Welte Mignon - Polishola - Blair

Played by Jack Blair released 1919

Category:

Music

Tags:

• piano
• novelty
• 1919

[autopiano]

Charitable of Welte to credit Fuiks/Arden, since it's a blatant steal of Harry Thomas's "A Classical Spasm", which he recorded for Ampico/Rythmodik in 1916! I'm hoping it was a labelling mixup rather than someone's dishonesty. Makes me wonder, however, if the mysterious Jack Blair was actually Fuiks/Arden moonlighting!

[pianmn199]

@autopiano According to Smith & Howe's Welte book, Jack Blair was a

late Poughkeepsie T-100 artist about 1918-1919.

[autopiano]

@pianmn199 Indeed - that's my point - nothing is known about him. I haven't been able to find any record of Fuiks/Arden copyrighting or publishing Polishola, so I wonder if Blair was actually him using a pseudonym. The Smith/Howe book says Lisle Embree was a psuedonym (false, he was a real guy), and says William T. Cusack was probably black (false, he was a Poughkeepsie local, a white attorney!)

[pianmn199]

@autopiano I think that much of the history of people and places of the

player piano hey-day will remain a mystery gone forever.

[KawhackitaRag]

Thanks for posting this, please don't take it down!

[KawhackitaRag]

@autopiano If you would like to hear "A Classical Spasm" played by the composer/arranger (Harry Thomas) in 1916, then please go to the National Jukebox website (part of Library of Congress) and listen there. The Rythmodik/Ampico roll is very good, but in my opinion it is not as brilliant as the audio recording! It's a very exciting recording! Harry Thomas also made some rolls for Aeolian and QRS during this time (mid-teens), and although great, today they are rather rare.

[KawhackitaRag]

@autopiano Victor Arden is still one of my favorite roll arrangers, but I have lost a great deal of respect for him after finding out about this. Perhaps he thought he could get away with it because Mr. Thomas' composition was based upon a famous classical work which was presumably in public-domain at the time (although I think I read somewhere that Mr. Thomas did register it for copyright, and the manuscript survives somewhere).

[KawhackitaRag]

@autopiano I have to agree with Mr. Perry here. Check out the bio of Harry Thomas on his "Pianola NZ" website... you will see that Mr. Thomas died an alcoholic, mostly forgotten, in the early 1940s, while Victor Arden (Lewis Fuiks) was leading an orchestra on radio during the same time. Of course I don't mean that this one massive plagiarism of Mr. Thomas' rag "A Classical Spasm" put him in the poorhouse, but I don't think it helped matters much!

[pianmn199]

@protte225 Yes, I have this roll in it's original form on Ampico. Will upload soon.

[protte225]

@pianmn199 Very different. The roll is a very entertainingly jazzed up version of a late 19th or early 20th century "cultivated" style piece.