And again. Love those trills. Gershwin is the GOAT.

"Tom Blake", "Eubie Jones" and "Cal Welch" were all three psuedonyms used by J. Lawrence Cook when he made piano roll arrangements in the mid-1920s for the U. S. Music Co. of Chicago, secretly, when he was supposed to be under contract to QRS. This is from Mr. Cook's interviews from the 1960s with Mike Montgomery, posted on Mike Meddings' website and also transcribed in part in the "Billings Rollgraphy" series of books by Bob and Ginny Billings, published by AMICA in the 1990s. I believe at some point, the QRS brass found out about it and Mr. Cook was reprimanded (nearly fired), but the whole thing was 'solved' in 1926 when QRS ended up buying the U. S. Music Co. itself and incorporating their label into the QRS roster of labels, continuing to issue 'U. S." rolls, now actually made by QRS, through about 1929 or 1930 or so when they were discontinued due to the Depression. According to Mr. Cook, he only visited the U. S. Music Roll factory in Chicago once, on vacation, and so except for editor-in-chief Mary E. Brown, plus Cook's future student Harold Wansborough, and a couple others, Mr. Cook didn't actually get to meet most of the U. S. legendary recording pianists. When moonlighting for them in the c. 1922-1926 era, he did the roll masters at his home in New York, and shipped them through the mail to the U. S. factory, who then checked and copied them and made production masters from them to make the commercial copies on sale to the public.

@barrybogart5436

2 жыл бұрын

Fascinating background. But he missed Jelly Roll Johnson.

@andrewbarrett1537

5 ай бұрын

Thanks! I have never seen or heard of a roll or record credited to "Jelly Roll" Johnson. However, Clarence A. Johnson from Kentucky was occasionally known as "Jelly" Johnson (without the "roll" name) and I *think* at least one of the extremely rare rolls he made for the Staffnote company of Milwaukee, has him credited thus. I have no idea if there was any personal friction or animosity between him and the much better known Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton, from New Orleans, due to their similarity of nicknames. For what it's worth, Lizzie Miles, the great singer from New Orleans, made records accompanied by BOTH Mr Johnson and Mr Morton (not at the same time!) and said in later interviews that Clarence Johnson was her personal favorite accompanist of all the pianists with whom she worked. IMO Morton gives a marvelous accompaniment to her for sure, one of his best records IMO, but perhaps due to his personality he was very difficult to work with. As far as Clarence Johnson goes, on almost all of his extant piano rolls (for Columbia / Capitol and subsidiary labels; plus a number for U S Music; a few for Staffnote; 5 for QRS; and a couple for Aeolian MelODee) he is just credited as "Clarence Johnson", although most of his duet rolls on U. S. have him as "Chet Gordon", his main pseudonym (to his nieces and nephews, he was "Uncle Chet"). Only on the few Staffnote rolls is "Jelly" included. On his two dozen or so vocal accompaniment records, on Brunswick, Columbia, Paramount, etc to the best of my knowledge, he is either entirely uncredited (record label just says the singer's name and "piano acc.") or he is credited simply as Clarence Johnson. The reasons for the "Chet Gordon" pseudonym are unclear today, except: 1. friends and relatives of Mr Johnson all attested to his great shyness; and 2. excepting a few "solo" rolls, most of the US rolls bearing this name were duets with (white) house pianists like Mary Brown, Constance Winters, Paul Pratt (as "Paul Parnell"), Armand Muth, etc. So perhaps certain members of the (quite racist) general public may have objected to Black/White piano duets in those days, hence the pseudonym. This theory is also suggested as to why Charley Straight used the name (of another real pianist!) "Billie King" for his extremely rare rolls on Wurlitzer Rolla Artis, including duets with Clarence M. Jones (although in Straight's case, he may have also been under contract to QRS at the time, ao may have also used the name to avoid punishment for breach of contract).

Thanks again. Can't get enough Gershwin.

@Dylonely42

4 ай бұрын

Likewise…

Cook is using a real "Arden and Kortlander" piano style for this roll, with some Pete Wendling touches here and there, plus a little tiny bit of his own style. He reportedly had absolute pitch and could imitate all of the pianists he heard and with whom he worked, and also, as one of the head editors at QRS, he could study the work of the staff artists and guest pianists in great detail.

Very nice.

Thanks for all the hard work you do in making these transcriptions!

Do you think you would ever transcribe Gershwins piano roll of "Idle Dreams"?

@yukimatsuri

Жыл бұрын

Yes! However, a Piano Roll MIDI File of "Idle Dreams" has not been released...

@rogerg4916

Жыл бұрын

@@yukimatsuri In 1994 it was released on a 3.5" floppy disc made for the Yamaha Disklavier piano. It plays 10 of Gershwin's piano rolls including "Idle Dreams". I used a program to convert these to MIDI files when I had a computer that used those discs.

Having never heard this video before, I can only thank the Yuoogle-Tubabet algorithms for predicting what I would enjoy Of course, I had already showered my highest praise on Maestro Matsuri for his flawless transcriptions of MIDI files.

1:57

Have you ever condsidered transcribing Gershwin's piano rolls to one piano, 4 hands?

@yukimatsuri

Жыл бұрын

No. My goal is to create a sheet music that reproduces piano roll performance.

@rogerg4916

Жыл бұрын

@@yukimatsuri Artis Wodehouse transcribed some of them for 2 pianos but for one piano 4 hands would be more useful. I suppose any 2 pianists could take your score and decide which notes each would play. Keep up the good work. I don't think there are many people who can do what you do.