It's been a long time since Walt opened the mailbag to respond to readers' questions. That's because most of the questions are inane or boring. But today I'll answer the most frequently asked query, which is... try reading this aloud with the intonation of Ed McMahon asking Johnny Carson... "How old are you?" Here is the answer.
I am so old that I know three distinct meaning for "CD". Younger folks probably think first of a silvery disc, about 4.75" across, which you stick into some kind of music machine [or the coffee cup holder on your computer. Ed.] to hear music. From their chairs in the home, your parents may remember when "CD" stood for "Certificate of Deposit", which was a fancy piece of paper that banks and S&Ls gave you in return for your hard-earned cash, sometime prior to 2008, and which turned out to be worthless. Their parents may remember being taught in grade school to "duck and cover" in the event of an A-bomb attack. That was part of the "CD", meaning "Civil Defence" drill.
Another word ["CD" isn't a word. Ed.]... OK, another term which has seen its meaning changed over the last century is "nickelodeon". If you're anywhere south of 40, you probably think first (and only) of "Nickelodeon", an American pay television network which was launched on 1 December 1977 as the first cable channel for children. I haven't watched it since they cancelled Ren & Stimpy, having belatedly realized that the excellent cartoon show wasn't really for kids. A poster on YouTube asks, "Why were we allowed to watch this?" Wouldn't happen today. Political correctness...
But I digress. The "nickelodeon" of which I speak is not the "Nickelodeon" mentioned in the first 1000 hits if you search the term on Google. Nooo... The nickelodeon was the first type of indoor exhibition space dedicated to showing projected motion pictures. Usually set up in converted storefronts, these small, simple cinemas charged five cents for admission and flourished from about 1905 to 1915.
"Nickelodeon" was concocted from nickel -- the name of American and Canadian 5-cent coins, and the ancient Greek word ᾨδεῖον [Ōideion], literally "singing place", a roofed-over theatre, the latter indirectly by way of the Odéon in Paris, emblematic of a very large and luxurious theater, much as Ritz was of a grand hotel. But wait... there's yet another meaning.
In 1949 a Tin Pan Alley lyricist incorporated into a popular song ("Music, Music, Music") the refrain "Put another nickel in / in the nickelodeon...", evidently referring to either a jukebox or... wait for it... a mechanical musical instrument such as a coin-operated player piano or orchestrion. That's a generic name for a machine that plays music and is designed to sound like an orchestra or band. Orchestrions may be operated by means of a large pinned cylinder or by a music roll, like that used in a player piano. The sound is usually produced by pipes (smaller and with different voices than those of a pipe organ) as well as percussion instruments, sometimes including the piano.
The sound of the orchestrion is the sound I heard as a child -- yes, I was a child once -- riding the carousel at an amusement park called Sunnyside. You can hear the music of the carousel in an eponymous Folkways LP (LP - ancestor of the CD), or you can watch and listen to this terrific video featuring a restored Wurlitzer 146B carousel organ from Norumbega Park in Newton, MA.
Wurlitzer was the leading name in orchestrions, as well as the organs for which it is still rightly famous. But it wasn't the only name. The The J.P. Seeburg Piano Company of Chicago was the Avis to Wurlitzer's Hertz. In the mid-1920s, a group of Seeburg and Marquette Piano Co. execs formed the Western Electric Piano Company, as a secret subsidiary of the Seeburg company. In late 1926, Western Electric, which had been in a different location in Chicago, moved into the Seeburg factory. The cabinets and piano assemblies, and most of the pneumatic stacks, were made by Seeburg, with pumps, roll mechanisms, extra instruments, controls, and coin mechanisms of different design resembling the earlier Cremona (Marquette) parts.
TMI? OK, here's a fascinating video in which James Pavel Shawcross explores and explains "a piano like none you've ever seen" -- a J.P. Seeburg orchestrion which he found at Bill Kap's Piano in Cleveland OH. I find James a little bit "gee whiz" -- to him, everything is "so cool" -- but I'd probably have the same reaction if I had a chance to see and hear one of these wonderful machines up close and personal. Enjoy.
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