Pianophilia

Hello All,

Interesting post GJF - What are the "Course booklets" you refer to? Are they something other than the "55 Studies In Syncopation" or the "100 Syncopated Breaks".
I know there was a sort of regular magazine, but containing full pieces rather than "course" material. You've piqued my interest.

Mayerl also wrote many pieces for multi piano (up to 8 at a time, I believe) - I've never seen (or been able to find) any of these and I'm not even sure that the Billy Mayerl Society has any. (Hope I'm wrong).

In my recent searching (actually its more like shuffling paper around!) I turned up this piece that is NOT a piano solo and its NOT BY Stanley Black - but his portrait loomed so large on the cover, (and it's a song that I like and whose title I always forget), that I can't resist posting it anyway. Regards,
tobyjj

Thank you, everyone for your replies and posts. I'll find the track to share with you all tonight and read through the liner notes again on the CD (again, I think it was one of Eric Parkin's recordings) to see if the transcription exists in print or was a piano roll or gramophone recording. Either way, it remains one of the most elusive of Billy Mayerl's works at present.

Here is a French album of transcriptions by Charlie Kunz. Hopefully someone can unearth the first three albums in the series, or some of the other albums listed on p.2 of this album.

Hello All,

I did promise this piece, - sorry for being slow in getting around to it.
Regards,
tobyjj

Excellent, I think I can get a banjo solo from this.

Luv

Thal

Hello All,

Frank, We haven't heard from you in ages - hope everything is alright.

I am posting up a piece by Cyril Watters - he apparently wrote more than 1 novelty piano solo but I can't find out much about him at all. Does anyone have any others.
Also does anyone have any pieces by the following composers:-

Corrie Huddleston (e.g. "Call 'Em Toodles")
Alberto Kollmann (e.g. "Chillito")
Henry W. Ross (e.g. "Tickles")

Thanks in advance.

Regards,
tobyjj

Dear toby,

Thanks for your thoughtful note. I'm still here, checking PP daily, but have been slowed down by a barrage of recent health issues. Nothing I can't handle, so I hope to be back in full force copying the balance of my novelty/popular sheets asap!

I have the three pieces you mentioned and am posting these below. I'm pretty sure there are no other published pieces by Corrie Huddleston, but there probably are another piece or two by Ross and Kollman. I'll have to check my folders on these composers to be sure. Anyhoo, in the meantime here are these. (btw I always thought the Huddleston piece was rather strange and hard to figure out. I'm surprised Jack Mills published the score!)


All Best,

Frank

Hello Frank,

Good to hear you're OK - and as always utterly amazing in what you can pull out of your apparently inexhaustable stores !

Its an interesting comment that you make about the Huddleston piece because my request was prompted by the back page (of a Max Kortlander piece, I think), in which Jack Mills offers "America's Greatest Novelty Piano Solos" - 7 pieces are listed, (surprisingly one of which is Scott Joplin's Magnetic Rag, which I wouldn't personally have called a novelty piece). James McHugh's "Love Notes" is one of the pieces mentioned, as is Arthur Schutt's "The Ghost of the Piano", also Bert Dixon's "Finger Wrecker". Taking up centre space in the list and in larger print, thus highlighting it to the reader's eye is the Henry Ross piece "Tickles'.

What is interesting about your comment and this back page is that the centrepiece "Tickles" has an accompanying note :"A DIFFERENT SORT OF PIANO SOLO".

If you think the Huddleston piece was rather strange, but Jack Mill's advert doesn't comment on it whereas it does comment on the Ross piece 'Tickles' - its a fair bet that "Tickles" might be even stranger!

[I make this comment without having opened the Huddleston file yet and not owning "Tickles" to compare it with either"]

Food for thought.

Best Wishes,
tobyjj

Found a Zez Confrey piece in an old Keyboard Classics magazine, and don't recall seeing it posted here before. It's based on Mendelssohn's Spring Song. - Bill

Here, especially for Toby is Tickles by Henry Ross. Between this one and Foolin' Around, he composed some rather suggestive novelties!

This scores is nowhere near as eccentric and bizarre as Huddleston's Call 'Em Toodles, but it is noteworthy in that it precedes (and predicts) Confrey's Dizzy Fingers by one year.

Enjoy,

Vincent