The Piano in America, 1890-1940 by Craig H. Roell

Author:Craig H. Roell [Roell, Craig H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, United States, 20th Century
ISBN: 9781469610610
Google: OrtoDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Published: 2018-06-05T00:40:48+00:00

Radio Music for Everybody

Few observers could have been as prophetic as David Sarnoff, when in 1916, the future president of Radio Corporation of America urged American Marconi Company to market “a simple ‘Radio Music Box,’” a plan that “would make radio a ‘household utility’ in the same sense as the piano or phonograph.”76 By the time President Herbert Hoover called upon his Research Committee on Social Trends in 1929 to provide a review of recent national developments and “epoch-making events,” the effects of the radio were very familiar. The president’s study nevertheless listed 150 such effects, from “the penetration of the musical and artistic city culture into villages and country,” to “widens gap between the famous and the near-famous.” “It hardly seems necessary to try to prove such statements about the effect of the radio as that ‘a new recreation has been provided for the home’ or ‘music has been popularized,’ “ the report affirmed. “These statements are obvious.”77 It was also obvious to many that radio’s success apparently was undermining the phonograph, sheet music, and piano industries.

The music trade did not always view the radio as an adversary, however. Just as dealers had held no fear about the mechanical player supplanting the straight piano, many in the piano industry saw the radio as another means of stimulating musical knowledge. When the music trades held their 1925 Silver Jubilee convention in Chicago, they featured a conspicuous radio exhibit, but most salesmen considered the device just another musical instrument. Indeed, a survey of seven hundred music stores revealed that six out of ten dealers in the United States sold radio sets in addition to musical instruments. In the spirit of the Jubilee’s slogan of “Make America Musical,” the piano industry embraced the radio in its effort to create an American musical democracy, with the hope of stimulating sales of musical instruments.78

“The radio and phonograph should not be regarded as rivals of the piano but rather regarded as a means of increasing its popularity,” proclaimed a Cable Company spokesman in 1928. These devices, together with the reproducing piano “should have the effect of making people want to produce their own music—to play for themselves.”79 George C. Foster, president of the mammoth American Piano Company, agreed. If the radio could awaken an interest in many who formerly were indifferent, the inevitable result would be a desire to make music. Quite naturally, the instrument choice would be the piano.80 To aid this awakening, American Piano urged radio listeners to tune in to the “Ampico Hour” Thursday evenings on station WJZ to hear great artists “play” the Ampico reproducing piano.81

Aeolian’s famous concert hall and office building at 29 West 42d Street, New York, was headquarters for RCA and Brunswick radios, which were displayed on showroom floors together with the pianos. The building also housed stations WJY and WJZ, and on February 12, 1924, premiered Rhapsody in Blue, with George Gershwin playing the piano with Paul Whiteman’s orchestra. The concert, which Whiteman called “an experiment in

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