A player piano is a self-playing piano, containing a pneumatic or electro-mechanical mechanism that operates the piano action via programmed music recorded on perforated paper, or in rare instances, metallic rolls, with more modern implementations using MIDI. The rise of the player piano grew with the rise of the mass-produced piano for the home in the late 19th and early 20th century. Sales peaked in 1924, then declined as the improvement in phonograph recordings due to electrical recording methods developed in the mid-1920s. The advent of electrical amplification in home music reproduction via radio in the same period helped cause their eventual decline in popularity, and the stock market crash of 1929 virtually wiped out production.
Gennett was an American record company and label in Richmond, Indiana, United States, which flourished in the 1920s. Gennett produced some of the earliest recordings of Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Bix Beiderbecke, and Hoagy Carmichael. Its roster also included Jelly Roll Morton, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Charley Patton, and Gene Autry.
James Price Johnson was an American pianist and composer. A pioneer of the stride style of jazz piano, he was one of the most important pianists who bridged the ragtime and jazz eras, and, with Jelly Roll Morton, one of the two most important catalysts in the evolution of ragtime piano into jazz. As such, he was a model for Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Art Tatum, and Fats Waller.
General Records was a small American record label during the late 1930s and early 1940s. Its most notable releases are piano solos recorded by Jelly Roll Morton in December 1939 late in his career.
A piano roll is a music storage medium used to operate a player piano, piano player or reproducing piano. A piano roll is a continuous roll of paper with perforations (holes) punched into it. The perforations represent note control data. The roll moves over a reading system known as a 'tracker bar' and the playing cycle for each musical note is triggered when a perforation crosses the bar and is read.
Jean Lawrence Cook was the most prolific piano roll artist in history. His output has been estimated at between 10,000 and 20,000 different roll recordings.
Good Time Jazz Records was an American jazz record company and label. It was founded in 1949 by Lester Koenig to record the Firehouse Five Plus Two and earned a reputation for Dixieland jazz.
Jelly Roll Morton: The Complete Library of Congress Recordings is a 2005 box set of recordings from jazz pioneer Jelly Roll Morton. The set spans 128 tracks over eight CDs. It won two Grammy Awards in 2006, Best Historical Album and Best Album Notes.
QRS is an American company which makes piano rolls. During the 1920s and early 1930s, it also produced three short-lived record series.
Red Hot Peppers was a recording jazz band led by Jelly Roll Morton from 1926–1930. It was a seven- or eight-piece band formed in Chicago that recorded for Victor and featured the best New Orleans-style freelance musicians available, including cornetist George Mitchell, trombonist Kid Ory, clarinetists Omer Simeon and Johnny Dodds, banjoists Johnny St. Cyr and Bud Scott, double bass player John Lindsay, and drummers Andrew Hilaire and Baby Dodds.
"I'm Alabama Bound" is a ragtime melody composed by Robert Hoffman in 1909. Hoffman dedicated it to an M. T. Scarlata. The cover of its first edition, published by Robert Ebberman, New Orleans, 1909, advertises the music as "Also Known As The Alabama Blues" which has led some to suspect it of being one of the first blues songs. However, as written, it is an up-tempo rag with no associated lyrics. The song has been recorded numerous times in different styles—both written and in sound recordings—with a number of different sets of lyrics.
The Aeolian Company was a manufacturer of player organs, pianos, sheet music, and phonographs. They created and operated Vocalion Records from 1917 to 1924.
Benjamin Franklin "Reb" Spikes (October 31, 1888 – February 24, 1982 was an American jazz saxophonist and entrepreneur. His composition with his brother John, "Someday Sweetheart", has become an often-recorded jazz standard.
"Tin Roof Blues" is a jazz composition by the New Orleans Rhythm Kings first recorded in 1923. It was written by band members Paul Mares, Ben Pollack, Mel Stitzel, George Brunies and Leon Roppolo. The tune has become a jazz standard and is one of the most recorded and often played New Orleans jazz compositions.
Bertha ("Bee") Walker (1898–1987) was an American composer and pianist.
Walter Melrose was a music publisher and lyricist in the 1920s and 1930s.
Howard Lutter (1889–1959) was an American musician and composer best known for creation of player piano rolls. He was born in Newark, New Jersey, in 1889 to Hermann Lutter and Clara Uhl.
Butler "String Beans" May was an American vaudeville performer, singer, pianist and comedian. He has been described as "the greatest attraction in African-American vaudeville, the first recognizable blues star," and was known "for his streetwise humor, contortive vernacular dancing, and outrageous blues piano playing." He was said to have been the highest-paid black entertainer in the country at the time of his accidental death at the age of 23, and has been claimed as "the model for Jelly Roll [Morton], at least as a stage entertainer and perhaps even as a blues pianist". No recordings of May exist.
