I first became aware of J. Lawrence Cook in the early 1950s when I saw his name in Alan Lomax’s book Mister Jelly Roll.  Lawrence had transcribed a number of Jelly Roll Morton’s performances for Roy J. Carew, owner of the Tempo-Music Publishing Company, which was run from Carew’s home at 818 Quintana Place, N.W., Washington 11, D.C.

It came as a complete surprise, when years later, I saw his name in a 1972 QRS Music Roll catalogue.  Looking through the vast list of music rolls that were issued under his name, I decided to try and contact him personally so that I could discover more about his remarkable music career.

Jean Lawrence Cook was born in Athens, Tennessee on 14th July 1899. 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.

Prof. Alan Wallace has located the Twelfth Census of the U.S. for Athens, Tennessee, dated 5th June 1900.  It lists Jacob L. Cook, his wife Zella, daughter Amelia and son Lawrence.  The census also indicates that Jacob L. Cook was a preacher. On a visit to Athens, Alan Wallace went down Cook Drive (off Church Street) and came across a small City Park where the “J. L. Cook High School” once stood. A sign has been erected in the park in memory of Jacob L. Cook, which reads:

J. L. COOK Memorial Park City of Athens Parks and Recreation

In 1914 Lawrence enters Haines Normal and Industrial Institute, a boarding school, in the Tenth Grade. The school was located at 1329 Gwinnett Street, Augusta, Georgia, and was founded in 1883 by Lucy Craft Laney, a noted Afro-American educator.

Haines Normal and Industrial Institute 1329 Gwinnett Street, Augusta, Georgia

Although the Haines Normal and Industrial Institute no longer exists, another educational complex, the Lucy C. Laney Comprehensive High School, now occupies the site at Laney Walker Boulevard (formerly Gwinnett Street).

J. Lawrence Cook registered for the WWI Draft on 12th September 1918. He gave his permanent home address as 6223 Loomis Blvd. Chicago, Cook County, Illinois. This was the home of his uncle Herman. On the draft card he gave his present occupation as “Candy Maker” and his employer’s name and place of employment as the Novelty Candy Co., 212 E. Austin Avenue, Chicago, Cook County, Illinois.

Jean Lawrence Cook

WWI Draft Registration Card
12th September 1918

My first experience of J. Lawrence Cook’s work came when I acquired my first player piano many years ago. Included in the purchase were two “Fats” Waller QRS rolls, which greatly impressed me — so much so that they were very quickly reduced to shreds with constant playing. What I did not know at the time was that Cook had edited all of Waller’s QRS output. Having collected all the available Waller rolls, I am now firmly of the opinion that Cook’s contribution to them went much further than a simple editing job — there is at least one documented instance of ‘Fats’ starting a roll but failing to turn up to finish it, so Cook had to complete the job.

Cook was a musical chameleon — he could produce convincing keyboard impressions of Art Tatum, “Fats” Waller, Teddy Wilson, Erroll Garner and several other leading pianists of the day. However, a major part of his QRS career was spent producing arrangements of commercial pop songs, as required for the catalogue of a commercial roll producer, and it is to Cook’s credit that his unique skill injected musicality into otherwise unexceptional material.

Some of the hot jazz rolls, which appeared under his own name, particularly those released during the 1940s, are masterpieces of swing piano playing. The arrangements are superb, clearly the product of a very fertile imagination, without doubt the work of somebody with a complete understanding of the idiom. He was far and away the most prolific and successful roll artist the world has ever known — yet he was just a part-timer (both Mike Montgomery and Bob Billings have told me that Cook held down a night job with the U.S. Post Office). [JF 1]

© March 2002 John Farrell

VIEW ORIGINAL LETTER

Memo To: Mr. Michael Meddings
Date 9/25/73
From: J. Lawrence Cook

Subject: Reply to your nice letter of 9/9/73 to Q.R.S.

Dear Mr. Reddings, (sic)

Thanks for yours of above date. Eubie Blake is a long time friend of mine (since 1920). We’re still in touch. He’s always been an inspiration to me.

About two years have now passed since I semi-retired from Aeolion Rolls.  Ramsi had promised me an occasional assignment when I retired, but nothing has happened as yet in this regard. Maybe if more people like you would keep “prodding” him, he would once again start having me do some masters for him. Don’t get me wrong, though, we remain good friends.

I’m out of photo’s (sic) at the moment, but hope this one from a newspaper may serve as a substitute.

Sincerely,
Lawrence

VIEW ORIGINAL LETTER - PAGE 1

Memo To: Mr. Michael Meddings
Date 10/6/73
From: J. Lawrence Cook

Dear Friend Michael,

Yours under date of 9/29/73 received and read with pleasure.

Here’s one thing that we all must keep in mind: It has been estimated that I have made something between 10,000 and 20,000 piano roll masters in my lifetime. Well, you, I, Ramsi and I all know that there just haven’t been that many Ragtime numbers, no matter how many people consider them as their favorites.

Interest in the result of all my efforts has survived through all these years only because I have worked very hard to please everyone who liked various styles of musical expression from Nursery Rhymes to Concertos.

(over, please)

VIEW ORIGINAL LETTER - PAGE 2

— 2 —

I think that Ramsi’s mistake may be with paying $200.00 per person to “name artists.” This might be OK but for the fact that he has no editing technicians who are capable of converting these live recordings into acceptable piano roll interpretations. The player piano has a characteristic all it’s own.

I would suggest that you contact Lewis Pub. Co. direct, but I doubt if they are still in business.

And last, but not least, I have met, and known personally, most of the “greats.” Thank God, for knowing them has been a big help to me.

Regards to you and all of yours from me and all of mine.

Sincerely,
Lawrence

J. LAWRENCE COOK’S
Collection of
Modernistic Jazz
Arrangements for Piano

Foreword

During the past decade J. Lawrence Cook has devoted his time to recording and arranging popular music for player piano rolls. He has always sought to temper his work according to the type of song at hand, plus his personal interpretation of it — endeavoring always to follow a trend of harmonic changes pleasing to the ear, whether in concords or discords, sparing no effort to make “blues” BLUE, and melodious numbers, snappy and with refined interpolations and novel inventions.

This folio is published to satisfy the demands of many of his pupils in jazz, admirers of his playing and his innumberable friends.

This collection holds no charm for beginners. It will furnish a wealth of worthy material to those who have studied music to some extent.

The three “shouts” should be memorized, for with such compositions at the pianists finger tips, he need never be timid about giving zest to the program of an evenings entertainment when the call for “pep” is sent forth.

The miscellaneous selections of choruses offers an interesting study in styles of executing the diversified types of popular songs they represent.

“Modernistic Reverie”, the final piece, seeks to demonstrate what the “jazzmind”, inured to outbursts of boisterous rhythm and strange intermixings of concord and discord, contemplates when set at ease.

