“Minstrel Songs. Old and New.”

Minstrelsy did not have a pretty image in my head, its history an ugly reminder of how my ancestors were portrayed and treated during the time when minstrel shows were oh-so-prevalent. I put aside my distaste for the genre and decided to examine the book. Interestingly, the illustrations on the cover were benign; in fact, the black people in the drawings were shown as human. They were not the images usually associated with minstrel shows.

The front cover illustrations of "Minstrel Songs. New and Old" appears more natural than stereotypical.

In the center of the book’s cover was an African American man and woman in a small boat, him serenading her with a guitar and song, and her listening lovingly. Another was an African American woman wearing an apron and kerchief carrying cotton in a basket, and others were scenes of people picking cotton and the front view of a wooden cabin.

Emboldened, I opened the book and read through the list of song titles. I was curious to see if this book published in 1882 carried the songs of an African American songwriter whose name I knew: James A. Bland. And it did, listing two of his most famous minstrel songs.

The book, published by Oliver Ditson Company of Boston, contained 102 of what it called “minstrel and plantation songs (and) Foster melodies.” I knew that Foster referred to Stephen C. Foster, one of the most prolific minstrel songwriters of the 19th century.

While the images on the front seemed innocuous, the titles were mixed:

Some of the titles were tame: “Rosa Lee,” “Nelly was a lady,” “Listen to the mockingbird.”

And some weren’t: “Oh, dat watermelon,” “Sing darkies sing,” “I’se going back to Dixie.”

And some mocked white people: “Folks that put on airs.”

And one sounded promising: “Massa’s in the cold ground.”

And some I recognized: “Carry me back to Old Virginia (or Virginny),” “Oh, dem golden slippers,” both written by Bland.

And two were déjà-vu: “Jingle Bells” (first written as “One horse open sleigh” by James Pierpoint in 1857 and listed as the second title of “Jingle Bells”); “Camptown Races” (also listed in the book as “Gwine to run all night”), along with “Old Folks at Home” (also listed as “‘Way Down the Swanee River”). The latter songs were written by Foster.

"Oh! dem golden slippers," music and lyrics from the book.

The song titles were a mix of stereotypical dialect that blacks supposedly spoke and the “good English” that others supposedly spoke. The titles and lyrics, though, were indicative of minstrelsy, which was a popular entertainment from around the 1840s and 1850s to 1870s. It had gotten started in the late 1820s after a white actor named Thomas Dartmouth “Daddy” Rice put black cork on his face and began mimicking a black man he’d met singing a song called “Jim Crow.” Rice turned it into a dance-and-song routine that made him famous.

Minstrel shows portrayed blacks in the worst light with their dances, songs, tomfoolery and gestures. White men in blackface played the typical black character as a lazy slave or a foolish dandy, and those images stretched years beyond the lifetime of the shows. There were also minstrel shows by black entertainers that started in the 1830s or 1840s, and gained popularity after the Civil War.

When “Minstrel Songs” was published, the shows were waning. Vaudeville was starting to take hold and popular music was changing. Among African Americans, the shows were expanded to include religious and other types of music, and the Fisk Jubilee Singers – formed at Fisk University around 1871 – were ushering in legitimate music.

During the 1850s, Foster wrote some of his most significant songs, which, according to several sites, sought to engender compassion for black people. “I have done,” Foster wrote in 1852, “a great deal to build up a taste for the (minstrel) songs among refined people by making the words suitable to their taste, instead of the trashy and really offensive words which belong to some songs of that order.”

Of Foster’s songs “Old Uncle Ned” and “My Old Kentucky Home,” black abolitionist Frederick Douglass said during a speech at a ladies anti-slavery society in 1855:

“Old Kentucky Home” and “Uncle Ned” can make the heart sad as well as merry, and can call forth a tear as well as a smile. They awaken the sympathies for the slave, in which antislavery principles take root and flourish.”

“Ned” is written in dialect, and although the sympathies may be there, you have to get past the language to feel it. Some references to blacks in “Kentucky” are a little disconcerting.

Bland was both a composer and an entertainer. He performed with several black minstrel groups, playing guitar, singing, dancing and composing. His break came in the 1880s when he traveled to London with one group and performed before Queen Victoria and the Prince of Wales. One site noted that although he was criticized for his minstrel songs, they were not “nasty or degrading.”

“Virginny” was named the state song of Virginia in 1940 and song emeritus in 1997, and “Slippers” is the official song of the Philadelphia Mummers.

Two pages from the book "Minstrel Songs. Old and New."

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The brothers George and Ira Gershwin, and DuBose Heyward wrote their opera in the 1930s and it was performed on Broadway for the first time in 1935. I have bits-and-pieces of memory of scenes from one incarnation of the opera: the 1959 movie with Sidney Poitier pushing himself around on a cart as a crippled Porgy chasing after Dorothy Dandrige as Bess that I likely saw on TV.

