Those of you who love the xylophone pianos and orchestrions will really like the music of the All Star Trio, who featured George Hamilton Green on xylophone, Wheeler Wadsworth on c-melody saxophone, and Victor Arden on piano! A great band, their recordings sold well during 1917-1921. I think it was the popularity of this group, or more properly of Mr. Green, that influenced a lot of American coin piano makers to phase out pipe pianos and orchestrions (imitating violins and flutes) in favor of xylophone pianos and orchestrions. Of course the economics of having an all-suction system versus an additional pressure system (for the pipes) were also an important factor, but had the makers started putting in xylophones BEFORE xylophones were actually popular/accepted with the general public, then they probably wouldnt have sold a whole lot of these instruments. Of course, one could also argue that the popularity of earlier instruments with xylophones (such as many European orchestrions from the 1905-1915 period) was due to the sheer novelty factor, rather than strict musical considerations for dance/background music, but I havent yet seen any articles offering direct proof of this. Technically, the xylophone started its trend toward popularity around (or before) 1900 in vaudeville, but the opinion of most historians is that it didnt really take off until the late teens and early 1920s, when virtuoso musicians such as Green started taking the instrument seriously, literally writing the book on how to play the instrument and creating a serious curriculum and methodology for teaching it for the first time: youtube/watch?v=VXyGSATGCfA
Posted on: Sun, 05 Oct 2014 19:20:26 +0000
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