Certain of the numbers in this collection may be heard on player piano rolls exactly as arranged, thereby enabling the pianist to hear the author’s exact interpretation. For those who wish to obtain these rolls, the following list is offered —

We wish to express our sincere appreciation to Mr. Max Kortlander and Mr. W. C. Handy for the use of their compositions, and our heartiest gratitude to Mr. E. L. Sparkes for going over the proofs.

THE  PUBLISHERS

Contents

GET AWAY BIG DON’T TRY TO HIGH HAT ME THE HESITATING BLUES SOUL STUFF IF EV’RY LITTLE BOY LOVED THE SAME LITTLE GIRL BABY THOSE THINGS DON’T MATTER TO ME HARLEM BLUES MODERNISTIC REVERIE

3 8 12 13 18 20 22 24

This book is respectfully dedicated to Mr. MAX KORTLANDER

Published By J. L. C. SONG SERVICE STUDIOS - 409 Edgecombe Ave, New York, U.S.A.

J. Lawrence Cook

J. Lawrence Cook

Annotated in JLC’s handwriting on the reverse of the above photograph:

Cook, in front of recording machine controls at Larry Givens’ factory

Off the Record

Music Rolls

Like the piano industry (see page 99), the player-piano roll industry has had tough sledding. But while the piano industry has good hopes of recovering, the player-roll industry looks very much as if it might not. Only ten years ago it was a $6,000.000 industry and was pounding its way day in and day out into American life.  But now it is almost completely archaic and a bit wistful. Sales in 1931 were only $428,000, and this year they will be less than half that.  There is only one very active company in the business — the Imperial industrial Corp. née the famous QRS Co. — and that is being kept up largely because Mr. Max Kortlander takes the business to heart.

QRS was the great roll name though no one knew for sure what the name stood for — maybe Quality, Real Service.  A QRS salesman passed through Grand Rapids in 1915 and heard young Max Kortlander play the piano.  He spotted Max as a natural for player rolls and persuaded him to go to Chicago.  So Max became one of the biggest player roll names, ranking with Pete Wendling and Lee S. Roberts.  In 1919 he wrote a song called Tell Me (“why nights are lonely; tell me, why days are blue”), which was sold for $100,000, the highest lump sum any popular song ever got.  As QRS slipped softly into its decline, Mr. Kortlander became a Director and in 1931 bought out the musical end of the business.  He calls it Imperial Industrial Corp., because with a name like that he can go into any business.  He plans to stick to rolls until he actually loses money — he says he hasn’t lost any yet.

IMPERIAL puts out about twenty new rolls a month and gets a steady call for old recorded numbers like the Blue Danube.  Sacred songs sell well and so does foreign music — Polish, Bohemian, and German, with Greek picking up fast.  South Africa is the best export field. Imperial’s biggest rivals are Ampico and Duo-Art, really the same company.  But they make rolls that can he played only on their own pianos.  They have big names like Paderewski and Hofmann on their rolls but don’t make any money and never did make much. Their only new output is popular stuff, no classical. Hardly any player pianos are made.

You probably know the principle of the player piano.  In the player piano is a perforated cylinder over which the roll passes.  When air is sucked in through a hole in the cylinder, a note plays. When you want to play C, you punch a hole in the paper so that it will pass over the C hole in the cylinder.  This makes it possible for anyone to make it piano roll by punching holes in paper. Which is just the way Imperial makes its rolls today. Mr. J. Lawrence Cook, a Negro, sits at his desk, a piano at his side, and plays a few bars of a song on the piano, arranging as he goes along. Then he draws lines on a roll of paper to indicate notes. Then someone punches holes where the lines are drawn, and there is your piano roll. It never gets near a piano until you play it. Mr. Cook does an average roll in two or three hours and is very adept at imitating the styles of popular pianists.

Ampico and Duo-Art scorn this cheaper method; their rolls are actually played and interpreted — as the old QRS roll were. It is, naturally, always possible to correct an interpretation by pasting up a wrong note or punching in an omitted one. Paderewski, a notoriously inaccurate player, always needed a lot of editing. It is also possible to perform feats that no pianist could dream of doing — miraculously full of chords and fantastic arpeggios. The old and very popular pianola style of rolling bass and octave tremolo was never actually played by pianists. It was punched in afterwards. The potentialities of the player once got musicians very excited. Busoni was going to write a special work for one but died before he got around to it.

Teddy Wilson Talks Jazz

by Teddy Wilson

I have done quite a bit of private teaching in my life, too, and the young people I’ve had as pupils have always been between sixteen and twenty years of age. At one time I had my own school in New York, “The Teddy Wilson School for Pianists,” from 1936 to 1939, with three excellent partners, and we turned out some very good students. J. Lawrence Cook was my chief assistant there and he was great on the theoretical side of the jazz piano and shaped the printed courses we had, containing sheet music of my improvisations on popular melodies. They proved very successful in teaching by mail. However, I had to give it up in the end because costs just kept soaring. Advertising and copyright payments were heavy items, especially as the latter were always for very popular songs. The other partners in my school were Eve Ross and Teddy Cassola. Their contribution rounded out the work done by the [sic] Cook and me. My having to be away traveling and performing so much of time led some to believe I only “fronted” the school. Not so. I was completely involved. [TW 110-111]

The Amazing Mr. Cook

by Tony Romano

In September of 1946, I began my third year of high school at the School of Industrial Art in New York City, majoring in Photography.  During my summer vacation, I had worked at a U.S. Post Office substation near Columbus Circle in the city.

Usually, when coming to work, I would see a black man, about forty years old, unloading large canvas mail sacks on the Post Office receiving dock.  He always smiled, waved and said hello to me. I was rather startled to see that he wore a large pistol strapped to his belt as he worked.

During lunch break one day, I happened to sit at his table and he introduced himself as Lawrence Cook. When I asked why he wore the gun, he told me that Postal regulations required all dispatchers to be armed, because many U.S. Mail sacks contained cash or other valuable items.

We often ate lunch together, and during our many conversations he told me that he also worked in the Bronx at night and on weekends, making music rolls for player pianos.  The next year, 1947, I would finish four years of study in photography, but I needed to complete a portfolio of my photographic work in order to graduate.  His part-time job sounded so interesting and unusual that I summoned the courage to ask him if he would allow me do a photograph essay of the process to use for my graduation portfolio.

Mr. Cook seemed pleased at my request and promised to ask the factory owner for permission for me to come to the factory and take pictures of him making player piano rolls, and also to write a description about how they are made.  He told me that although player piano roll sales had fallen sharply since the 1920s and 1930s to a fraction of their former activity, there was still a steady demand for them.  One company in California was producing music rolls for the West Coast area, while his company made them for the East Coast.

