Here’s something I have no logical reason to own: A player piano roll. Of course, it’s a “St. James Infirmary” player piano roll, so when it popped up on eBay, I bid on it. And I won: $11.50 plus shipping. It arrived yesterday. For a little while I felt pretty silly as opened the package and assessed my new possession. But that feeling passed quickly. I’m thrilled to have it.
I have to thank this site’s most valuable friend, Mr. Robert Harwood. Partly for egging me on to bid. Partly for having the good sense to do a little Web research related to this item that I will share with you now.
One of the reasons I was at least somewhat tempted to snap this up from the moment I saw it is that the package notes the copyright holder as Gotham Music Service, Inc. — the company of Irving Mills, who claimed authorship of “SJI” under the name Joe Primrose. (See the 2005 SJI essay for more on that.) I hardly paid attention to the bit on the package that says, “Played by J. Lawrence Cook.”
But as Mr. Harwood found, J. Lawrence Cook was a big deal in the player piano business. According to the 1976 obituary reprinted on the web site of the Automatic Musical Instrument Collector’s Association, he was “sometimes known as Piano Roll Cook because of his career as an arranger, composer and maker of the rolls for player pianos.” The maker of this roll, Q.R.S., was one of several companies he worked for over the course of a career that stretched from the 1920s, until his death. “Mr. Cook was a friend of such jazz pianists as W. C. Handy, Eubie Blake and Jelly Roll Morton. Teddy Wilson was one of his pupils.”
Another site found Mr. Harwood — it seems connected to one of Mr. Cook’s descendants — includes a couple of quotations from Q.R.S. catalogs. From 1974:
J. Lawrence Cook is indeed a legendary name in the Player Piano industry. His first QRS recording was issued in 1921, and Mr. Cook has been recording music rolls ever since! “Cookie”, as his friends call him, was the only artist to be retained full time by QRS during the lean Depression years and is responsible for almost every QRS Roll issued from 1931 until 1961!
And from one published in 1990:
J. Lawrence Cook … was the undisputed master of piano roll recording for over 40 years. Between 1921 and 1961, he recorded thousands of rolls for QRS which remain unequalled for their balance and imagination.
Most remarkable of the links Mr. Harwood passed along, however, is this one. It leads to a site where you can actually hear a MIDI version of Cook’s “SJI” roll being played!
How does it sound? A little odd, to me. It’s done as a fox trot. So it has this sort of jarringly upbeat, carnival quality to it. Or maybe like something you’d now hear dubbed over a silent movie — people jerking around weirdly on screen, throwing pies at each other.
It goes by really fast, but on the second and third listens I was able to get over that initial impression, and it grew on me. It has a certain seductive … pizazz. Not a word I normally associate with “SJI,” but that’s okay. In fact, it’s good.
Anyway, as I opened my new (old) Q.R.S. box and unfurled the roll enough to see the pattern of puncture marks that somehow converts into music in a player piano, I took a moment to ponder the strange history of technology and song. I had to give the MIDI version another listen. What better sound track could I have?
Though partial to the dirgey SJI versions, this quirky fox trot reminds me a little of barrelhouse without the ladies. It does grow on one.
It is possible that the MIDI version is set at too fast a tempo. Piano rolls can be varied in tempo to a large degree, from a standstill to quite fast.
Cook’s strong suit was that his rolls sounded pretty good even if taken too fast or too slow, a testament to his arranging skills. This is also partially because the 88-note rolls were also adapted for coin-operated pianos, which had limited tempo controls but were seldom bothered with by bar owners.
The 10-tune coin piano roll would be put on, the tempo set (or, in some cases, not even touched) and the bar owner and “route operator” who leased the piano would just sit back and count the money! They usually didn’t care about nit-picky musical details.
As a contrast, an 88-note home player piano has a tempo lever and governor with a fairly wide latitude, that is almost always set by the pianolist before playing the roll (part of the process of putting on and taking off the 1-tune roll).
Also, a well-restored 88-note foot-pumped player piano with a well-adjusted wind motor governor can be very responsive to pumping, allowing you to set the tempo and then pump harder or softer to get good dynamics without affecting the tempo of the roll (much). Some of the more sophisticated pumpers had extra devices which allowed you to give a sharp sforzando accent with the pedals without causing the corresponding overcompensation and slow-down of the roll.
I would recommend finding a well-restored foot-pumped player piano (that means the PIANO TOO, not just the player mechanism) on which to try your roll.
[…] “St. James Infirmary,” J. Lawrence Cook (talkover); more on that here. […]
I have his great album “Piano Roll”, and would certainly like to find a CD with the same music. The exact title is: Piano Roll Party in Hi-Fi”. It was probably purchased in the 60s.