Audra McDonald and Norm Lewis as Porgy and Bess in the current Broadway musical.

A year or so ago at auction, I came across a Decca Records four-LP set from the 1935 opera, featuring Todd Duncan (Porgy), Anne Brown (Bess) and the Eva Jessye Choir. It was Decca Album No. 145, Personality Series. It apparently was the first of two volumes – this one released in 1940 and the other in 1942.

I picked it up because it was free and historical, but didn’t have a bit of interest in listening to it. The photo on the album cover showed black folks hanging out of windows and black men lying lazily around a yard. It looked exactly as I expected.

Some of the songs on the album were well-known, though: the lazy stroll of “Summertime (which I learned was written by Heyward)” and the brazen nonchalance of “It Ain’t Necessarily So (by Ira Gershwin),” “Bess, You Is My Woman,” and “I Loves You, Porgy (also by Heyward).” I always thought these were all written by the Gershwins.

I came back to the album today, ready to listen to some of its tunes but found that my old record player had speeds of 45 and 33 but not 78. I was inspired after having spent more than two hours over the weekend watching a new musical version of the opera called “The Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess” on Broadway.

The cover of the 1940 Decca Records four-album set of songs from "Porgy and Bess."

A week or so ago I had turned up my nose when a friend suggested that she wanted to see “Porgy.” Why, I wondered. It was probably full of stereotypes– I see enough of those images on the auction tables – so why spend my money to see them in 2012.

Yet, I was curious. I’d never seen the play in its entirety, and so I warmed to the idea. I soon learned that the composer Stephen Sondheim had criticized the new production by director Diane Paulus and writer Suzan-Lori Parks, who revamped the original to make it more contemporary and fresh. He hadn’t seen the play but was reacting to their remarks about updating it. The musical opens Thursday, Jan. 12 at the Richard Rodgers Theater.

Sondheim’s comments – and the positive reviews the play is getting in previews – apparently sparked a lot of people’s curiosity. The matinee performance I saw was packed, and the audience gave the performers a standing ovation.

I stood and applauded them, too, for their performances, singing and choreography. But I’m still not sure how much I liked the play. It didn’t wow me. I didn’t cheer for any of the characters or empathize or sympathize with them. The 1935 opera played around in my head, and I couldn’t shake that indistinct notion of what it must’ve been like for the performers back then.

Photos from inside the 1940s Decca album shows Todd Duncan, Anne Brown, the Eva Jessye Choir and Alexander Smallens, conductor of the Decca Symphony Orchestra.

This new version was obviously updated. These folks, although poor, weren’t pitiful or beaten down. They showed deference to the white law enforcement with little of the Stepin-Fetchit-ness. These people lived their lives in their own swath of a community in Charleston, SC, called Catfish Row, where the men fished during the day and played craps at night, the women looked after them, and they all enjoyed their annual picnic on an island nearby. Interspersed were the killings of black men by the hands of other black men – then with blades instead guns.

The musical kept some of the commonly seen black characters: the overweight woman and the brutish man (fortunately, there were only one of both). When the male character, Crown – played by Philip Boykin – came out for his bows, the predominantly white audience booed him. That’s how well he played such an awful person. They also booed the two white police officers, who mildly terrorized the community.

Playbill noted that when the opera went on tour in 1936 and landed at the National Theater in Washington, DC, Duncan refused to perform before a segregated audience. (Another version of the story says Brown was the one who first refused.) The cast members held out until the theater agreed to desegregate.

Both Duncan and Brown were classical singers. Already a performer, he apparently was recommended to George Gershwin as a potential Porgy, while she was a music student at Julliard who applied for an audition. The original play was called “Porgy,” but Gershwin is said to have liked her so well that he filled out the role of Bess – and renamed the opera “Porgy and Bess.”

Todd Duncan as Porgy and Anne Brown as Bess in the 1935 opera.

The play was based on a 1925 novel “Porgy” by Heyward (who with his wife Dorothy wrote a play based on the book), who had grown up in Charleston. He was both hailed and criticized for his characterizations of black people - which were regarded as right on the mark or way off it.

At the play last weekend, Audra McDonald was her usual wonderful self; Norm Lewis was a very convincingly crippled Porgy, and David Alan Grier can actually sing (although I thought his character became a little too much of a caricature).

All in all, it is a production worth seeing.

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It’s not the smooth, clear, sophisticated sound we hear on today’s technological wonders, but the music of a century ago delivered on old-style music cylinders. The phonographs give us a glimpse – by ear not by sight – into the musical innovations of their day, allowing us to experience recordings as they sounded to those Americans who could afford these machines 100 years or so ago.

An Edison Standard Phonograph, circa 1898. Anthony made the wooden horn on the machine.

