The talking machine world (July-Dec 1926)

20 THE TALKING MACHINE WORLD October IS, 1926 Cashing In on the New Talking Machines Retailers Must Exploit Improved Instruments and New Records by Consistently Bringing Them to the Attention of Prospects A few days ago I was walking through a street in one of the charming suburbs of Chicago, distinguished among others for possessing a university, a large population of cultivated men and women and a great deal of wealth. The street along which I was walking contained among other things a row of quaint little wooden houses, quite Californian in type, small and pretty, each with a patch of garden in front and behind, all alive with dwarf trees, shrubbery and flowers, while other trees, comparatively quite gigantic in height, poplars, elms and oaks, towered among the tiny buildings, forming a veritable celestial canopy beneath which TELETONE talks like a human and plays like a virtuoso ! — exactly^^^ Teletone Corporation of America 449-453 West 42nd Street New York City By W. Braid White dreamed away the happy dwellers. As I ^trolled along my ears caught the sounds . of music apparently issuing from one of the little houses a few doors further down the street. A piano, one or more violins, some wind instruments and (so I thought) some drums, were performing dance music. They were doing it very well too and I was astonished that so tiny a house as the one before me should contain so many, at least half a dozen, good musicians. Was it, I thought, a dance orchestra meeting at the leader's house for moining practice? Then again, was it an extraordinary good bit of radio reception? So I drew near and listened, still more intently. What Was It? The front door of the house was partly open and through it a tiny living room could be seen, in part at least. There was no company of six musicians in that room, that was sure enough. In fact, it was a bit doubtful whether there was any piano there at all. A dim shape bulked in one corner but was surely too small even to be a very small upright piano. What was the explanation of this remarkably fine dance music 1 was hearing? Then suddenly the strains ended, there was a pause of a few seconds and then the first glorious sounds rang out of the great chorus "And the Glory of the Lord" from the Messiah. It is many a long day since I had heard anything like this. Here was volume, strength and color, sweetness and that sense of largeness which only a great body of voices can give. This was no cramped, distorted "small room" version, it was the real thing. And then, of course, the solution flashed on my mind, ll was a phonograph to which I was listening! A phonograph and it had fooled me to the very last strain of the dance music; for it sounded as phonographs in the past have not been supposed to sound. Nothing would do now but that I should confirm the conviction, and so I went up to the front door, rang the bell, and to the pretty young girl who answered it spoke somewhat as follows : "Forgive the intrusion, please, but would you mind telling me whether this is a phonograph to which I have been listening during the last few minutes? For some time, I could have sworn that a party of excellent musicians were rehearsing in that charming little living-room that I see; but the chorus undeceived me. Somehow I knew that it was not radio reception, at least after the dance music was finished, for there are no choral societies doing iho Messiah at this time. Was it a phonograph or the angels? Perhaps you would tell me which it was, and is?" And the young lady said with a smile: "Pray come in and see, or hear, for yourself." And I came in, and it was a phonograph. It was, in fact, a full-sized specimen of the wonderful new machines which came recently on the market and which have created, together with the new process of recording, a veritable acoustic revolution. Perhaps nothing that could have happened to me, save this unexpected demonstration, could have brought home with such extraordinary force and conviction the amazingly complete nature of this revolution. The Point of It And what is the point of this long story? Simply this, that if the phonograph merchant of to-day will look around him and use his brains he will discover that, whilst he has been bemoaning slow sales, there has been going on all around him a revolution. The phonograph is no more to-day what it was two years ago than chalk is cheese. There has been a com plete new deal, from the first card to the last. The whole map is changed. The whole field appears under new and unpredicted aspects. Not one of the arguments which a short time ago were being used to show that the day of the talking machine is over any longer applies. One only has resolutely to put the old ideas and the old inhibitions out of one's mind to realize all this and to know that a new day of prosperity and expansion has dawned. But prosperity will come only to those dealers who recognize the opportunity and seriously set out to cash in by exploiting the new instruments and records through the practice of sales promotion methods of the highest order. The dealer must bring both instruments and records to the public in a manner that will sell them on the merits of the line he handles. He must "sell" through advertising, through his window displays, through demonstrations and in every other manner he can devise. Let me insist still further on my personal experience. I thought I knew the talking machine from top to bottom. I thought I knew and could detect its every sound. I found that I was fooled. In a word, the new talking machine is a revolution. It opens a new day for the merchant, and whoso cannot see this had better get on his thinking cap without delay and do some hard brain work. For he who can adjust his mental processes and his methods of merchandising to it is entering upon a new era of prosperity and of expansion. Are You Through? Any man who does not realize that a revolution in public musical taste is even now going on is not fit to be in the music business, for evidently such a man does not follow the musical events and affairs of the nation. Unhappily our trade is full of men who seem to think that the right way to sell musical instruments is to profess and demonstrate complete ignorance of the art and performance of music, to shun every concert or recital and to say publicly that matters of art are not for red-blooded he-Americans. But the day of such men in the music industries is already past. They are through. The phonograph merchant, however, who can see the signs of the times will realize that he has now at his disposal a musical instrument of outstanding and revolutionary power, an instrument for which the American people has for a long time unconsciously been searching. He will realize that he has but to wipe the slate clean, tell the facts and persistently demonstrate them, to obtain from the American people a response more cordial than his wildest dreams of the old days could ever have enabled him to imagine. Film Star Buys Panatrope Brunswick Panatropes are proving to be decidedly popular among Hollywood film artist> Many of the leading celebrities of the silver screen are owners of these instruments. The latest star to buy a Panatrope is Agnes Ayres, who played in "The Son of the Sheik," a Rudolph Valentino picture. Joe May Loses Father Expressions of sympathy and condolences from the industry and trade have been proffered to Joe May, sales representative of Chas. Ditson & Co., who recently suffered the loss of his father, Joseph May, Sr., who had been in poor health over a long period.