My favorite kind of vacation is to visit music collections and recently
I went to see Rick and Betty Cooley at Hockessin, Delaware.  I had not
seen a collection like this since Doyle Lane had his Music and Wheels
Museum in Hillsboro, NC during the 1970s.  There were numerous band
organs, nikelodeons, calliopes, juke boxes and music boxes but what I
enjoyed the most were two beautiful Steinway Duo Art grands and an
Aeolian residence organ operated from a midi file which could also
play rolls.

I invited Warren Trachtman, who many know from his piano sound fonts
for computers and his ragtime web site, and Dick Baker who had seen
some of the West Coast collections during the 1970s and is well known
by jazz fans as being an integral part of the Patomac River Jazz Club.
We all enjoyed our stay and appreciated the hospitality of the Cooleys.

Earlier in the summer I visited Larry Norman in Moneta, Virginia and got
to enjoy his four player pianos representing the reproducing systems of
the Duo Art, Ampico and Welte Mignon.  He had more rolls than I could
enjoy with my overnight stay but I'm a glutton for music and am familiar
with most of the classical pianists as I have studied their lives, music
and recordings.

The popular music rolls are always fascinating. To hear the arrangements
of the same pieces by different pianists and be able to recognize them
just by the way they play is always a wonderful experience.   Hearing
James P. Johnson play "Down Home Blues" and "Muscle Shoals Blues" was a
strange experience as the music and the arrangements wer practically
identical.

Larry has some real winners with his "Roller Tune" reissues.

Charles Davis