Hello MMD.  About two years ago I was browsing through one of Frances
Broadway's Post-bid lists.  She operates a postal roll auction from
Stoke Newington in London.  Towards the end of the list was a roll
titled "Indian Cradle Song," made by the English company Parex
(doubtless a contraction of "Par Excellence").  I almost missed the
words in brackets after the title: "Recordo-coded roll."  (Maybe there
would have been less trouble for a lot of people if I had missed them.)

A Recordo-coded roll made in the UK, by a company that existed for
just a few years in the 1950s?  I doubt that there are more than a
dozen Recordo players in the whole of the United Kingdom.  I didn't
really believe that it could be a Recordo roll.  Why would a roll
company hanging on by the skin of its teeth bother to cut a roll for
such a tiny potential market?  I emailed the Broadways, and Frances'
husband, Michael, examined the roll for me.  He replied that it looked
like a Recordo to him.  So I put in a bid and just beat some other
undeserving enthusiast.  After the usual weeks and weeks of waiting,
the roll arrived and was very soon sitting in the spoolbox of my
Gulbransen Recordo.  It was indeed a Recordo roll, and it was reason-
ably well arranged.

But I didn't believe it was a Parex roll.  The Parex leader had a
handwritten label, as did the box, but no roll number.  However, just
after the leader there was a rubber-stamped number, 30682, and the name
of the pianist, B.G. Howard.  I got out the Billings Rollography,
volume 2, "Recordo And Its Kin," and started browsing through it.  I
quickly discovered that only one company seem to have employed B.G.
Howard, and that was Pianostyle.  The Billingses had managed to track
down only nineteen Recordo titles for this brand after years of
searching.  My roll's number lay in the middle of the range of their
listed roll numbers, but it wasn't one of them.  So I emailed Bob
Billings with the news of this exciting new discovery.

Bob wasn't as enthralled as I, and indicated he'd like a little more
proof before accepting this as a new Recordo.  I have found some more
evidence since then and am convinced that it is indeed a Pianostyle
Recordo roll.  How did it end up in the U.K.?  Well, I constructed
one or two lurid theories about this, based on no evidence whatsoever.
But Julian Dyer, editor of the British PPG Bulletin, pointed out that
it was probably imported into the U.K. before World War II, by a
company whose remains became part of Parex, who also produced a British
version of Pianostyle after the war, just to confuse the issue.

Shortly after this I was searching through the rolls for sale on eBay
and came across a lot that included a Pianostyle roll with a pretty
green and white label, unlike their ordinary labels.  It was an
amazingly clear photo, and at the bottom of the label were the magic
words "Plays all 88-note and Expression reproducing Pianos".  It was a
Recordo, and again, it was not on the Billings list.  I was seized by a
fierce excitement and began looking at eBay every night.

It's now eighteen months later, and by pestering eBay vendors unmerci-
fully I've extended the Billings list of nineteen titles to about
seventy-five.  I must say that I've found most vendors to be very
obliging, especially since I tell them that I don't intend to bid for
their lot.  Sometimes I can't get the vendors to unroll the roll a bit
to read the pianist's name (well, they are busy people and I'm just a
nuisance), but I've acquired most of the details for most of the rolls.

One or two of the lots contained almost nothing but a few Pianostyle
Recordos.  I bid for them and have acquired a dozen.  Possibly this is
the World's finest collection!  So what are they like?

Well, they are pretty awful.  As not everyone may be familiar with
the Recordo coding system, I'll just mention that it employs a split
hammer-rest rail, with the division between middle C# and D, so that
one can have soft treble and loud bass or vice-versa, or both soft, or
both loud.  There are just five vacuum levels, usually labeled 0 to 4,
that range from PP to FF.  This is a very simple system, but with
clever coding, it can produce surprisingly good music.  QRS arrangers
were especially skilled at this.

The Billings Rollography states that Pianostyle Recordos have coding
that is very crude and choppy and does not make use of the bass soft
position.  On looking at my dozen rolls I've found that the earlier
rolls do use the soft bass hammer rail, although not lavishly, but as
the serial numbers increase, soft bass dwindles away to nothing.  None
of the rolls have much sustain, just short bursts here and there.  Most
of the rolls do use a lot of soft treble hammer rail.

But it's the expression levels that are the most curious.  None of my
dozen rolls uses level 1 (P) or level 4 (FF) at all.  The most common
coding utilizes level 2 (MF) with the soft treble being turned on and
off.  There is an occasional excursion to level 3 (F), but for most of
the roll there is a series of long perforations that actuate level 2,
with a few short gaps in between.  When there is no expression perfor-
ation at all, the system  defaults to level 0 (PP).  Sometimes the gap
between two successive level 2 perforations is so short that, taking
into account the long tracker bar expression ports characteristic of
the Recordo system, the level 0 sections must be ineffective or at best
very short.

I get the impression that Pianostyle didn't really know, or care, what
they were doing with their Recordo rolls and cared even less as time
went by.  This despite my initial feeling that the Parex "Recordo" is
not too bad.  It is a pity, because some of the piano playing on these
rolls is quite OK.

I won't be bidding for any more Pianostyle Recordos, but I'll keep
looking on eBay for "new" ones for a while yet.  Such information as
I have has been entered into an Excel file.  If anybody is mad enough
to want it, I would be willing to email it to that person.

In the meantime I have to say to Bob and Ginny Billings: You were right
all along.

John Phillips,
Hobart, Tasmania