When Mr. Cook shared my request with factory owner, the owner felt that the market would not support any more competition and so was anxious to avoid publicity.  He agreed to let me take photos and write my story on the condition that the material would be used only for my school requirements.  He also asked me to give him all my negatives, prints and writings after I graduated. I agreed to these terms and a short time later, on a Saturday afternoon, Mr. Cook and I visited the factory in the Bronx.

As arranged, I brought along my camera, film, and flash equipment to the plant in a worn brick building situated in an older, industrial part of South Bronx.  Since it was a weekend, the parking lot and building were deserted, but Mr. Cook had keys to the place, as he usually worked there by himself after the other workers had gone home for the day.

The manufacturing floor contained a lot of machinery, some of which appeared to be printing presses, but most of the other equipment looked strange to me.  All of the machinery looked well maintained and many were loaded with rolls of white paper. I had the impression of an old time newspaper pressroom where the workers had knocked off for the day, leaving everything ready to start again when they returned.

Mr. Cook took me to his work area located in a room at the front part of the building, closed off from the rest of the factory.  Inside of the room were more rolls of paper and boxes of wooden spools. Also, I saw several odd looking, stripped down, pianos with most of the inside piano mechanisms exposed.  There were many electric wires tubes, gears, electric motors installed in the bottom of the pianos.

Mr. Cook sat down at one of the modified pianos and placed some sheet music on the music shelf of the piano.  He then placed a spool of paper in the supply spool holder, mounted on a drive unit, and attached the leading end to a take up spool on the lower part of the drive just above the music shelf.  He explained that roll of paper he was using was a thicker grade, almost like card stock, and heavier than paper used for finished music rolls. He called this “master stock” and said that when he pressed on the piano keys, a series of perforations would be punched into the master spool.

He turned on the power switch and as I heard the electric motor turning, paper began scrolling down front the supply spool to the take-up spool, at a slow and even speed.  As he played, I could hear the notes being sounded and see holes being made in the master roll, just as he had described, but it seemed so strange to me because the music was being played at a slow rate of speed.  Mr. Cook told me that he was recording the score at half the actual playing speed of a finished music roll. It was difficult to concentrate on taking pictures because I did not understand the logic behind what he was doing.

While I shot the photographs of Mr. Cook making recordings, he would occasionally stop the scrolling of the roll, back it up, and place masking tape over some of the perforations.  He would then restart the scrolling and place new holes where the old ones had been.  He explained that this was his method of adding or removing erroneous notes.  When he reached the end of the roll, he rewound it to the beginning, and again keyed in more perforations in the same scrolling paper roll. When he was finished, he rewound the master roll again to the beginning and turned up the speed of the drive mechanism. I was amazed to hear the music playing normally and see so many keys on the keyboard moving up and down as if played by invisible fingers.  But what really astonished me was that it sounded just as if two people were playing different parts of the same music at the same time.

Mr. Cook then took the completed master roll out to the factory floor and turned on two machines. On the first, he mounted the master spool.  On the second one he placed a spool of blank music roll paper.  When the two units were turned on, I saw perforations from the master roll being rapidly duplicated onto the roll of paper in the second machine.  All the time this was being done, Mr. Cook filled me in on what was happening, so that I could write it down to use with pictures that I had been taking. Mr. Cook explained that other people performed additional mass production operations later on to add lyrics and other printed information before rolls were completed, boxed and shipped out to customers.

After packing my camera and equipment, we left the factory and went to Mr. Cook’s home located a few blocks from the plant.  On the way there, he told me about his third occupation, which was preparing scores for musical groups. He offered to let me take pictures and write about this process as well.

The part of his home I visited was a very nice first floor residence, in a well-kept quiet neighborhood. No one was at home at the time and we went into a neat, comfortable living room furnished with a couch, chairs and an expensive combined radio and phonograph, enclosed in a polished, dark wood cabinet.

Taking a pad of blank music paper, Mr. Cook seated himself in front of the console, turned it on and placed a 78 r.p.m. record of popular music on the turntable.  As the music began to play, he adjusted the volume and he began writing musical notes on the music lines of the blank paper.  He explained that first, he was writing down the trumpet notes.  At the end of the recording, he again replayed the same record and using a new sheet, began writing notes for the next instrument. He continued this until he had written the parts for each instrument contained on that record.

He did this so that he could provide each musician with their own part of the score enabling the group to play the music contained on the phonograph record.  I had never seen or heard of anyone being able to perform this feat.  And he did so with no more effort than that of a person writing a letter.  I’m still amazed to think that someone could have the ability to listen to a phonograph record and isolate what each musician is playing.  But that’s exactly what he did, as I witnessed on that unforgettable day.

My project, titled “The Amazing Mr. Cook” received an Outstanding Achievement Award at my graduation. My only regret is that, because I kept my word and gave the pictures and essay back as promised, I do not have those items today to help me relive that wonderful experience.

Now, after so many years have passed, I can look back and truly appreciate the kindness and generosity of this talented man.  He took part of his weekend to show me a brand new world, knowing in advance that as a seventeen-year-old student, I could not repay him for his time and effort.  He also knew that the pictures and writing would not be made public, so he would receive no compensation, recognition or acclaim.  He was just trying to help me meet my requirements for graduation.

I have been fortunate enough to find several copies of piano rolls that contain the label “J. Lawrence Cook” and I keep them in memory of him.

© 2003 Anthony J. Romano

Editor’s note: Elsewhere on this page, readers will note that some articles state that J. Lawrence Cook worked at the Post Office on the night shift. However, during the time that Tony knew him (1946-1947) he worked full-time at the Post Office during the day and part-time at the Imperial Industrial Company during the evening and weekends.

Memories of Grandpa

by Lisa Fagg

I have been aware for quite some time of the existence of keen interest in my grandfather J. Lawrence Cook’s music. Ten years or so ago, I was wandering around in a huge “flea” market with a friend in New England when I heard music from a player piano coming from the far end of the lot. Even more incredibly, I heard something else, too — the unmistakable musical “voice” of Grandpa. At that point I turned to my friend and said, “That’s Grandpa” and followed my ears. Puzzled and curious she followed me. There it was — at the periphery of the field stood a huge van with a player piano in it. We stood and listened; one of Grandpa’s old “standards” was playing. I was thrilled. When I finally introduced myself as one of J. Lawrence Cook’s granddaughters, the owners of the van were as amazed as I was at this chance meeting. Apparently there is at least one “J. Lawrence Cook special interest group” in the U.S. — they collect, sell and trade JLC piano rolls. We talked for a while and that was that — but the experience has stayed with me. Since moving to the U.K. to marry, I’ve met several other enthusiasts of my Grandpa’s music; Mike Meddings (in person) here in England and Millie Gaddini and Alan Wallace (by e-mail) in the U.S. Thanks, all of you, for making my grandfather’s music available to a wider audience on the World Wide Web.

