Does Your Chewing Gum Loose It's Flavor

The Mighty Little Wurlitzer player piano owned by Mary Jane Rogers plays her one of her favorite Q.R.S rolls: "Does Your Chewing Gum Loose It's Flavor on the Bedpost Overnight?" As meaningful today as when it was written in 1924. The words are written "the spearmint" but in America we say "chewing gum." Want to play along? Music available at Musicnotes.com.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Player
• piano
• Wurlitzer
• Does
• Your
• Chewing
• Gum
• Loose
• It's
• Flavor
• spearmint
• bedpost
• overnight
• play
• along
• karaoke
• QRS

[tenderheart17]

Ahh...lovely stuff. I have my parents' pianola. Most of the tubes and the bellow are long-since perished, and the rolls were probably either devoured by moths or thrown away by my mother.

The piano can still be played, although it is out of tune. I sometimes wonder if I should have the whole thing restored...but I know it would cost thousands to have it done.

[doggletts]

@tenderheart17 - It's hard to justify the restoring of these things when you only use them once in a great while. This one is rather new, and it is useless as a real piano for a person who plays - the action feels crappy and the sound is lousy. Why do I keep it?

[mdc2296]

can you remake this video or edit it with better sound quality?

[doggletts]

@mdc2296 - Thanks. I will give it a shot! Do you like being able to read the roll? I think it makes it more fun.

[TurtleShroom]

Amazing! A piano that plays itself! Those don't exist anymore! Where did you find it? It is just to bad the video lacks quality.

[doggletts]

ANCIENT? My mom bought it almost new in 1975! The video was filmed with a $150 Sony digital still camera - sorry about the quality. They make digital grands now. For Mr. Rogers' type fun, check out the QRS Factory video on Youtube or go to their website. They said they had a scare when radios came about in the '20's, but they are still going strong. I'm glad you had fun, and I will get a better camera next time.

A.

[vparonto]

Many thanks for sharing!

[Musicsmoke]

well, this is amazing technic stuff!! In my opinion even a computer looses from something like this!! How to make a piece of paper with holes in it, play a whole piano mechanicly!!! (ehm, a very fast computer scanner reads the paper, creates a midi-file of it, the midi-file is outputted realtime to a synthesizer, and the synthesizer output is connected to a computer built in the piano, which drives servo motors with little hammers who hit the strings... cough cough...)

[tenderheart17]

@KawhackitaRag

Hey there!

The pianola is an oldie. A 'Victor' patent by W.H. Paling & Co. Ltd, made in the USA somewhere between 1930 and 1940, and shipped out to Australia. Every removalist that has had anything to do with it has said something along the lines of " that bloody thing just about broke me back!" And it's not surprising, really. It's big and ferociously heavy with steel casing, and timber from the forests of Canada.

[KawhackitaRag]

P.S. I am not personally picking on you when I talk about videos with poor sound quality, I realize that you are probably not an audio engineer, and you did the best you could at the time. I mainly put that remark in for the benefit of any of the good restorers who are out there "losing their shirt" trying to make a living, when the poor-quality videos they have posted of their work are the culprit!

[KawhackitaRag]

@TurtleShroom In my opinion, a well-restored foot-pumped player piano (depending upon the manufacturer, and type of player action) can sound just as good as a well restored "reproducing" or "coin-operated" player piano, of the same general type (upright) and era.

I don't mean to waste space with my comments, I just love player pianos and I hate to see them get trashed because people don't know how good they can sound, or how much fun they can be!

[KawhackitaRag]

@TurtleShroom Even some (though not all) of the fully-restored player pianos viewable on Youtube are either being played incorrectly (with an added suction box, which causes the piano to bang out a tune), or again, are poorly recorded, causing the beautiful tone to sound muddy or muffled, or the beautifully finished case to look bland.

[KawhackitaRag]

@TurtleShroom They are also outnumbered by good-quality videos of fully restored "reproducing" and "coin-operated" players, which, although they deserve such videos for the amount of work that has been done, in no way deserve to leave the regular foot-pumped pianos "in the dust".

[KawhackitaRag]

@TurtleShroom unfortunately, the small quantity of videos of fully-restored foot-pumped player pianos here on Youtube is far outnumbered by the larger quanitity of videos of players in fair to poor condition, or having had a questionable "restoration" job, or are poorly recorded, causing the sound of the video to be distorted.

[KawhackitaRag]

@TurtleShroom The scrupulous restorers who actually care about foot-pumped players (and usually, also care greatly about the "reproducing" and "coin-operated" players, too), will stand by the customer who has a decent foot-pumped player, wants to restore it for personal or sentimental reasons, and has no desire to recoup their money invested in restoration. They realize the customer or family will cherish the player and will thus do the best job that they can on it for the customers' budget.

[KawhackitaRag]

@TurtleShroom Full-sized upright foot-pumped player pianos will probably never be manufactured again, so if you want one, now's the time to get one. There are still good restorers out there who can and will do a good job bringing your piano back to like-new condition.