Anthony owns several Edison phonographs. I first learned that the man who improved on the light bulb was just as proficient in making phonographs after coming across a bevy of floor models of Edisons, RCA Victors and Brunswicks at auction a couple months ago.

Most of them were lovely, but were caked in dust and in great need of repair. They, too, appeared to be part of someone’s collection, as the lot included pamphlets, letters and other documents about the phonograph records and players.

Thomas Edison is credited with inventing the phonograph in 1877, but a man named Eldridge Johnson popularized it. Johnson formed his Victor Talking Machine Company around 1901, and his trademark of a dog listening to his master’s voice became ubiquitous.

I found the old phonographs intriguing both for their historical value and their beauty. So, I was delighted when I came across Anthony and his collection of Edisons and Victrolas. Anthony, 41, is a native of Schenectady, NY, or ”The Electric City.”

(Thomas Edison arrived in Schenectady in 1886 to open a manufacturing plant to efficiently make his light bulbs and phonographs. He formed the Edison General Electric Co. three years later and then merged with another company under the name General Electric Co.)

Anthony works with the disabled, but he’s a baker by trade, having owned a shop for nine years.

“I’ve since closed the bakery but I occasionally make wedding cakes by word of mouth,” he said. “I still enjoy the art of creating them.”

Two wedding cakes made by Anthony the baker.

I asked him to tell me about his collection. Here’s what he had to say:

How did you get started collecting phonographs? What’s the allure? How did you learn to repair them?

I really liked the appearance of the cabinet to the floor-model Victrolas but never appreciated the function of one. Once I bought my first Victrola, I realized how amazing they are.

I found my first Victor Victrola Model VV-100 at an antique shop about three years ago. I always wanted one but really could not afford the price of one in a good working condition. This particular Victrola caught my heart as its cabinet was in good original condition but needed to be serviced as it did not work. I paid $165 for it and transported it home.

I then went to various antique shops and asked around if anyone knew where I could get it serviced. Once I found a man who had experience reconditioning Victrola motors, he was nice enough to clue me in on the ins and outs of getting Victrolas back into working condition. That was the start of a wonderful, rewarding hobby that has led into Edison phonographs and probably will not stop there.

A floor-model Victrola that Anthony adapted with a horn. The sounds would have normally come out of the top two doors.

How many phonographs do you have in your collection?

I have:

6 table-top Victors
4 Victor floor models
1 front-mount external horn Victor Model P
1 Frankenvictrola that I’ve pieced together with Victor components. I handmade the wood base and wood horn.
2 Edison cylinder phonographs

Do you make your own horns? How did you get into that?

I’ve made two wood horns. One for my custom-made Victrola and one for my standard phonograph. A few reasons why I’ve made my own wood horns are because I like the challenge. I like to have unique machines and I can’t afford a beautiful original or professionally made wooden horn. Both horns are temporary and are interchangeable with original horns. I would never adapt a machine to take one of my unique handmade horns.

Where do you store your collection?

I display my collection throughout the house.

The back side of the Edison Standard Phonograph, circa 1898.

What’s the best or oldest phonograph you have & how did you get it? 

The oldest one I own is my latest addition to my collection. It is an Edison Standard Phonograph with the last patent date of May 31, 1898. I would have to say my favorite and most valuable is my Victor Model P external front mount horn, which was purchased on eBay.

How do these compare to how we listen to music today? Do you prefer the sound of phonographs?

It seems the louder music is playable, the louder we turn it up to the point where loud is not loud enough. I guess that’s just human nature. Over the years we have taken advantage of technology and lost appreciation for what life hands us. This will never happen with a phonograph. What you hear is what you get, as there is no volume control. Cabinet-style Victrolas have a slight variation of volume by opening and closing the speaker doors, but only max out when the doors are all the way open.

Edison phonographs have smaller and larger horns but there’s only so large you can go. I can’t explain why but I enjoy the sound of a Victrola/phonograph. The sound is so real.

A phonograph that Anthony assembled from Victor components. He made the wooden base and horn.

What type of music do you normally buy to play on the phonograph?

For phonograph rolls, I would buy anything I can get regardless of the style of music or condition. For 78 speed records, I prefer classical and big-band music.

Do you ever repair the phonographs and give them as gifts? Have you sold any of them?

I’ve repaired various models of Victrolas for friends and family, and only charge for the cost of parts. My profit is getting the experience and the chance to work on them. I’ve sold two Victrolas to downsize my collection and received just the amount of money I put into them.

Since I had never heard an old phonograph played before, Anthony made two videos for me.  You can see and listen to one below and the other here.

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The Arion Musical Club of Milwaukee, WI, was presenting Marian Anderson in a concert at Milwaukee Auditorium on Wed., Jan. 26, 1949. I can imagine how thrilling it must have been for ticket-holders (likely not many or any of whom looked like me) for this event.

