Frank Milne's Piano Roll Output

Frank Milne's work under his many pseudonyms would constitute the
entire Aeolian-American Piano Corporation's popular output after some
date in the early nineteen-thirties on which the New York recording
pianos were retired and removed from service.

Aeolian and American Piano Co. merged in 1932 and in 1933 consolidated
all operations in the American Piano Company factory in East Rochester,
New York. It appears they didn't want to move and use the advanced
recording and editing machines that were in the New York City studios.
This included moving Frank Milne and his family to East Rochester as
told in interviews with his son, Alexander.

As we know there were a number of rolls issued under the names of
living Ampico artists such as Adam Carroll and Edgar Fairchild after
this move occurred. Unlike Milne, who was not a stage or radio soloist,
Carroll and Fairchild had major careers playing for the public and
would not have had the time to be involved in the drawing or editing
of rolls bearing their names.

So the question is, on what date did the New York studio recording
pianos cease to exist? And since Carroll and others were very much
living performers, did they simply submit the manuscripts of the
arrangements that they would have played had the recording studio not
been discontinued and then Milne transcribed them to the graph paper?

The same for the classical performers, but could the late rolls of
those simply been old recordings that were never released? I'd assume
the living artists must have had some input to the recordings bearing
their names and some payment for using them. The recordings by Morton
Gould and Otto Cesana would have been unlikely to have been hand played.

Milne was Aeolian's legacy employee who knew mechanical roll arranging
probably better than any of the other remaining employees at both
companies plus he was brilliant in learning the coding techniques for
the Ampico B which was unlike the Duo-Art system. I'm not sure if we
know if any Ampico or Duo-Art editing staff other than Milne was moved
to East Rochester.

All this means that any rolls made by Milne by tracing lines on the
stencil weren't really played by the named artist. More properly they
should read "arranged by (artist's name) and transcribed by Frank
Milne". Ampico had done this for years but used the term "assisted"
in some but not all cases, however the named artist usually did play
something on the recording piano even if it was a far cry from the
finished roll.

It's amazing that the Aeolian management of the merged Aeolian-American
Piano Corp. kept the Ampico and Duo-Art systems along with a decent
roll catalog for both in production at a time when, even as advanced
as they were, they were considered a creaky relic of decades earlier.
Even if it's under pseudonyms and drawn on graph paper, we're fortunate
to have Frank Milne's 1930's popular music arrangements to enjoy today,
especially since this was the period of the most sophisticated popular
songs.

Lee Lanier
Atlanta, Georgia