PATCHING UP A VICTOR R

A nice Victor Model R "Royal" was brought in for a minimal cost patch job.    The mechanical part was easy, one of the three governor springs and weight assemblies had a screw come out of one end.   The screw was in the bottom of the case, so putting it back was easy.

After that was done, the turntable did not have enough torque to play a record.   This is a simple spring motor, so I thought maybe it needed to be cleaned and greased.   Did that.   Not much improvement.   The spring seemed to have lost much of its tension.   The short term solution was to decrease the needle pressure, by adding a counterbalance to the  horn, thus getting by with a reduced motor torque.

Rule #1, is do not make irreversible changes, so I made a small clip to hang the weight on.   If a proper restoration is made in the future, this can be removed and no sign it ever existed will remain.

                                                  Making an Orchestrion     Part 4


The piano we chose for this project is a 1909 Weber.   Having rebuilt the stack and getting it properly fitted in the case, the next issue is placing the other items and instruments.

We have placed all the pieces on the shelf and think this will work out, subject to finding that we have to readjust due to unforeseen problems in the future.

Based on the hope this will work, we have run the valves to the manifolds on the deck and have started tubing the tracker bar for this configuration.

We have not yet found a home for the triangle.

                                            ABOUT THE ROCK STARS OF THE 1920s


The Coon Sanders Nighthawks Band

Carleton Coon was born in Rochester, Minnesota in 1893 and his family moved to Lexington, Missouri shortly after his birth.   Joe Sanders was born in Kansas in 1896.   Sanders was known as "the Old Left Hander" because of his skills at baseball.   The Coon Sanders Nighthawks Orchestra was formed in 1919.   Sanders gave up baseball in the early 1920s to concentrate on dance music as a career.

The orchestra began broadcasting in 1922 on clear channel station WDAF, which could be received throughout the United States.   They were broadcast in performance at the Muehlebach Hotel in Kansas City.   They took the name Nighthawks because they broadcast late at night (11:30 p.m. to 1:00 a.m.).  By 1924, their fan club had 37,000 members.   Fans were encouraged to send in requests for songs by letter, telephone or telegram.   That move became so popular that Western Union set up a ticker tape  between Sander's piano and Coon's drums, so telegrams could be acknowledged during the broadcasts.    Their song "Nighthawk Blues" includes the lines:  "Tune right in on the radio/Grab a telegram and say "Hello" .   In 1925, they recorded the Paul Whitman and Fred Rose composition "Flamin' Mamie".

The group left Kansas City for the first time in 1924 for a three-month engagement in a roadhouse in Chicago.   The orchestra moved to Chicago the same year, where Jules Stein used the profits from a tour he booked, for them to establish the Music Corporation of American (MCA), with the orchestra as its first client.   The orchestra moved into the Blackhawk in Chicago in 1926.  The members of the  orchestra at that time were Joe Richolson and Bob Pope, trumpets; Rex Downing, trombone; Harold Thiell, Joe Thiell and Floyd Estep, saxophones; Joe Sanders, piano; Russ Stout, banjo and guitar;
"Pop"  Estep, tuba; Carleton Coon, drums.   In the following years, the Nighthawks performed at the Blackhawk every winter, doing remote broadcasts over radio station WGN.   Their reputation spread coast to coast through these broadcasts and the many records they made for Victor.   They undertook very successful road tours.

The orchestra moved to New York City for an 11 month broadcast engagement at the Hotel New Yorker, arranged by William S. Paley, who needed a star attraction to induce radio stations to join the Columbia Broadcasting System.

At the peak of the band's success, the musicians owned identical Cord automobiles, each in a different color with the name  of the Orchestra and the owner embossed on the rear.   The Orchestra's  popularity showed no signs of abating and their contract with MCA had another 15 years to run in the spring of 1932, when Carleton Coon came down with a jaw infection and died on May 4.

Sanders attempted to keep the organization going; however, without Coon, the public did not support them.   In 1935, he formed his own group and played until the early 1940s when he became a part-time orchestra leader and studio musician.   In his later year he suffered from failing eyesight and other health problems.   He died in 1965 after suffering a stroke.

                                      Donating to a Museum???

This way of passing on your collection item is not a bad plan.   BUT if you want your collection preserved and available to the public, there are a few areas that need to be considered, before making a donation of machines or literature.

1)   When you donate an item you lose all control over it.  Period.

2)   No reputable school or museum will guarantee much of anything about display or retention of a donation.   If they do make such a guarantee, don't believe them.   Over time, as the situation changes, the pledge will become undoable or forgotten.

3)   Your best indication of probable fate of your donation, is to check the fate of past such donations.  If they refuse to discuss that subject, then you have your answer and can walk away.   Your best chance for continued public access to your donation, is their past record of such access.

4)   You need to trust that if the item is eventually sold, it will go to someone who appreciates it.

We believe that DeBence Antique Music World is an example of a proper place to donate.   We hold in trust, what Jake DeBence collected, thus preventing it from being sold to and probably being hidden in many different private collections.   We keep all of it available for public view and performance.   We have received and added a number of major instruments over the last 20 years.

The Hammond/Aeolian Player Organ, the Nelson Wiggen Style 6, the Aeolian/Duo Art Grand, The Sohmer-Welte Upright and the Aeolian Duo-Art Grand Reproducing System all came to us needing repairs and have been restored and are exhibited and played for visitiors.

We have filled gaps in our phonograph and instrument collections with donated instruments which have been repaired and are now on display.   We have been given several non-working phonographs, duplicating items which we already have and have restored and sold them.   Proceeds from such sales are used for restoration and maintenance of the instruments in the collection and if the donors care, they are told where the money from the sale of their machine was used.

In summary, don't discount this way of passing on your collection items, as there are worthy places to donate an item where it will be restored, preserved, exhibited and played.   You just need to do your homework and research to find them.