it really hot!

The original QRS word roll of this is super-rare, by the way.  I have
never seen a single copy of it for sale in the 15 years or more I've
been collecting rolls, even though it's a QRS word roll!  The first
and only time I've heard the 88-note version of this, is on Mr. Frank
Himpsl's website, so he has a copy.  I think he'd probably be okay with
eventually recutting this roll, as long as enough orders for it pile
up.  Let me be first in line with an order!

This same arrangement also made it onto A-rolls; check out the restored
Seeburg K with flute pipes playing it on Mr. Craig Brougher's webpage:
http://www.musicrolls.com/cb/ra/waitinfo.zip

8. "Ma (He's Making Eyes at Me)" (Con Conrad, 1921).
This must be an original proprietary Clark arrangement, since I have
not yet heard any 88-note roll that has this arrangement.  However,
I don't think I've yet heard the Columbia roll of this, so it might be
from there, but I doubt it, since this same arrangement also appears on
a Seeburg H roll (also on YouTube),

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTV5xozX6y4

and Columbia never made H rolls to my knowledge, so this is likely a
Clark roll and arrangement.

Important:  Did the late Mr. P. M. Keast ever compile for future
collectors a list of his arrangements that he did for Clark circa
1920-1924?  Of course I know he did the drum parts for most of their
rolls, at least up through about 1923 or 1924, but he did also make
many note-arrangements which were only found on these coin-op rolls and
not found on 88-note rolls, except for some that also made it onto the
Clark "red X" XP rolls (playable on most 88-note players).  Anyway,
regardless, this is another fantastic arrangement!

11. "Tuck Me to Sleep (In My Old 'Tucky Home)" (George W. Meyer, 1921).
This is derived from Pete Wendling's 1921 QRS roll, which fortunately
is still relatively easy to find today, great for collectors,
non-collector music lovers, and musicians alike, since I think this is
amongst Mr. Wendling's all-time finest!  The registration and
percussion in this roll is superb, and probably also the work of Mr.
Keast.

12. "Lullaby of Broadway" (Harry Warren, 1935). This is derived from
J.  Lawrence Cook's great QRS roll, and is a really nice arrangement.
The percussion goes nuts on this, especially at the end of the piece!
I don't know who arranged the drums but they had a lot of fun!

If anyone wants to hear this album, I have the whole thing digitized,
but could only post the pre-1923 tracks due to copyright issues.
Please let me know, since I would be very happy to post all of the
digitized pre-1923-copyright tracks to MMD, with Robbie and Jody's
permission of course!

 [ The LP recording has it's own copyright which is not expired.
 [ You may be able to upload the recordings to YouTube and let
 [ Google deal with the copyright and royalties.  Read the fine print
 [ at YouTube prior to uploading!    --Jody

I don't know what the current owners of the rights to this album are
doing with it (probably nothing), and I wonder where the master tapes
are for this session at Deansboro (if they still exist).  They _must_
have recorded more tunes that ended up on the "cutting room floor".

 [ A digital "remaster" for release on CD would be great.  This
 [ is one of those situations where, I think, people would line up
 [ for paid digital downloads too.  --Jody

According to Wikipedia, the current owner of the Westminster recordings
catalog is Deutsche Grammophon, and I would bet that they probably have
no plans at all to ever reissue "Honky-Tonk in Hi-Fi", but stranger
things have happened!

What would be superb would be to reissue this classic album as a
24-track CD, with the original LP taking up the first 12 tracks of
the CD, and then the same tunes, played on the same exact instruments,
tracked down to their current new homes (now superbly restored and in
perfect tune, and warmly mic-ed, not sounding cold or clinical), would
make up the following 12.  Kind of a "Honky-Tonk in Hi-Fi then and now"
or better yet "Honky-Tonk in Hi-Fi... Reborn!".  Trust me, these
arrangements are so great, and well-chosen, that they'd be a pleasure
to hear twice, or again and again.

I've been told the Nelson-Wiggen 7 is with a private owner in New
England somewhere.  Does anybody know what became of the other five
instruments featured on this album (the Link, three Seeburgs, and
Wurlitzer Pianino)?

At least one survived at the museum into the 1990s without being sold
early, since I remember seeing the KT Special when I was a mere kid
visiting this museum, but was so creeped out by the large, dark
menacing room that it was in, that I didn't even have the courage to
walk up to it and put a coin in its slot!  Now I regret that, since the
KT Special probably has a new home and sounds really nice!

Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed my reminiscence and review of this great
LP record, and budding younger collectors can have faith that although
they may never be able to afford an actual Seeburg KT Special (for
example), they may still enjoy the music on the original LP, since it
can currently be infrequently found for relative pennies on the dollar,
at your local swap meet, flea market, record store, thrift shop, or
junk shop.

I also see that there is currently one copy for sale on Amazon and
another copy for sale on eBay, both by unknown (to me) sellers,
although when they're sold I don't know when other copies will be
posted up for sale there:

  http://www.ebay.com/itm/370670099511
  http://www.amazon.com/Honky-Tonk-In-Hi-Fi/dp/B002A3J5JW/

Sincerely,
Andrew Barrett

 [ The Billings Rollography says:
 [ QRS 2253 (6/23) NATCHEZ AND THE ROBERT E. LEE, THE (Fox Trot)
 [ [L. Wolfe Gilbert] Pete Wendling
 [ -- Robbie