Grandpa’s Little ‘Helper’

Grandpa was always mending and modifying things. His favourite “tool” seemed to be masking tape, of all things. He seemed to think that the stuff could fix anything. He even used it to “edit” some of his Master player piano rolls — something I remember him doing quite often on the kitchen table at my grandparents home. He “read” the roll first, making editing marks with a red felt-tipped pen; red dots, indicated new holes to be punched in (using a hammer and punch for the separate holes or an Exacto knife to join up the sustained notes) and red circles around holes indicated “errant” holes that needed to be blocked with strips of masking tape. As you can imagine, as a young child I was fascinated by this work he did and he must have recognised my interest. When I was old enough to be trusted with knives and punches, he would let me do the manual part of the work giving me a roll to patch and punch whilst he edited another one. Lord knows he must have had to “check” his rolls carefully after his twelve-year-old granddaughter had been at them, but that was the sort of grandfather he was. I used to really enjoy “helping” him — much more so than helping Grandma with the washing up after dinner — and I worked very, very carefully.

He loved his music and so did I — although I’m too young (or, possibly, too “square”) to remember the Beatles early music, I DO remember the first time I heard “Penny Lane”, “Michelle” and “Eleanor Rigby” — and it wasn’t coming from Liverpool, England — I was sitting at the player piano beside Grandpa in my grandparents house in the Bronx. Grandpa and I both sat at the piano (we always sat at the piano to listen because we liked to read the words and sing together). I can still hear it all in my mind’s ear — his gruff bass-baritone and my child’s voice. He never seemed to grow weary of hearing (and singing) the same songs over and over again. It was incredible fun then and listening to Grandpa’s recorded music today takes me back to those wonderful times.

© 2001 Lisa A. Fagg

Tribute to J. Lawrence Cook

by Bob Berkman

I met Lawrence Cook only once, near the end of his life. My first summer at QRS coincided with his last visit there, as part of the 1975 AMICA Convention in Buffalo.

Rudy Martin and I were assigned to meet him at the airport, take him to lunch, and then deliver him to his hosts. This was really almost all the time I spent with him, because once he was whisked into the convention’s official whirl I had little access to him.

The prospect of meeting J. Lawrence Cook was exciting to me as a 20-year-old roll enthusiast. At lunch I was probably too shy to pepper him with as many questions as I would have liked, though I have since come to believe that he had long before learned to answer technical questions in simple — and sometimes unintentionally misleading — layman’s terms. After all, the average fan was unlikely to understand what he really did and how he did it. And no matter what the listener’s level of understanding, a lifetime of craft could not possibly have been explained over a plate of spaghetti.

Granted both his field and his audience were limited. His primary job was to produce commercially satisfactory arrangements of American popular songs, in step with or in anticipation of demand as monitored by his employer, and this fairly narrow focus of material was intended only for use on the player piano — a medium that faded from the consumer mainstream early in his career.

Nevertheless, from his first QRS roll in 1921 until his last in the early 1970s, the quantity and quality are remarkable. An important part of his mastery lay in his ability to minimize the player piano’s liabilities while exploiting its capabilities, drawing variety and color from a seemingly monochromatic palette. As you follow his work from his early Leabarjan-made stride arrangements to his 40’s and 50’s masterpieces, you can hear him thinking less pianistically and more orchestrally, and with increasingly sophisticated harmonies. The economical voicing in his arrangements, the clarity and musical sense of his lines, the very deliberate choices of note durations, and the keen sense of form all reveal high levels of both craft and musicianship. And all of this is even more remarkable when one considers the sluggishness and recalcitrance of the machinery he used.

Twenty-five years since having lunch with J. Lawrence Cook, I have come to understand that what he did and how he did it could not have been adequately explained by any amount of conversation with him. His work is his testament, and the more it is examined and enjoyed, the more his stature grows.

© 2002 Bob Berkman

J. Lawrence Cook on Jelly Roll Morton

by Butch Thompson

Writing in the Jazz Record of October 1947, Roy J. Carew announced that he had published Jelly Roll Morton’s Frog-I-More Rag, calling it “the finest example of a published rag that has appeared in many years.”  “It is,” he wrote, “the first time, to my knowledge, that any Morton number has ever been published exactly as he played it, note for note, from introduction to final bar.”

This limited edition publication was transcribed by J. Lawrence Cook.  Carew could not have found anyone more qualified for the job, and over the next several years their work together resulted in a portrait of the Morton style that was not only the first of its kind, but remarkably accurate.

In a letter to Mike Meddings in 1975, Cook remembered Morton as a “sloppy, ear-playing pianist. However, I think he deserved all of the fame that he gained.  This being because he definitely invented a certain style of jazz playing.”  In other words, Jelly Roll Morton was a true original, and J. Lawrence Cook knew it.

In fact, Morton’s playing was unlike that of any other jazz pianist.  Some of this comes from intangibles — his uniquely ringing touch is impossible to imitate — but some of it can be analyzed by careful transcription of his playing, and the Cook transcriptions offer some wonderful insight.

A word about the transcription process itself will not go amiss.  Beginning the work as he did in the early 1940s, Cook had to use a turntable for playback.  This was a clumsy business, even with the most precise tone arm of the time.  Repeated hearings of short fragments were extremely difficult. Add to this the technical limitations of the recordings themselves, and things are even more subjective.  Even on the best piano recordings, it is often very difficult to distinguish what is actually played.

All of this would make Cook’s work very tricky.  And because of the unique aspects of the Morton style, he would have to listen hard.  Much of what he would hear simply was not standard practice.

Examples exist of Cook’s work on 22 different Morton performances. These include full transcriptions as well as edited “arrangements” and some fragments such as Benny Frenchy’s Defeat, Discordant Jazz, and Sweet Jazz Music, the latter all taken from Morton’s celebrated Library of Congress recordings. A number of the unpublished pieces can be found at the Historic New Orleans Collection, most notably superb versions of Creepy Feeling (the 1938 Jazz Man recording) and Sweetheart O’ Mine (the 1926 Vocalion).

The very dedicated Roy Carew published eight full-length pieces in single sheet music format, including Frog-I-More Rag (1947), Mamie’s Blues (1948), Buddy Bolden’s Blues (1950), Winin’ Boy Blues (1950), The Crave (1950), The Miserere (1950), Naked Dance (1950) and Big Fat Ham (1956.)