At the recital, Anderson engaged her audience with Handel, Gluck, Scarlatti, Dvorak and lots of Shubert. The program seemed to be tucked between ads for pianos and accordions, corsets and hat cleaning, cameras and photo supplies, and upcoming concerts.

The front cover of the concert program featuring Marian Anderson, sponsored by the Arion Musical Club in 1949.

As I perused it, something else caught my eye that could easily have slipped by. It was a section at the end titled “Negro Spirituals.” She also sang five songs arranged by composers Harry T. Burleigh, Edward Boatner and Hall Johnson. I was familiar with Burleigh and Johnson, but not Boatner. I was pleasantly surprised to see that among the European classics Anderson had paid homage to her own spiritual roots – and thereby creating her own classics.

I wanted to know more about this aspect of the program, so I went hunting. I found that she had long been incorporating spirituals as a postlude to her concerts, and by doing so, she was following a proud tradition. Spirituals had been around for decades, but the Fisk Jubilee Singers helped to popularize them in the late 19th century.

By the early 20th century, they were coming out of the shadows and into the mainstream, finding their way into the offerings of African American concert artists and composers, according to a 1994 University of Pennsylvania exhibit called “Marian Anderson: A Life in Song.”

Anderson’s portfolio contained more than 100 spirituals, according to one account, and she usually ended her concerts with “He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands” arranged by Hamilton Forrest. One site surmised from her programs that her favorite arrangers were Burleigh, Johnson and Nathaniel Dett.

Many of those composers and arrangers were friends or acquaintances, and several dedicated arrangements to her. In other cases, she popularized some songs.

Dett’s “Poor Me” was dedicated to Anderson, who sometimes sang with his Hampton Institute Choir. Burleigh’s “My Lord, What a Morning” became the title of her 1956 autobiography. Florence Price’s “My Soul’s Been Anchored in the Lord” was sung often by Anderson. Roland Hayes was her teacher and her inspiration.

The list of spirituals sung by Marian Anderson at the 1949 concert in Milwaukee.

My program from auction showed that she sang four spirituals, among them one of the Boatner’s best-known, “Trampin’.”

“These are the songs of my people,” she said once in reaction to a warning not to sing spirituals in the USSR when she performed there. “I shall sing them whenever and wherever I please.”

On piano at each of her concerts was Franz Rupp, a German-American who accompanied Anderson for 25 years starting in 1940.

Anderson seemed to have returned to Milwaukee pretty often for concerts sponsored by the Arion, which had been around since 1877. On March 26, 1944, the “world famous Negro contralto” – as the Milwaukee Sentinel described her – performed at a sold-out concert at the 6,450-seat auditorium. She sang Brahms, Haydn, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Charles Griffes, and her spirituals: Burleigh’s “Ride On, King Jesus”; Hayes’ “Lord, I Can’t Stay Away,” Dett’s “Poor Me” and Price’s “My Soul’s Been Anchored in the Lord.”

Two years later, she sang at the Wisconsin State Teachers Association convention in another sold-out concert during the Arion’s season. In 1952, she helped the music society celebrate its Diamond Jubilee.

All of this activity was a far cry from the 1939 incident in which the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow her to sing at Constitution Hall in Washington. That snub created such an outcry that First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the organization.

Anderson instead gave a concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday, and she ended the performance with “Gospel Train,” “Trampin’” and “My Soul Is Anchored in the Lord.”

In the years before the incident, Anderson was said to have averaged about 70 concerts a year, and she apparently kept up the pace afterward. She was a busy woman during the 1940s and 1950s, entertaining U.S. troops at war, and touring Europe, South America, the West Indies and other nations.

Here are snippets of some of the spirituals.

The left page shows the Arion Musical Club's patrons list, and the right shows the beginning of Marian Anderson's program of songs.

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All were apparently in hiding on this day because nothing was calling my name. Just as I was about to give up, an assistant mentioned that she wanted to see how much a set of Noguchi tables would go for. I hadn’t noticed the tables, so I followed her into the room where the sale of furniture and other top-named items was starting.

Along the way, I read the bid sheet, which described the tables as “Noguchi style,” so my interest waned. With their curved black bases and glass tops, the coffee and side tables truly did resemble the works of sculptor Isamu Noguchi.

The Transcriptors' Skeleton turntable waiting to be auctioned.

As I stood near them, I noticed an item I had completely overlooked in my walk-through. It was a glass box with a turntable inside. In fact, it looked more like a work of art than a utilitarian apparatus for playing records. It was quite lovely in its transparency.

I had not seen so immodest a record player before, and was curious about the maker. The auction bid sheet described it as “Michel Turntable Record Player. High Quality Turntable in Custom Glass Cabinet. Michel Turntable was used in the movie ‘Clockwork Orange.’”

