For Me And My Gal Played by Pete Wendling in 1917
Вставка
- Опубліковано 11 вер 2024
- Here is an original Player Piano Roll from 1917. Pete Wendling plays the famous hit "For Me and My Gal". The music is by George W. Meyer and the words are by Edgar Leslie and E. Ray Goetz
Love this old song, on the old piano roll.I remember my Mother and my Uncle Murray singing this song in our room and a half in Brooklyn, NewYork. The year was 1955, I was seven years old.
This has terrific syncopation. I love it. Thank you.
Thanks for posting one of the hottest Pete Wendling ragtime rolls! I love this version of this tune - it is my favorite version of this, done in the great 8-to-the-bar rag-rock style of the late 'teens and early '20s!
As far as I know, this roll has only been commercially recorded once - for one of the Cracker Barrel records entitled "Original Player Piano Roll Gems" (they issued several volumes in this series).
Great Pete Wendling version! I have the relaxed Qrs Milne version.
Never heard this one. Thanx, for posting!
Wendling played another version as part of a medley roll, and it is very different from this version. This just goes to show how brilliant Wendling was.
Pete Wendling played on my favorite player piano rolls!
SUPER! THANK YOU.
Whew, sure would like to watch someone play it like this! Do you know what it takes to find a simple video on UA-cam of this piece on piano played the way it's supposed to sound? You either find the ultra-easy version or someone playing it 1/4 speed like a lullaby!
@KawhackitaRag
And one of the few Wendlings I can play note for note lol
Paul Gronemeier PLEASE post video of you hand playing this!!!
@@andrewbarrett1537 ..I think I played it at the piano contest one year. I haven't touched a piano in ALMOST 20 years now, but if one was going to play/copy a Wendling, this would be the roll to do it....(Meaning, if I could do it, ANYONE could do it!) LoL
Paul Gronemeier I'm working on "Jazz Dance Repertoire" and "True Blue Sam" from Yuki Matsuri's transcriptions, and also hoping to finish my own transcriptions of "So Long Oolong" and "Oh, By Jingo"
What do you call this paper rolling thing and what is it for? Is it like an old time synthesia program?
The paper is what operates the push-up player. Each hole is a note.
The rolling thing is called a "piano roll" and the device it is playing is called a "piano player" or a "push-up piano player" which is the external version of a "player piano".
While a player piano is built-in to the piano itself, a push-up piano player is in the form of a cabinet with felt-tipped "finger" levers, which is height-adjusted to the piano keyboard and carefully rolled up over the keyboard, so the levers can depress the piano keys. This allows nearly any regular upright or grand piano to be automatically played externally with rolls, even if it is not already a "player piano".
The operator then pumps the foot pedals, creating suction which runs the entire system of the piano player, including reading the rolls.
The operator (aka "pianolist") can add dynamics by pumping harder or softer, including accents, and has finger levers and/or buttons to operate the sustain pedal and to soften the bass or treble to bring out a melody. This is the same as with nearly all home foot-pumped player pianos (you can add dynamics by pumping harder or softer). There is also a tempo lever to adjust the speed of the music.
Julian Dyer shows a primer for playing the Pianola here, using an arranged roll of Chopin's "Minute Waltz". This advice applies equally to the external push-up and also the built-in versions: ua-cam.com/video/2A6ZXZwl3nA/v-deo.html
Some fancier and more expensive player actions/systems (like the Wilcox & White Angelus; Jacob Doll; and Vose player actions) have a separate spring-loaded tempo lever or tablet which allows for the pianolist to easily add ritardando or accellerando to the music, without disturbing the 'main' preset tempo set by the main tempo lever. However with most other systems (including the one in this video), you have to use the main tempo lever to make all tempo changes.
The instrument in the video is a rare 65/88-note Aeolian Pianola push-up piano player which was pushed up to a 9' Steinway grand piano. The pianolist/owner was the late Randolph Herr of New York.
While the 65-note Aeolian Pianola was the best-selling and today the most common of all push-up piano players, the 88-note and combination 65/88-note versions are very rare and highly sought after by roll collectors and mechanical music collectors. Some other makes of push-up are also rare.
Is this wonderful version orchestrated or just two fantastic hands?
gary boyce It's arranged based on what Mr. Wendling played on the QRS recording piano, and looks largely hand playable by one person, although certainly fantastic. Comparing Mr. Wendling's ~1,000 piano rolls, 1914-1929, with 5 of the 6 commercially-issued audio recordings he made, in 1923 and 1926 (the sixth recording is so rare I've still not yet found/heard it), I will attest that Mr. Wendling played probably about 80 to 90% of what made it onto his piano rolls. He was a truly fantastic ragtime pianist.
@@andrewbarrett1537 I imagine he also used a Leabarjan perforator to edit rolls and of course the famous stop-tab arranging piano.
@@PiotrBarcz The late magician Dai Vernon was friends with several of the QRS recording artists in the 1920s and had a regular (weekly?) card game with them (pinochle? poker?). This included Pete Wendling, Lee S. Roberts, and others. During the card game sometimes, they'd talk about making the music rolls.
(My friend Todd Robbins was friends with Dai Vernon in the 1970s and has relayed these stories to the ragtime community).
According to Mr. Vernon, while Victor Arden and Lee S. Roberts would edit and arrange their own performances, Wendling stated that he would just turn up at the QRS recording studio, play his selections on the recording piano, and leave! So other arrangers/editors would make the final arrangements of his performances. He never apparently arranged or edited anything.
So I presume the added notes in all his rolls were the work of someone else, very likely a QRS staff arranger like Max Kortlander or Victor Arden.
I daresay it is likely that Kortlander and/or Arden used the "arranging piano" a lot, although it was used the most to construct performances by J. Lawrence Cook, especially in later years. Other arrangers may have preferred the 'drawing board' or 'arranging table' method to the 'arranging piano'.
Of course, in the earliest years, 1912-1915 or so, many if not all QRS Autograph performances had NO added extra notes but directly represented what the recording pianist played, although a bit "jerky" due to how the production roll perforator interpreted the master roll.
This includes the earliest Lee S. Roberts, Max Kortlander, and Charley Straight rolls and doubtless also some of the early Wendling rolls under his assumed names "Russell Bryant" and "Walter Redding" before he officially joined QRS in 1917.
@@andrewbarrett1537 I never liked the true hand played rolls that weren't mastered to the punch grid, they sound bad, have very very jerky tempo and in general are substandard. I know for a fact that Cook used the stop-tab arranging piano to make roll masters (there's several videos of him doing it) and that it was the main method after the recording piano. The drawing board I'm pretty sure was primarily used to tweak arrangements or master them in a non professional environment like Frank Milne did in his last days. In Wendling's case, I bet it was Kortlander doing the editing as his playing is generally 1910's cheap and Wendling's was just that. Arden had a little more imagination.
Here is a playlist I put together of all 6 of Pete Wendling's commercial audio recordings. The two OKeh sides (one side each of two different OKeh records; I think Harry Jentes is on the flip side of each of them) are moderately rare to find; the four Cameo sides (two separate Cameo records; one with Frances Sper on uncredited vocal; the other strictly piano solo) are EXTREMELY rare with very few copies surviving today. It has taken over 25 years for me to be able to hear all 6 of these records. They prove that Pete Wendling played 80% of what was on his rolls and that he was indeed a phenomenal ragtime pianist: ua-cam.com/play/PLO_0SKORNqoLsfiPgcJwphOE2-AAQjcrT.html