A close look at some of these published pieces is in order.  First, it should be pointed out that Cook’s role was not always simply to transcribe, but at times also to edit. This editing ranges from minor changes to more extensive overhauling of what Morton actually played.  It seems clear that Cook (and possibly Carew) felt the need to “clean up” certain aspects of Morton’s playing.  A very obvious example is Naked Dance, taken from the 1939 General recording, in which Cook has changed a number of D flat octaves in the bass to more “correct” E flats. Whether Morton had played these “wrong” notes intentionally is a matter for debate — he had used the same jarring bass pattern to make a deliberate point at the Library of Congress. Cook’s idea, however, was probably that the more correct bass line would have a better chance to pass muster with people who might buy sheet music. Whatever the verdict, this isn’t a major change, and in fact Naked Dance, played as transcribed by Cook, it sounds very much like the recording.  It is not, however, an exact transcription in every detail.

Among the other published pieces, The Crave is remarkably close to the General recording, which is its model.  There is much to learn here, beginning with the introduction, where we notice in the first bar that Morton does not always put the melody on top.  During the first strain in D minor, the melody shifts frequently from the top of the right hand — the little finger, playing in octaves — to the bottom, the thumb, with chiming thirds and sixths voiced above it. This is a very important key to the Morton style, in which something very much like sleight of hand seems always to be at work.

There can be no better example of this melodic trickery than the final sixteen bars of The Miserere, which is actually a medley of two popular themes from Verdi’s Il Trovatore. Morton plays through 16 bars of The Anvil Chorus twice, the second time in a tour de force of inspired improvising. Again, he combines ringing octave passages with smaller intervals in which the melody moves from top to bottom and back.  At times we seem to hear at least two improvised lines at once, much like the freewheeling collective improvisation of a New Orleans band.

Due to the inaccurate pitch of the Library of Congress material as it was originally heard on record, a result of the erratic recording process itself, Cook’s transcription of The Miserere is a full step lower than Morton’s key. This does not detract from his considerable accomplishment.  Another fine Library of Congress transcription is the “stomp” version of Maple Leaf Rag, which Cook pitched in F major — a full minor third lower than where it was actually played.

Morton fans have long known of his requirement that the true jazz pianist should imitate a jazz band.  With his transcriptions, Cook managed to unravel Morton’s method for this process.  The published version of Buddy Bolden’s Blues shows how Morton used the same kind of polyphonic right-hand playing, combined with two-handed, arpeggiated flourishes, at slow tempos.  Perhaps the best example of this kind of playing at slower tempos is the unpublished Sweet Jazz Music, two improvised choruses loosely based on the verse of Mr. Jelly Lord.

By listening so hard and so carefully, J. Lawrence Cook managed to put at least a part of the Jelly Roll Morton magic on paper.  This was a tremendous accomplishment.

© 2003 Butch Thompson

Note: Also see entries of J. Lawrence Cook’s transcriptions and arrangements on the Jelly Roll Morton Copyrights & Compositions page.

MUSIC

Roll On, Imperial

One of the most magniloquent named organizations on earth. Imperial Industrial Corp., was rolling steadily forward last week. Imperial Industrial Corp. belches no great plume of smoke over the industrial landscape; it is, simply, all that is left of the U.S. pianola business. But Imperial is a complete monopoly and it is enjoying a small boom, largely produced by A.F. of M. Boss James Caesar Petrillo’s ban on phonograph recording (Time, June 22).

Imperial Industrial Corp., under its portly, bespectacled President Max Kortlander, occupies the third floor of a rambling brick factory in the upper fringes of the Bronx. It seldom advertises, does much of its retailing through big concerns like Sears, Roebuck and Manhattan’s R. H. Macy & Co. Its customers are mostly U.S. farm families. To this small but steady market, Imperial sells approximately half a million pianola rolls a year. Biggest current sellers: When the Lights Go on Again, Moonlight Becomes You, The Beer Barrel Polka, Let Me Call You Sweetheart,Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life, The Star-Spangled Banner.

President Kortlander has about 25 employes (sic). One is J. Lawrence Cook a dignified, 43 year-old Negro inherited from the company’s once-famed predecessor, the Q.R.S.* Music Roll Company. J. Lawrence Cook is a nearly indispensable man. There hangs a tale and a technique.

In the heyday of 1923, when 197,252 pianolas (more than 50% of all the pianos sold in the U.S.) were sold in a single year, the pianola industry hired the greatest pianists, such as Paderewski, to record their performances on perforated paper. It also hired such early jazzers as J. Lawrence Cook and Harlem’s historic James P. Johnson. But as the pianola gave ground to the phonograph, the pianola industry could no longer afford to pay for personal recordings.

Most of the pianola artists moved on to greener pastures. But J. Lawrence Cook stayed. He continued to make his own rolls, also produced rolls that accurately ghosted the performances of other jazz improvisers. He did this by listening to their phonograph records, carefully transcribing what he heard into a musical score, then playing his score on Imperial’s perforating machine. Today Imperial issues pianola rolls by such jazz artists as Fats Waller, Ted Baxter and Pete Mendoza. All are ghosted by J. Lawrence Cook.

Cook was born in Athens, Tenn., where the Negro J. L. Cook High School bears the name of his father, a Presbyterian minister. As a boy he learned the clarinet and piano. He never made the big time as a jazz pianist. But was a good “paper man” (i.e., a musician who can read, write and arrange music) he got a job with a Harlem music publisher, later with Q.R.S. in The Bronx. He has made over 20,000 arrangements for pianola rolls.

Today, Cook spends his days with Imperial, his evenings earning a little extra cash as a clerk in the post office near Grand Central Station. His 19-year-old son, Jean Lawrence, studies medicine at Columbia University, his daughter, Annizella, takes a voice course at the Julliard School of Music.

Cook has found time to complete a course in short story writing, also contributes a monthly column to the International Musician (official organ of the American Federation of Musicians) on jazz piano technique.

* The Original meaning of the letters lost, Q.R.S. executives explained that they meant “Quality, Real Service.”

TIME, February 15, 1943

PIANO HANDBOOK
on BOOGIE WOOGIE, BLUES
and BARRELHOUSE

By J. LAWRENCE COOK

Foreword by M. H. Goldsen

Boogie Woogie, Blues and Barrelhouse are the three famous “B’s” of jazz styles.  Each is entirely different, yet are often mistaken for each other by the general public and amateur musician.  In chronological order, the blues, no doubt, came first . . .

The pleasant sensation of playing this style has prompted pianists to seek out publications that featured the “eight to the bar” music.  However, no one publication was able to satisfy their desire to learn it fast and at the same time, learn the other two “B’s” — barrelhouse and the blues.  That is the object of this publication.

