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J. Lawrence Cook
J. Lawrence Cook (July 14, 1899 – April 2, 1976) was the most prolific piano roll artist in history. His output has been estimated at between 10,000 and 20,000 different roll recordings. Cook was born in Athens, Tennessee, the son of a preacher. He was orphaned before his fourth birthday, and raised by relatives who introduced him to music. He went on to become the most famous name in the history of the music roll industry. The young black pianist arrived in New York in March 1920 and recorded some rolls for the US Music Roll Company. In May 1923, he was engaged by the QRS Music Roll Company (QRS Records), where he remained for nearly 50 years. As a result of his prolific output, he also used pseudonyms and some rolls were released under names such as Sid Laney, "Pep" Doyle, and Walter Redding. He also produced some rolls that were marketed as being played by Fats Waller. Cook was known to produce over two piano rolls each day, along with his other jobs, such as at the B.A. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Athens, Tennessee
Athens is the county seat of McMinn County, Tennessee, United States and the principal city of the Athens Micropolitan Statistical Area has a population of 53,569. The city is located almost equidistantly between the major cities of Knoxville and Chattanooga. The population was 14,084 at the 2020 census. The population of the zipcode area is at 23,726 History Early history and Civil War The Cherokee were living in McMinn County at the time of the arrival of the first Euro-American explorers. The Athens area was situated nearly halfway between the Overhill Cherokee villages of Great Tellico to the north in Monroe County and Great Hiwassee along the Hiwassee River to the south. In 1819, the Cherokee signed the Calhoun Treaty, selling the land north of the Hiwassee (including all of modern McMinn County) to the United States. McMinn County was organized on November 13, 1819, at the home of John Walker in what is now Calhoun. The Native American village, Pumpkintown (a corrup ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
QRS Records
QRS Music Technologies, Inc. is an American company that makes modern player pianos. It was founded as Q•R•S Music Company in 1900 to make piano rolls, the perforated rolls of paper read by player pianos to reproduce music. The company also produced vinyl records in the 1920s and 1930s and radios beginning in the 1920s. Today, it makes modern, digital variations on the player piano and the recordings to drive them. History QRS was founded in Chicago, Illinois, by Melville Clark (ca. 1850-1918), who also founded the Story & Clark Piano Company, to make piano rolls. It recorded early ragtime and jazz musicians, such as Fats Waller and James P. Johnson. In 1912, the company introduced the QRS marking piano, one of the first mechanisms for recording the performance of a live pianist to a piano roll, rather than transcribing notes by hand. The first "hand-played" roll that QRS released was "Pretty Baby" by ragtime pianist Charley Straight. The company went on to capture live pe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fats Waller
Thomas Wright "Fats" Waller (May 21, 1904 – December 15, 1943) was an American jazz pianist, organist, composer, violinist, singer, and comedic entertainer. His innovations in the Harlem stride style laid much of the basis for modern jazz piano. His best-known compositions, " Ain't Misbehavin'" and " Honeysuckle Rose", were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1984 and 1999. Waller copyrighted over 400 songs, many of them co-written with his closest collaborator, Andy Razaf. Razaf described his partner as "the soul of melody... a man who made the piano sing... both big in body and in mind... known for his generosity... a bubbling bundle of joy". It is likely that he composed many more popular songs than he has been credited with: when in financial difficulties he had a habit of selling songs to other writers and performers who claimed them as their own. Waller started playing the piano at the age of six, and became a professional organist at 15. By the age of 18, he was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Treasure Tour
The American Treasure Tour is a tourist attraction established in 2010 and opened to the public for guided tours. Visitors travel through a large private collection that encompasses an eclectic variety of smaller collections. Included is one of the world's largest private collections of automatic music machines: nickelodeons, band organs, calliopes, photoplayers and music boxes. There are also classic cars, circus art, dolls and dollhouses, and a large assortment of popular culture miscellania. It is located in the 422 Business Center in the community of Oaks, Pennsylvania, west of Valley Forge National Historical Park just off of U.S. Route 422. Background The collection is located in Oaks, Pennsylvania, in a former B.F. Goodrich tire factory building. The factory was opened in 1937 and active in tire production until its closure in 1986, shortly before Goodrich sold their production line, and the name of their brand, to the Michelin Company. The former plant has si ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oaks, Pennsylvania
Oaks is an unincorporated community located in Upper Providence Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. The community is 18 miles (30 km) northwest of Philadelphia and its boundaries are defined in large part by the village's position at the junction of Perkiomen Creek and the Schuylkill River. History The two waterways defined much of the village's early history. In 1825, the Schuylkill Navigation Company completed the Schuylkill Canal and Brower's Locks at Oaks, and the system was heavily traveled. The village of Oaks was named after the canal's designer, Thomas Oakes. Later in the nineteenth century, the railroad largely supplanted the role of the canal. The Perkiomen Railroad built the Oaks station in 1868. The Philadelphia and Reading, sometimes referred to as the Reading Railroad, merged the short line as its Perkiomen Branch. Oaks village cropped up around the station. Present Oaks today is set in dense suburbs. Many of its original structures remain, including ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Virginia City, Montana