A guest appearance in Stanley Kubrick’s “Clockwork Orange?” Now, I was genuinely intrigued.

In Googling, I found out that the turntable was a Transcriptors Skeleton designed by the founder of the company that produced the one seen in the 1971 movie. That was actually a Hydraulic Reference turntable.

Actor Malcolm McDowell and the Hydraulic Reference turntable in a scene from the movie "Clockwork Orange."

The Hydraulic’s origin was muddled on several websites, which had combined the design history of Transcriptors founder David Gammon and Michell Engineering founder John Michell. Both made high-quality turntables that were very similar. Their individual websites kept the histories separate.

According to the Transcriptors site, Gammon created his design of the Hydraulic Reference based on the look and workings of some 17th and 18th century clocks and watches. He eschewed the wooden cabinets of most turntables, wanting instead to allow buyers to see the parts.

Gammon started the business in 1960 in Borenhamwood, just north of London, making turntables and accessories. The Hydraulic was made in 1964.

In the late 1960s, Michell moved his company to the area and started making parts for Gammon and others, according to both websites. When Gammon moved to Ireland in the early 1970s, the two entered into an agreement licensing Michell to produce the Hydraulic Reference turntable. These were tagged J.A. Michell Eng. Ltd, according to the Michell website.

Michell built his own turntable in 1977, calling it the Michell Reference Electronic.

An up-close view of the Transcriptors' Hydraulic Reference turntable.

Both men seemed to have some connection to Kubrick. In 1969, the director approached Gammon about using a Hydraulic in “Clockwork Orange.” In the movie, the turntable turns up twice, the first time as actor Malcolm McDowell listened to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

Michell built the spaceship Discovery for Kubrick’s 1968 film “2001: A Space Odyssey,” and provided models and parts for other films, according to the company website.

Gammon came up with the Skeleton – like the one sold at the auction – around 1973, and it became a hit when he moved to the United States a year later, according to the Transcriptors website.

Here’s a YouTube video of a Skeleton playing John Coltrane’s “My Favorite Things.”

I wasn’t around when the turntable sold, so I’m not sure how popular it was among bidders.

Another view of the Skeleton turntable by Transcriptors.

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Three harmonicas were lying on a table waiting to be auctioned, including one in a box inscribed Borrah Minevitch and His Harmonica Rascals. (By the time the auction got started, one had been stolen). Under the tables were boxes of albums, sheet music and reel-to-ree1 master tapes.

An array of Paulie Teardrop guitars that were auctioned. Most sold for more than $200.

They were apparently part of this music lover’s collection, and they had been well cared for. I saw not a speck of dust on the guitars, although the phonographs were dusty. One auction staffer said those had been found in the back of the one-car garage.

The musical instruments were set off by themselves, on a special table away from an eclectic mix of glassware, jewelry, Zippo lighters, mini soft drink bottles, German cuckoo clocks and more. Even those were separated from rows of boxes and tables loaded with what looked like flea-market finds in the back of the house for this estate sale.

An animatronic Dean Martin and other items line one table. There were loads of stuff from the entertainer's home.

One table included some photos of naked women (I always wonder why families don’t discard some of this stuff. A couple years ago, a photo album of a nude couple from the 1940s or 1950s wound up on an auction table.)

Stationed at the front door to the house – also for sale and located in Egg Harbor Township overlooking Lakes Bay not far from Atlantic City – were two stone dogs that fetched a pretty sum ($375). In fact, there was a bounty of dog paraphernalia here, including ceramic figurines and a pair of metal Scotty dog bookends that my auction buddy Janet was eyeing.

Stone dogs guard the house. They were quite popular at auction, selling for $375.

The inside of the house was as immaculate as the guitars, and that’s where I came across photos of the man who loved music – Paulie Teardrop. I had never heard of him, but for years, he and his guitar apparently were popular entertainment at Primavera restaurant in Caesar’s Atlantic City.

Paulie Teardrop – whose real name was Paul Ciaurella – died in January at age 76. Some of his relatives were at the auction, including a woman who started crying anytime anyone mentioned his name, according to Janet. The woman and other family members were also bidding on Paulie’s stuff.

More of Paulie's guitars.

Born in East Harlem, Paulie and his brother Tony started out in the 1950s as the Teardrops, with Paulie on the guitar and Tony the accordion singing and playing Italian tunes, according to a 2008 story in Shore News Today. They opened at the Copacabana in New York in 1953, according to the story.

A decade later, they recorded “Aunt Carmella’s Italian Favorites,” a collection of songs with some comedy thrown in. Paulie is on the album cover  in drag. The two received a gold record after the song “Till” sold one million copies. The Teardrops made more than 20 albums, according to the news story.