Contents

BOOGIE WOOGIE (Exercises and solos) A Simple Boogie Woogie Chorus Boogie On The Beam BLUES (Exercises and solos) A Typical Blues Verse Don’t Cross That Door Blues BARRELHOUSE (Exercises and solos) Don’t Try To High Hat Me

2-14 10 12-14 15-24 15-16 22-24 25-28 26-28

Copyright 1944 CAPITOL SONGS, Inc. RKO Bldg. Room 605. New York, N.Y.
First printing May 1944

Frog-I-more Rag

By R. J. CAREW

One day in 1918, soon after arriving in Los Angeles from Chicago, Ferdinand “Jelly Roll” Morton picked up a pen, and, on a sheet of manuscript paper, carefully wrote the heading “Frog-i-more Rag . . . by Ferd Morton, Writer of Jelly Roll Blues.”  He thereupon proceeded to put upon paper a ragtime composition which he held in high regard.  In Frog-i-more Rag Morton followed a customary form, — introduction, first part, second part, repeated first part and a trio.  The composition is tuneful, the 32 bar trio especially having a beautiful melody. About 1923 the Spikes Brothers and Jelly Roll in collaboration used the first part and trio of the rag for a song which they called Froggy Moore, which was never published.  After Ferd became connected with the Melrose outfit in Chicago, Walter Melrose used an adaptation of the trio of Frog-i-more for the chorus of a sickly sentimental song published as Sweetheart O’Mine, to Jelly Roll’s understandable disgust. Recordings have been made and issued under the various titles, but it is always Frog-i-more that is used.

Frog-i-more Rag is one of Ferd Morton’s finest, and I seized the opportunity to acquire the rights to the number, in the belief that it deserved to be in printed form.  The limited edition I have just published fully justifies my belief.  Jelly’s piano solo as issued on S-D 103 was chosen, and Mr. J. Lawrence Cook did a superlative piece of transcribing and editing. Frog-i-more is the finest example of a published rag that has appeared in many years, and with six full pages of Jelly Roll’s improvisations, it is the first time, to my knowledge, that any Morton number has ever been published exactly as he played it, note for note, from introduction to final bar. The sheet music of this edition should be of especial interest to the student of ragtime and jazz piano, as the back cover carries a facsimile of Morton’s original manuscript of the trio, and the simple way he wrote the trio can be compared with the “stepped up” version he played.  When one remembers that Jelly “never played a number twice alike” this edition should furnish revealing proof of his powers of improvisation.

In 1954 London Origins of Jazz released a 10-inch long-playing record titled JAMES P. JOHNSON Early Harlem Piano.  The record features 8 piano rolls by James P. Johnson.  The recordings were made with the co-operation of J. Lawrence Cook. London AL 3511.

JAMES P. JOHNSON
Early Harlem Piano

In the Harlem piano circles there was a lot of competition for supremacy and players such as Lucky (Luckey) Roberts, Willie “The Lion” Smith, Duke Ellington, and Fats Waller would engage in cutting contests, learning from each other as they competed. These ‘rent-party’ sessions were noted for hard-hitting, spirited playing and a general lack of respect for the other people’s talents - except in the case of James P. Johnson. He was established as king of the pianists, not one that you tried to beat but one you tried to emulate; his ideas were bigger and his technique better; a real musicians’ musician. And because he preferred the real jazz, and performed it with a deceptive ease and grace he has remained the musicians’ musician and is not known to a very wide public.

He is also a great composer. The Charleston is one of his best known creations, and Runnin’ wild. He composed hundreds of pieces for the piano, examples of which are to be found on this record - Harlem strut, Harlem choc’late babies on parade and It takes love to cure the heart’s disease. He was one of Bessie Smith’s favourite accompanists, and played with musicians of every style and generation with equal facility. For the past few years ho has been seriously ill and not much in the musical limelight, but, for his artistry, his teaching, and, more practically, his generosity to struggling artistes, he is and always will be remembered particularly amongst the musicians of his own race. His music and his records are sought by collectors for they are always authentic and first-rate. As one critic says: “It is safe to say that he has never played a superficial or a tasteless note in all of his long career.”

His style is the lusty Harlem style which we have become familiar with mainly through the popular recordings of Fats Waller. A pounding, good-time music, full of exhilaration and the joy of playing, a professional and skilful kind of jazz that retains all the true spirit of the cruder New Orleans variety.

Because he was purely a pianist, without Fats’ vocal abilities, Johnson’s records have mostly stayed in the obscure archives of the collector’s haunts. Very few of them had been issued in this country until recently when two long-playing selections were made up, one called Daddy of the Piano which included some of his earlier solos and another of Fats Waller Favourites which he recorded in June, 1944. This present selection goes right back to the early ‘twenties and gives us J. P. Johnson in his heyday, and it’s all rough, rolling jazz from start to finish. They were originally cut for QRS piano rolls, but with the decline in the pianola’s popularity, ousted by the radio and gramophone, they were forgotten, and might easily have been destroyed if the jazz revival, arid such enthusiasts as Bill Grauer, had not come along and saved them. The piano roll library is proving a positive treasure-trove of such music, recorded by early composers like Scott Joplin and the great jazz pianists such as Fats Waller and Jelly Roll Morton.

Only now can we appreciate the full quality of Johnson’s playing. We find rhythmic, brilliant, almost breath-taking music with a range from the blues tempo of Make me a pallet on the floor through a swinging version of Handy’s Loveless love, to the dexterities of Harlem strut and the boisterous Charleston.

James P. Johnson started with the ragtime tradition strong in his blood. He was born in New Jersey but soon drifted to New York and with the ragtime as basis, he added a strong feeling for the blues and his natural flair and liking for the better type of party and theatre music; the result is the unique mixture to be heard in its original form here and to be heard at second hand in the playing of all the pianists who learnt their playing within the orbit of the great originator. These rolls were made from 1921 to 1926, of tunes by such diverse composers as Jimmy Durante and W. C. Handy, and including four of Johnson’s own compositions. All of them take on a new vigour at his touch.

The recordings were made with the co-operation of J. Lawrence Cook, a pianist in his own right who can be heard on London records. He has probably cut more piano rolls himself than anybody else, and was present at many of these sessions by other pianists. Judging by his faithful rendering of the solos on the Fats Waller Jazz Archive record, a style we are more familiar with, we can assume that these mechanical renderings at James P. Johnson have been given the maximum of reality and authenticity by his sympathetic and expert touch.

It is a safe bet, that these wonderful solos will do a great deal to readjust Johnson’s standing in the estimate of the average collector, putting him in as high a position in popular esteem as he holds amongst jazz musicians and critics already in the know. This is a lesson in the adjustment of comparative values, one which we should have learned long ago from the unproven rumours of Johnson’s greatness. Now, at any rate, we have the proof.

Original QRS label numbers of the roll and months of issue are as follows:- It takes love to cure the heart’s disease (1339), April 1921: Loveless love (1340), April 1921: Harlem strut (101014), May 1921: I’ve got my habits on (1814) [sic] (1804), January [sic] (February) 1922: Vampin’ Liza Jane (1836), February 1922: Charleston (3143), June 1925: Harlem choc’late babies on parade (3526), July 1926: Pallet on the floor (3626), September 1926.

