Player Pianos

Hy Babit can be viewed on the 1966 TV tour of the NAMM Show in Chicago, which highlighted several key exhibitors to the show that year.  Hy provided a review of the art of piano roll arranging.  At the time of the filming Hy was working for QRS.  Fast forward to 2014, Hy was once again in front of cameras for NAMM, this time for the Oral History program.  At the age of 97, Hy recounted his passion for music and some of the many adventures he has had as a result of his very interesting life in music.  

Lou Berger was an energetic piano salesman in the style of the old piano traveler of a by-gone era. In fact, what Lou knew about selling pianos he learned from some of the old timers when he was a young man starting out in the business. Lou was a walking encyclopedia of the piano business and was well versed in the player piano boom of the 1890s all the way to the electronic piano disc boom of the 1990s. In fact he once provided training classes for the NAMM Foundation’s Museum of Making Music’s docent program on the subject of player pianos.

Bob Berkman has a passion about the player piano and the player piano rolls.  Bob's grandparents had a player piano when he was a child and he grew up fascinated by the instrument.  Once while in dental school, on a long weekend, Bob traveled to the QRS factory to make his own roll, having no idea at the time that he would one day work for the company for more than 35 years.  

Q David Bowers contributed greatly to the archiving of the music products industry. As an author, he researched and published several books on the early era of mechanical instruments. His 1972 publication, The Encyclopedia of Automatic Musical Instruments, has become the definitive reference source on the topic. Along the way he also saved an enormous and invaluable collection of vintage trade magazines dating back to the 1880s from being lost. Those materials have since been scanned by the NAMM Resource Center, thanks to Mr. Bowers’ devotion to history, and will be made available

Bill Brandom enjoyed playing piano as a kid and was even voted “most musical” in high school.  He later was given a book on piano tuning, which changed his life because he realized it would be his passion.  He attended a piano tuning school and opened his own shop in Kansas City before being asked to join the Yamaha team in 1980.  His first role with the company was to manage the service department for the Everett Piano factory in Michigan, which was owned by Yamaha at the time.  He later moved to the Yamaha corporate headquarters in California and joined the Yamaha piano service

Gary Burgett and his brother Kirk established PianoDisc out of their piano retail store in Sacramento, California in the late 1970s. Gary was a pianist and music teacher with a successful studio of his own, and Kirk was a skilled piano technician and rebuilder. The store, Burgett Pianos, sold a product called the Pianocorder, a cassette-driven player system that could be added to any piano, which eventually increased in sales over the years. The brothers brought together a team to create their own product once the Pianocorder was taken off the market.

Dick Dolan is the president of QRS, the historic makers of player piano rolls. He purchased the company in the mid 1980s and ensured that QRS continue to innovative products in the electronic age. His passion for the player piano resulted in a line of creative products including video linked player pianos. Dick had a 40 year career as a chemist working in the field of chromatography. During the early part of his retirement, he seized the opportunity to lead the company that produced the piano rolls he had collected and enjoyed for years.

Bob Furst was a veteran of the piano industry for over 50 years, Bob sold nearly every brand of player, upright and grand piano that you can think of. Over the years he also became an expert on the value of pianos and a historian on the background of piano manufacturers. With a growing need for updated guides on the prices of vintage pianos, Bob wrote a series of books that he made available on the Internet. The Piano Bluebook has been in print for over 20 years and lists nearly every model and brand name with facts about each style and design.  

Ann Jones was interviewed alongside Dick Dolan, the president of QRS, a company known around the world for their piano rolls. As CFO, Ann has been with QRS since the 1980s. She has played an important roll in the expansion of QRS into DVD products for a new generation of player pianos. Under Dick and Ann’s direction, the company has renewed its image within the industry by combining their staying power and pursuit for new technology and products. Ann’s NAMM Oral History interview was completed on January 20, 2007. 

Arthur Linter had many stories to share, like the one about his real birthday. “My mother told me, ‘Your birthday is March 14, 1913, but it says April 5 on your birth certificate because the doctor put it in his pocket and carried it around for a few days before he filed it.’” He was a street wise kid from Brooklyn who took night classes to become an accountant and lawyer while working the day job of assisting his father in making headstones at a local cemetery. “The work was rewarding but I often told my father that his clients kept dying off.”

Edward Marsh, like many jazz pianists, was greatly influenced by the raw power and brilliant ideas of Art Tatum and other musical innovators. Ed took hold of jazz and blended it with his classical training to create his own unique style. After school he began working in piano sales with music retailers in San Diego. By the late 1960s, he joined Thearle’s Music, where he managed one of the store locations, which was owned by former NAMM President Harry Callaway. Ed also developed a love of the AMPICO piano systems and has become a collector and historian on the reproducing piano.  

WMAX-TV Host Jim Hutton with Hy Babit of QRS.

David Saul is a leading expert on player piano rolls and the AMPICO Company. David was interviewed in his El Cajon, CA home in June 2011 and spoke of his career as an engineer. He worked in Texas for the space program in the late 1960s and early 70s before gaining his master’s degree and moving to San Diego to work for the US Navy. Beginning in the 1960s he also became very interested in the player piano patents, especially the AMPICO line of products. He was writing articles on the subject by 1971 and later purchased the equipment to make his own rolls. He focused on the hard-to-