Virginia City is a town in and the county seat of Madison County, Montana, United States. In 1961 the town and the surrounding area were designated a National Historic Landmark District, the Virginia City Historic District. The population was 219 at the 2020 census. History Founding In May 1863, a group of prospectors were headed toward the Yellowstone River and instead came upon a party of the Crow tribe and was forced to return to Bannack. On May 26, 1863, Bill Fairweather and Henry Edgar discovered gold near Alder Creek. The prospectors could not keep the site a secret and were followed on their return to the gold bearing site. A mining district was set up in order to formulate rules about individual gold claims. On June 16, 1863, under the name of "Verina" the township was formed a mile south of the gold fields. The name was intended to honor Varina Howell Davis, the first and only First Lady of the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. Verina, alt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wurlitzer
The Rudolph Wurlitzer Company, usually referred to as simply Wurlitzer, is an American company started in Cincinnati in 1853 by German immigrant (Franz) Rudolph Wurlitzer. The company initially imported stringed, woodwind and brass instruments from Germany for resale in the United States. Wurlitzer enjoyed initial success, largely due to defense contracts to provide musical instruments to the U.S. military. In 1880, the company began manufacturing pianos and eventually relocated to North Tonawanda, New York. It quickly expanded to make band organs, orchestrions, player pianos and pipe or theatre organs popular in theatres during the days of silent movies. Wurlitzer is most known for their production of entry level pianos. During the 1960s, they manufactured Spinet, Console, Studio and Grand Pianos. Over time, Wurlitzer acquired a number of other companies which made a variety of loosely related products, including kitchen appliances, carnival rides, player piano rolls and radi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Glen Echo Park, Maryland
Glen Echo Park is an arts and cultural center in Glen Echo, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C. Located about northwest of the city's downtown area, the park's site was initially developed in 1891 as a National Chautauqua Assembly. Following the foreclosure and sale of the Chautauqua grounds in 1903, leisure facilities were developed there to serve the city's growing population. In 1911, the site was expanded to become the privately owned Glen Echo Amusement Park, a popular facility that operated until 1968. The National Park Service (NPS) now operates the park, which serves the Washington area as a regional cultural resource when offering classes, workshops and performances in the visual and performing arts. The park is known for its Streamline Moderne architecture, an antique Dentzel carousel and its historic Spanish Ballroom, as well as for its children's theater and social dance programs. Visitors also come to the park to participate in its festivals and events, which inc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tin Pan Alley
Tin Pan Alley was a collection of music publishers and songwriters in New York City that dominated the popular music of the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It originally referred to a specific place: West 28th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues in the Flower District of Manhattan; a plaque (see below) on the sidewalk on 28th Street between Broadway and Sixth commemorates it. In 2019, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission took up the question of preserving five buildings on the north side of the street as a Tin Pan Alley Historic District. The agency designated five buildings (47–55 West 28th Street) individual landmarks on December 10, 2019, after a concerted effort by the "Save Tin Pan Alley" initiative of the 29th Street Neighborhood Association. Following successful protection of these landmarks, project director George Calderaro and other proponents formed the Tin Pan Alley American Popular Music Project to continue and com ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tiger Rag
"Tiger Rag" is a jazz standard that was recorded and copyrighted by the Original Dixieland Jass Band in 1917. It is one of the most recorded jazz compositions. In 2003, the 1918 recording of "Tiger Rag" was entered into the U.S. Library of Congress National Recording Registry. Background The song was first recorded on August 17, 1917 by the Original Dixieland Jass Band for Aeolian-Vocalion Records. The band did not use the "Jazz" spelling in its name until 1917. The Aeolian-Vocalion sides did not sell well because they were recorded in a vertical format which could not be played successfully on most contemporary phonographs. But the second recording on March 25, 1918 for Victor was a hit and established it as a jazz standard. The song was copyrighted, published, and credited to band members Eddie Edwards, Nick LaRocca, Henry Ragas, Tony Sbarbaro, and Larry Shields in 1917. Authorship "Tiger Rag" was first copyrighted in 1917 with music composed by Nick LaRocca. In subsequen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jerry Cooper
Jerry W. Cooper (born August 6, 1948 died March 21, 2020 in McMinnville) was a Tennessee Democratic politician and a former member of the Tennessee Senate for the 14th district, which encompasses Franklin, Bledsoe, Coffee, Grundy, Sequatchie, Van Buren, and Warren counties.Legislative Information Services"Tennessee Senate Member." Accessed August 23, 2006. On August 22, 2006, Cooper was indicted by a federal grand jury on three felony counts: bank fraud, mail fraud, and conspiracy to commit bank and mail fraud. He was acquitted of those charges, but in November 2007 he was fined $120,000 by the Tennessee Registry of Election Finance for state election finance violations and on December 7, 2007, he resigned his State Senate seat. Education and career Jerry Cooper attended public schools in McMinnville and graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville in 1970. From 1970 to 1976, he served in the Tennessee Army Nati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