LONDON ORIGINS OF JAZZ LONG PLAYING 33 1/3 r.p.m. RECORD a “Riverside” record Produced by Bill Grauer, Jnr., and Orrin Keepnews

PRINTED IN ENGLAND R.S. 4-54

In 1959 Mercury Records released a 12-inch long-playing stereo record titled PIANO-ROLL ROCK’N ROLL. The record features 12 music rolls by J. Lawrence Cook.  Guitar, string bass and drums accompany the numbers.  Mercury SR 60083.

The liner notes on the reverse side of the record cover give no indication that Lawrence was involved in the actual recording.  However, his music rolls, played on a Hardman Duo Player Piano, are in good company with accompanying musicians, Milton Hinton, Tony Mottola, George Duvivier and Osie Johnson.

In the mid 1950’s, the Hardman Piano Company, introduced the “Hardman Duo”, an electrified player piano in a modern “console” case.  The company slogan was “It’s Twice The Fun when Your Piano is 2-in-1 — See The Hardman Duo today!”

PIANO
ROLL
ROCK ’N
ROLL

J. LAWRENCE COOK

Rock ’n roll on the piano roll

J. Lawrence Cook bridges three generations of music appeal, with this player-piano, plus all-star supporting musicians’ album.

But how can Cook claim to be an artist when a player-piano is mechanically grinding out the modern hits, backed by rhythm section?

Cook happens to be one of an almost deceased profession. He’s a piano-roll-perforator-musician! The nostalgic player piano (a genuine Hardman-Duo) tinkled out its melody from a role [sic] perforated by Cook himself from an arrangement he’s worked out especially for the player-piano!

Just as many have thrilled from the turn of the century to the marvellous foot-pedal operated or electric player piano, so too, today’s teen-agers will join their parents and grandparents to the call of the Cook player-piano.

A Cook’s tour of the musical world

J. Lawrence Cook came to New York from Pittsburgh in 1920, after completing a college preparatory course in piano technique. He’s been fascinated by the player piano from childhood, recalling sitting through three or four runs of a silent flicker just to hear the player-piano background. In the spring of 1921, he purchased a simple, hand-operated music roll perforator and studied the work of contemporary piano roll artists. His first piano rolls were made for U.S. Music Rolls in 1921 and continued thru 1923, when he joined the staff of Q.R.S., with whom he is still associated.

SIDE ONE

ROCK AROUND THE CLOCK
(Jimmy DeNight & Max Freedman) Myers Music, Inc. (Ascap) ...1:50
BERNADINE
(John Mercer) Palm Springs Music Co. (Ascap) ... 2:07
ALL SHOOK UP
(Otis Blackwell & Elvis Presley) Elvis Presley Music, Inc. & Shalimar Music Corp (both BMI) ... 2:42
SEARCHING AND DREAMING
(J. Lawrence Cook & Theresa Baguato) Pure Music Co. (BMI) ... 2:42
WHY DO FOOLS FALL IN LOVE
(Frankie Lymon & George Goldner) Patricia Music Publ. Corp. (BMI) ... 2:38
MY SHIP
(J. Lawrence Cook) Pure Music Co. (BMI) ...1:43

SIDE TWO

HOUND DOG
(Leiber & Stoller) Elvis Presley Music, Inc. & Lion Publ. Co, Inc. (both BMI) ...1:32
OH YEAH
(Sheldon Harnick & Jerry Bock) Sunbeam Music & Valando Music (both Ascap) ...1:30
WAKE UP LITTLE SUZY
(B. Bryant & Felice Bryant) Acuff-Rose Publications (BMI) ... 2:10
THE SWININ’ SHEPHERD BLUES
(Moe Koffman) Kahl Music, Inc. (BMI) ...1:51
THE WALK
(Jim McCracklin & V. Garlic) Arc Music Corp. (BMI) ... 2:01
NICE LITTLE GIRL
(J. Lawrence Cook) Pure Music Co. (BMI) ... 2:49

Hi-Finformation

For this recording session, the Hardman Duo player-piano, which played the piano rolls arranged and perforated by J. Lawrence Cook, was set front left with an RCA 44-BX microphone reproducing the sound. Tony Mottola’s guitar was also captured thru an RCA 44-BX, while the stringed bass, played alternately by George Duvivier or Milton Hinton, worked to a Telefunken U-47, as did drummer Osie Johnson. Bass was set on the left with the piano, while drums and guitar are on the right for stereo. For the monaural recording, all four mikes were picked up on one tape track as on Amplex 300, while for stereo, the separate left and right channels were etched on quarter-inch tape by an Amplex 350 stereo tape recorder.

Notice the authenticity of this recording, wherein at the start of each number, the mechanical noise of the player-piano is slightly audible. Note too at the end of “Searching and Dreaming” there’s a retard, not usually found in player piano rolls. In fact, player piano rolls are extremely difficult for live musicians to work with, because their mechanical perfection is at times disconcerting in that sidemen vary tempo, while the piano roll is as steady as its mechanical counterpart, the metronome.

Hal Mooney
Mercury Recording Director

GARMANS & FRIENDS AT THE PIANOLA
Pret-ty Ba-by in the basement

RECREATION

No Hands

Conductor Franz Waxman raised his baton, and the orchestra sailed into the opening bars of Stravinsky’s piano concerto. Then he gave the nod for the first piano passage, and the piano came right in on cue. The audience at last week’s International Music Festival in Los Angeles did 2,000 double takes: though the piano bench was vacant, the music was coming out loud and clear.

The instrument was a player piano, and the unseen fingers that pounded the keys belonged, in a way, to Stravinsky himself. The absent Igor had made a piano roll of the concerto’s first movement in 1925, was in Europe at the time of this pianistic hanky-panky and missed hearing Stravinsky playing Stravinsky (see Music).

Peppermint & Rolls. As the unmanned Steinway eerily picked its note-perfect way through the concerto in Los Angeles, thousands of other pianolas* were making rumpus rooms, rathskellers and taverns resound all over the U.S. Most of them — foot-pumped jobs with no concert-grand pretensions — were being played for the sheer rinky-tink fun of it by people who own either vintage instruments rescued from dusty oblivion or brand-new 1962 models, bought in a shiny showroom. The player piano is coming back into its own again to the tune of Moon River and The Peppermint Twist. And, once again, people are clustering around and singing the old favorites as the hyphenated lyrics (“Va-len-cia! In my dreams it always seems I hear you softly call to me . . .”) roll past like a speech on a presidential TelePrompTer.

