Dear MMDers,  I recently bought a copy of the original piano roll,
Starck 11228, named "Wabash Blues".  I must say that I'm greatly
intrigued to read a small bit of paper with this note inside the piano
roll's box: "Columbia Master - Played by Clarence Johnson".

Really, a Columbia piano roll entitled "Wabash" was released in 1921
under the number 228.  But the MMD Columbia/Capitol data compilation
by Mike Montgomery does not mention Johnson.  So my questions are:

(1) Is this Starck roll really the Clarence Johnson's rendition of
"Wabash Blues"?

(2) Is this Starck roll possibly another issue of the master cut
for Columbia by C. Johnson?

Any help would be greatly appreciated,

Benjamin Intartaglia
Paris

 [ In the preface to his rollography, "Columbia Capitol, Supertone and
 [ Challenge word roll catalog", Mike Montgomery wrote about Starck:
 [
 [ "This was no relation to the [John] Stark Publishing Company of St.
 [ Louis, Missouri.  P.A. Starck was a piano and player piano maker in
 [ Chicago and the firm had retail stores, too.  They obviously sold
 [ Columbia rolls under the store's own brand name for a few months.
 [ The earliest Starck roll found is 142.  Only 10 Starck examples have
 [ been reported, the highest number being 311.  Along the way, Columbia
 [ numbered the Starck issues by preceding their own three-digit number
 [ with a "9" (see 155), a "6" (see 242) and the number "11" (see 274,
 [ 293, 296 and 305.)"
 [
 [ At http://mmd.foxtail.com/MMMedia/CoCap/index.html is an image of
 [ the label of Starck 11228, "Wabash Blues".  The first mention of
 [ Clarence Johnson in the Columbia/Capitol list at
 [ http://mmd.foxtail.com/MMMedia/CoCap/cocap.html is roll 273,
 [ "Blue Danube Blues".  I suspect that Columbia 228 is indeed played
 [ by Clarence Johnson, and Starck 11228 is identically the same.
 [
 [ -- Robbie