Theatre organist Jesse Crawford piano roll--"Tripoli"

Here is another piano roll recording by theatre organist Jesse Crawford. This piano roll and the other Crawford piano roll I posted were found in a roll storage cabinet by the late Richard S. Villemin when he removed the organ from the Obispo Theatre in San Luis Obispo, CA circa 1955. He gave me the two rolls about 30 years later.

This roll is nearly 90 years old and it complains quite a bit toward the end and has had some very poor repair.

Theatre organist Jesse Crawford got his start in the Pacific Northwest in the early 1910s. By 1919 when this roll was made, he had worked his way to Los Angeles. Within 2 years he would be in Chicago at the Tivoli and Chicago Theatres. By 1926 he was at the New York Paramount and the rest is history. Crawford was known to have recorded several player piano rolls in his early years (not to be confused with the style R pipe organ rolls he recorded for Wurlitzer 10 years or so later.)

Here again on the POPULAROLL label, Mr. Crawford plays "Tripoli", waltz ballad. This roll is also labeled "Organ Effects". These effects surely refer to the use of "tremolo" trying to simulate the sound of a pipe organ.

1919 was still fairly early in his career. He would not start recording 78 rpm records until the mid 1920s. While this roll is early in his career, the famed Craword rolls and glissandos are very present.

POPULAROLL 1244 (1919) FilMusic Co. Los Angeles.

Piano is a Beckwith "garden variety" player piano supposedly built in 1902 (according to serial number sequence) but more likely is from around early 1918.

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Music

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• Player-Piano
• AMICA
• MBSI
• theatre-organ
• Fox
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• Seeburg
• Nickelodeon
• Model
• Player
• Piano
• Prohibition
• Roaring
• 20's
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• blues

[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.

[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