Macy’s in Manhattan carries a 2,500-roll library, sells about 200 rolls a week, compared with ten rolls a week two years ago. Most of the rolls are old standards (After the Ball, Ain’t We Got Fun, The Old Rugged Cross), but new numbers from Broadway musicals and the transistor hit parade are added each week. The source of Macy’s supply is the Q.R.S. Co. in The Bronx. Lone survivor of the once more than 50 U.S. roll makers, Q.R.S. sees brighter days ahead. Its artist-in-residence, J. Lawrence Cook, turns out the rolls by playing on a special piano rigged to a device like an IBM machine, which punches the proper holes in a master roll. Then the master roll is placed on the production perforator, which can punch out more than 30 finished rolls at a time. A second manufacturer, Aeolian Music Rolls of Glendale, Calif., joined the roll-making ranks 1½ years ago, is currently turning out 1.500 rolls a day. In Palisades Park, N.J., ex-Tugboat Captain John Duffy, 39, who deals in both new and rebuilt player pianos, has seen his business grow from a kitchen-and-basement operation to a 14-man organization in four years. Duffy grossed $220,000 in 1961 and expects to go to $500.000 this year.

Shoulders & Shading. In cabarets and coffee houses across the land, pianolas are twanging away. Barney’s Market Club in Chicago is typical. Says Co-Owner Harry Schwimmer: “When we have a banquet or a bachelor party, they don’t play cards after dinner like they used to; they congregate around the piano, throw their arms around each other’s shoulders, drink their beer, puff their cigars, and rip off the good old songs.” But the pianola’s biggest comeback is in the parlor. Many buyers are women who recall the pleasure of pumping one as a child and want to share the fun with their own kids. In suburban Elmhurst, 111., Mrs. Janet Carman, a banker’s wife and mother of four children, recently bought a reconditioned player. Says she: “We just love it. Our seven-year-old twins bring in all their friends on weekends, and they sing away for hours. It’s the funniest thing to wake up on a Saturday morning and hear these wee little voices coming from the basement singing Pretty Baby.”

The idea for the player piano seems to have originated with a Frenchman named Fourneaux who patented a player operating on pneumatic principles in 1863. Through the years, they were modified and improved until — at the peak of their heyday around 1923 when 205,556 were sold in the U.S. alone — player pianos could not only play loud and soft by themselves but could reproduce every nuance of shading and expression of a Paderewski or a Gershwin (both of whom sat down at a special recording piano and cut rolls on the Duo-Art label).

The Hardman, Peck Co., which makes most of today’s new player pianos, no longer turns out electrically driven concert grands or giant uprights (people refuse to give them house space though their tone is beyond compare). They feature player spinets with foot pedals only, feel that pumping out the music is a genuine part of the nostalgia that is their stock in trade. Says one foot-pumping purist: “It gives you a sort of feeling of satisfaction . . . like natural childbirth.”

* “Pianola,” once a trademark of the Aeolian Co., long ago became a generic term for all player pianos, has been revived again recently by Hardman, Peck Co.

J. Lawrence Cook in 1962

The Imperial Industrial Company
781 East 136th Street,
New York City, N.Y.

The Old Piano Roll Man

New Yorker J. Lawrence Cook
leads nostalgic revival of long-forgotten player piano

A SHUDDER swept the audience at Lincoln Center. Andre Kostelannetz was conducting the New York Philarmonic and “guest pianist” was (who’s that again) George Gershwin.

No, the Broadway composer had not been resurrected. He was simply represented by a dowdy old contraption known as the player piano. Prior to his death, Gershwin had preserved That Old Feeling [sic] on the piano roll and his performance was now being rendered posthumously.

The event, two years ago, was a kind of eerie red-letter day in a nationwide revival of the player piano, once the rage of the twenties. Collectors are buying rolls of everything from gospel to show tunes and the strange upright instruments lend a delightfully dated atmosphere to off-beat entertainment spots. Leading this nostalgic resurgence is a retired New York postal worker, J. Lawrence Cook, who since 1920 has arranged some 20,000 rolls. Last year he issued between 200 and 300 and the market for both rolls and instruments to play them on is growing monthly. To grateful afficionadoes [sic], Cook, is now known as “Dean of the Piano Roll.”

ODD INSTRUMENT BEING SERIOUSLY CONSIDERED BY
LOVERS OF THE KEYBOARD

BACK around the mid-fifties, a recording firm sought Cook’s advice on to best present a release of Cy Corbin’s The Old Piano Roll Blues. With a disarming logic, the “dean” suggested an actual piano roll. Luckily nobody laughed. Not only was the tune a hit but the instrument itself, long confined to museums and “period” movies, began to be rediscovered.

Today the player piano has caught on with all the suddenness of Batman. Last year some 10,000 were sold, mostly by the Aeolian Music Company, Cook’s employer. Rolls are beginning to move like phonograph records and certain labels, notably Columbia and Mercury, have recorded it electronically for the regular market.

Unlike Batman, however, the player piano is anything but camp. “Sure, it’s still a curio to some,” admits Cook, “you know, the old rickey-tick-tick. But more and more people are beginning to realize that this is an actual piano.” Even in the twenties, he reminds, the player piano was a mechanically advanced instrument, capturing dynamics and other subtleties of performance. Rachmaninoff and Paderewski often used it and their rolls have been preserved. For lesser known pianists in search of an audience, it serves much the same purpose as today’s electronic recording.

Over the years, Cook and his former boss, the Imperial Company of the Bronx, were alone in preserving its technology. When others stopped production about 1930, Cook, though working at the post office, continued to serve a small afficionado [sic] clientele with his periodic “J. Lawrence Cook Rolls.” Both pianist and technician, he has devised a means of making perforations as he plays, improving on the traditional method in which the artist performance was followed by weeks of mechanical adjustments. Cook is also an arranger and often transcribes orchestrated music to the two-keyboard instrument.

It is here, in particular, that the player piano improves on its manual cousin. “Since notes can be set before perforations are made,” says Cook, “it is possible to place any number of notes on the same roll — far more than a single pianist is able to play. The arranger can thus make a sound like a four-handed piano.”

DRAMATIC RESURGENCE OF AN INSTRUMENT-AND OF A
MUSICIAN WHO KEPT FAITH

ALONG with the discovery of the player piano has been an accompanying discovery of J. Lawrence Cook. The musician, 60, has appeared on a wide variety of TV shows, including I’ve Got a Secret, To Tell the Truth, You Asked for It, The Garry Moore Show, Tonight and The CBS Six O’Clock News. In addition, he occasionally cuts rolls for motion pictures and has been consultant to several reference works on the instrument. Among the many mementoes adorning his Bronx home is a “Thank You” from actor Jack Webb, with whom he worked as technical advisor in the film, Pete Kelly’s Blues.

While new in the limelight, however, Cook is no overnight success. It was nearly 50 yea