Tony died in 1980, and Paulie moved to Atlantic City four years later with his guitar, continuing to sing professionally until last year, according to the Press of Atlantic City newspaper. One friend recalled him as a “strolling musician” regaling diners at the Caesar’s restaurant.

This group of small stringed instruments/music boxes seem to be a collection.

“Anybody who knew him as a musician knew he loved music,” friend Rita Stafford told the Press. “His whole world was about music. And he would totally work the rooms – the people loved him. He had lots of fans, people who followed him. And they came in just to see him.”

Paulie apparently knew and met a lot of famous people – one piece of kitsch on a table in back was a singing animatronic Dean Martin doll. The Shore News Today reporter wrote of seeing photos in Paulie’s home of him posing with such people as Dinah Washington, Sammy Davis Jr., Red Buttons and Martin.

This autographed photo of Nat King Cole was in a plastic sleeve with some oversized wedding photos.

At auction, I found a laminated autographed photo of Nat King Cole among a large group of reproduction prints propped against a wall out back.

After learning more about Paulie, I knew the guitars at auction were not necessarily a collection but a livelihood. They included a Fender Model F2 with a Harrah’s Atlantic City casino pick (sold for $290); two D’Agostinos ($20 and $220); Washburn acoustic guitar, new in box ($110); Penco electric guitar ($150); Gretsch Synchromatic Model 6576 ($210. Janet remembered the same auctioneer begging someone to buy one of these at auction once for $1. “We should’ve bought it,” she lamented) and Dobro with silver resonator ($200). An Epiphone banjo went for $300, and a Paramount Style A banjo – from the 1930s, the auctioneer said – sold for $410.

These two banjos were sold quite well at auction.

Another of Paulie’s treasures was parked next to the house: A royal blue Town Coupe whose exterior was as slick and clean as the interior. Someone mentioned that he rarely drove it, opting instead for the other cars that were for sale. The car stretched as long as the driveway, but it was a beauty.

Paulie Teardrop's Town Coupe.

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The only problem was that it was too much for me. My house wasn’t big enough. I had always longed for a large music room that would accommodate a grand piano – Steinway was the dream model. The closest I got was a Fischer console on which I would practice every night when I took piano lessons for a couple years. I overcrowded its top with mini grand piano music boxes, mini violins and saxophones in black cases, a Hohner Blues Harp harmonica and two kalimbas or thumb pianos.

The Yamaha grand piano at auction drew many admirers.

But this piano, this Yahama grand, I drooled over. I tapped a few of its perfect black and white keys, checked out its pedals and looked beneath its top cover. The frame and strings were covered in dust, and the top cover was caked with a film that someone had partially wiped away to show the shiny exterior beneath.

The piano also made a big impression on others at the auction:

As I sat there on the leather-top stool, one auction-regular came up to me. “You know you want this piano,” he said. I guess it showed. Then I went into the story about my dream music room with the grand piano.

I watched as another man asked the auction-house staff about moving it. It must have weighed a ton. A co-owner/auctioneer explained how he could get several of his guys to move it for him (later, one staffer mentioned the chore of moving this mountain of an instrument from its original home). The co-owner pointed out the spot where the dust had been cleared. “We got it straight from an estate,” he said. As they talked, a woman who had been sitting close by like a sentry got up to hear their conversation. Later, I chatted with the man – remarking on how beautiful and awesome this piano was and telling my music-room story again. He mentioned that he didn’t have any place to put it in his home, either. So I assumed he was a dealer and would sell it.

As I was examining items on a table in another room at the auction house, a regular walked up to me. “I bet you came for the piano,” he said. I began to wonder how many people saw the look in my eyes and the way I had spent too much time with it. He told me that he has five pianos in his house, including a grand, an organ in the basement and his wife’s console upstairs. I looked at him a little strangely. “My dad used to own a piano shop,” he explained.

A close-up view of the perfect piano keys.

This Yamaha grand was likely manufactured in the 1980s, and it’s a 200-year-old descendant of the first grand, invented around 1700 by an Italian named Bartolomeo Cristofori. Three of his pianos from the 1720s are still around – at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Musikinstrumenten-Museum at Leipzig University in Germany and the Museo Strumenti Musicali in Rome.

The piano was the instrument of early classical composers who not only wrote but played their own music, as well as later jazz composers and musicians the likes of Thelonius Monk, Oscar Peterson, Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, Mary Lou Williams.

It was always my intention to first learn how to just play the piano – as in learning and remembering the notes – and then settling into some jazz. Unfortunately, I never got very far past the first part. I think, though, that if I had that Yamaha in a music room, I’d be giving mini concerts for my friends.

At the auction, I waited close by for the bidding to start. The auctioneer announced that this Yamaha G1 piano was worth “over $10,000.” One website noted in 2005 that grand pianos were worth more than their original prices, estimating the G1 at $18,790. Another noted that by 2009 prices for pianos had dropped.

