Theatre organist Jesse Crawford piano roll--"Tripoli"

[paulj0557]

It would almost seem like a better way to have made a tremulent effect would have been to attach a pair of rollers near the far end of the strings on the piano harp- one roller on each side of the entire length of strings. Sort of like how a cloths wringer works, then just quickly oscillate the rollers. Of course like on a guitar there would be intonation issues so they could have clamped some sort of a pincher to slightly deflect each string with a permanent set screw that could be finely tuned

[KawhackitaRag]

I can see what they mean by the "organ effects" (the tremolo effect in piano rolls was also labeled "mandolin interpolation", "saxophone arrangement", "marimba waltz" etc etc). However, if this roll were played on a photoplayer, wouldn't the arranging give the pipes that familiar theatre organ sound? No? How does a photoplayer tremulant sound different from a regular theatre organ tremulant? Interesting to hear Mr. Crawford on player piano rolls; how much of this do you think is his own playing?

[Yaledmot]

The American Photoplayer tremolos were very theatrical-if a bit speedy. I have never heard a tremolo on any of the smaller Wurlitzer instruments. My own electro-pneumatic piano console organ has a standard TO tremolo. Crawford's rolls would sound great on a machine such as Joe Rinaudo's.

John Landon's 1975-ish book on Crawford stated Crawford recorded these rolls circa 1919/1920. Crawford never used the tremolo effect in organ playing. I would suspect these were added by others.