Here’s someone playing Fats Waller’s “Ain’t Misbehaving” on a G1, and someone else demonstrating the wonderful sound of it.

There were one phone bidder and two people on-site – the woman who had baby-sat the piano all morning and the man who had inquired about moving it. Bidding started at $1,200 and went tit-for-tat past $2,000. The woman held up her bid card the whole time, determined to get the piano. It sold for $3,000.

The Yamaha grand piano sold for $3,000 at auction.

I wasn’t sure who actually won the bid – auctions can get rather confusing - so I asked the man who had inquired. It wasn’t him (I think it was the woman). He finally told me why he was interested.

He was bidding to buy it for his church. He only had $2,500 to spend, and the next increment of the bid would’ve been $3,500, more than he could afford. Too bad; it would’ve been a lovely addition to his church.

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There was a time, though, when people danced cheek to cheek and body to body to the sounds of their favorite singers from jukeboxes like this Select-o-matic. So, I obeyed its silent order, stepped up on the platform and read its song-list. Click on photo below for a full view.

An up-close view of the Seeburg Select-o-matic waiting to be auctioned.

The Select-o-matic was one of the most successful jukeboxes, the first of which was made in the late 1940s. The songs in this machine spanned several decades, from the 1930s (My Prayer by the Platters) to the 1950s (I Left My Heart in San Francisco by Tony Bennett) to the 1960s (I Heard It Through the Grapevine by Marvin Gaye) to the 1980s (Gloria by Laura Branigan).

Someone had taped a piece of paper on the front of the machine with a list of the most popular jukebox songs, as determined by the Amusement and Music Operators Association. There was no date on the listing, but I did find a 1989 Top 40s list that included them.

A Top 10 list of the most-played jukebox songs.

1. Hound Dog and Don’t Be Cruel – Elvis Presley (1956)

2. Crazy – Patsy Cline (1961)

3. Rock Around the Clock – Bill Haley and the Comets (1955)

4. Dock of the Bay – Otis Redding (1968)

5. I Heard It Through the Grapevine – Marvin Gaye (1968)

6. Mack the Knife – Bobby Darin (1959)

7. Light My Fire – The Doors (1967)

8. Blueberry Hill – Fats Domino (1956)

9. Old Time Rock ‘n’ Roll – Bob Seger (1979)

10. My Girl – Temptations (1965)

The jukebox prominently displayed the Seeburg company name and logo in gold leaf. The J.P. Seeburg Co. started out making electric piano players at the turn of the 20th century. It got into phonographs in the 1920s in the infancy of recorded music. The company became successful with its jukeboxes in the 1940s, producing several models before turning to making electronic equipment for the war.

The most successful of its jukeboxes was one built after the war that played both sides of a record – for 100 selections. It became known as the Select-o-matic, and its popularity also derived partly from its front window that allowed people to see the record as it changed and played. Here are some other neat Seeburg jukeboxes.

The Select-o-matic song list.

Jukeboxes got their footing in the 1930s, but generally were much more popular from the 1940s to 1960s. The granddaddy of them all was the Wurlitzer company, which started out importing musical instruments and then got into pianos, organs and jukeboxes. It is said to have made some of the most beautiful jukeboxes. Here are some lovely Wurlitzers.

Several sites noted that jukeboxes were “colorblind” at a time when there was no crossover of music by black and white performers (most people did not see the famous acts in person). They did not identify singers by race, and for black entertainers, they were a great outlet for their music.

The name “jukebox” is said to have come from the African American juke joints (or jooks) or dance halls in the South, according to the book “The Great Depression in America” and other websites. In the 1920s, the machines replaced bands that had provided entertainment in these places.

A very nice Wurlitzer 1080 Colonial that just needs some care.

The Select-o-matic outside the auction house was no match for the one I found inside. It looked to be much older, with a wooden cabinet and a very fancy design. I scoured the machine looking for a maker, but could find none, only a $25 Philadelphia tax label.

Its list of songs lacked the diversity of the Seeburg machine, and they likely represented the tastes of the people where the jukebox had previously lived. There was Elvis, along with Perry Como, Rosemary Clooney, Eddie Fisher, Joni James, Ralph Marterie, Ferko String Band (a South Philadelphia Mummer’s band).

In my research, I found out that this was a Wurlitzer 1080 Colonial, made between 1945 and 1947. It needed to be cleaned up a bit, but I understood why the Wurlitzer was so much admired.

The brass design on this Wurlitzer was amazing. The song list was relatively homogeneous.

I saw the jukeboxes at a preview the day before the auction and didn’t attend the actual auction. So, I’m not sure how much they sold for. On several websites, vintage jukeboxes were being offered for way over $1,000. Some were way way over.

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The auction house staff had laid them out side by side on tabletops and under tables. Some were in what were once and could still be lovely cabinets. I was acquainted with the names Victor and RCA Victor and the familiar trademark dog listening to “His Master’s Voice,” but I also saw Edison and Brunswick stamped in gold script inside the top covers of several. Those were not familiar to me as phonograph makers, but I found out later that Thomas Edison (the light bulb) was the actual inventor of the phonograph.

A Victor record left inside a floor cabinet, ready to be auctioned.

None of them had the large horns that practically overshadowed the very early models.

These apparently had been someone’s prized possessions, because this person kept meticulous records. Underneath one table were binders with pamphlets, letters and other correspondence about phonograph records and players, along with record dusters and other related items I did not recognize. This collector – like most who value their holdings – seemed to have made himself or herself an expert on phonographs.

Although they were caked in dust now and needed work, these phonographs were likely dusted, repaired and cared for by their owner long ago. Now, they looked like old relics, tossed in the “we-don’t-want-them” bin by someone else who didn’t have the time or the inclination or the desire to preserve them.

The tabletop phonographs were covered in dust at auction.

I was curious as usual about where the previous owner had kept the phonographs, since there were so many of them and they looked so heavy. They came from an era when everything seemed to be made big, even down to the long fat arms whose needles played the 78 records. Once, these big babies exuded prestige and class for anyone who could afford them.

The earliest phonographs were popularized by a man named Eldridge Johnson, owner of a small machine shop in Camden, NJ, in the late 19th century. He had been asked by the inventor of a flat phonograph disc record to make a low-cost motor for his phonograph machine. Johnson started his own company – calling it the Victor Talking Machine Co. – in 1901 and made improvements to the machine. He was quite successful, but soon found that the huge horn that emitted the sound was a pain and people found them an unsightly sight in their homes.

Phonograph cabinets that needed a little loving care.

Around the turn of the 20th century, Johnson and his company made cabinets to hide the horns and turntable, called this new invention the Victrola and patented it. In 1907, the first table top Victrola was introduced but it flopped. A cheaper model was sold four years later.

At the start, most of the phonographs were bought by the wealthy, but the company eventually made a cheaper model for everyday folks. The phonographs remained very popular, surviving a lull in manufacturing during WWI when the company made war-related products.

Competition from the emerging radio in the 1920s hurt the company’s sales, and retailers were practically giving away the phonographs. Johnson joined with RCA to sell radio-record player sets that did quite well. In 1929, RCA bought the company and called it RCA Victor.

Accessories, arms and records were on sale with the phonographs.

Victor is known just as much for its recordings. Many of the country’s most noted classical singers and orchestras around the same time were on the label. The company also made what were called “race records” for African American listeners, combing dance halls and juke joints in the South looking for black blues and jazz singers.

Among the musicians who recorded in Victor studios were Jelly Roll Morton and his Red Hot Peppers, Duke Ellington and Fletcher Henderson, all of whom were on the label in the 1920s until the 1930s.

Victor saw competition for his phonograph from Edison, who formed his Edison Phonograph Co. in 1887. Brunswick, originally a billiards-equipment maker, got into phonographs in the 1920s. The company also produced records that were sold with its machines.

I wasn’t around when the phonographs sold at auction, but I’m sure they were a good buy for someone wanting to start a collection or repair them for sale.

A phonograph by Brunswick, which had originally specialized in billiards equipment.

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“This” was a wide cylinder with rusty metal studs sticking out all around its body in some unrecognizable pattern. On first glance, it looked like some medieval torture mechanism. But then it reminded me of the small slits on old player piano rolls but with pointed ends. It also reminded me of the metal slitted discs that I had seen lying on one of the other auction tables (larger versions of Thorens music box discs).

This cylinder with studs stumped me and another auction-goer.

The cylinder stood about 3 ½ feet to 4 feet tall, and it was heavy. It had been placed among some dusty Victrola cabinets, records, papers and discs waiting to be auctioned. All apparently had been part of someone’s collection, along with some piano rolls in their original boxes.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” the man said, but then he started guessing and joking. It looked like an old acupuncture roller, he said. You’d be aching more after that treatment than before, I replied.

Then he suggested other uses for it: Put a glass top on it and turn it into a table. Add a light fixture and shade, and make it into a lamp. Then he started to go punchy: Put it over your door and when someone breaks in, it’ll fall on their head.

The top of the mystery item.

He was right – my guess was as good as his. Because of where it had been placed on the auction floor, I assumed that it had to do with piano rolls, music, Victrolas and the like. Maybe it was used to punch holes in the paper.

According to the website jazzwax.com, piano rolls offered people their first sound of recorded music. The site related how the music was recorded on paper as musicians played. The more I read about how they were made, though, the more I was convinced that this was not an instrument for making them.

These metal discs were part of the Victrola and music lot at auction.

I’d love to know what this contraption was used for. Do you know?

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