The recent glass armonica discussions in MMD got me thinking about
the other unusual instruments that are out there.  Many of these other
instruments fall in the novelty category, and they are all equally
interesting and unique.

The J. C. Deagan Company of Chicago made many of these musical devices
for use in vaudeville and the circus.  Over the years I have collected
a number of these instruments, such as shaker chimes, keyboard-operated
saucer bells, hand rubbed rosin chimes or rosin harp, keyboard-operated
orchestra bells, and a _loud_ Deagan Una-Fon which sounds like tuned
doorbells played from keyboard!  Besides the Deagan products there is
the musical saw, of which professional ones were made without saw teeth.

There is also the Flex-A-Tone, made in the twenties by the Playatone
Company of New York.  New ones are being made today but they are just
cheap toys when compared to the original professional ones made in the
twenties.  In its advertising, the Playatone Company claimed that their
Flex-A-Tone made "Jazz Jazzier"!

The Flex-A-Tone sounds like a musical saw when properly played.  It
is made of tempered steel, hand held, and is struck by two wood balls
mounted on flat steel springs.  The hardness of the wooden balls
is tempered with rubberized cork.  The pitch of the tempered steel is
changed by thumb pressure, while the whole thing is swung around with
a rapid "soup stirring" motion.  The "soup stirring" motion creates
a nice tremolo effect.  What is really fun, and also quite difficult,
is to play two Flex-A-Tones at once with each hand in harmony!

Another fun musical device is the slide whistle.  In the 1920's beau-
tiful professional slide whistles were made.  Both the Flex-A-Tone and
the slide whistle were featured in 1920's dance band music, like Paul
Whiteman's recording of "Whispering", which has a nice slide whistle
solo.  By the way, Flex-A-Tones were also played with monkey organs in
Berlin in the 1920's.  The organ grinder would crank with one hand and
play the Flex-A-Tone with the other!

Such musical novelties did not go unnoticed by mechanical musical
instrument manufacturers.  In Germany the Popper Company incorporated
both the slide whistle and the Flex-A-Tone into different orchestrion
models.  The Popper Roland jazz orchestrion featured an animated slide
whistle prominently displayed on the front of the cabinet.  The
pneumatic mechanism for the slide whistle would follow or "slide along
with" the highest perforated note on the roll when turned on by a
perforation in the roll.  The musical effect is very good indeed!

The Popper Company did not over do it and always left the customer
wanting more.  To my knowledge there are only five Popper Rolands in
existence which have this device, including a nice example on public
display in Fredy Kunzle's museum in Lichtensteig, Switzerland.

The larger Popper Ohio jazz orchestrion also featured a slide whistle.
One of these can be seen in Nethercutt's collection at the Meryl Norman
museum in San Sylmar CA.  In Siegfried Wendel's collection in Ruedes-
heim, Germany, a large Popper Ohio exists that plays a Flex-A-Tone!
This instrument is currently awaiting restoration, therefore we music
await to hear it play!  I have not yet studied its mechanism to see how
they animated the "soup stirring" movement necessary for the tremolo
effect!  Being of German design I am sure that it is quite complicated
and very effective.

In the late 1920's, the Leipziger Orchestrionwerke of Paul Loesche also
made a jazz orchestrion which plays a slide whistle.  It is similar to
the Popper Roland and was probably built to compete with the Roland
orchestrion.

The Loesche orchestrion with the slide whistle is in my collection and
is the only such Loesche instrument known to exist.  It has a very mod-
ern Bauhaus case.  The orchestrion has a rank of violin pipes, a rank
of flute pipes, piano, percussion, and the slide whistle.  Like the
Popper, when turned on by a perforation the slide whistle follows the
highest note on the roll, which is usually a melody-line note.  Air
from the tremolo mechanism flows directly to the whistle.

For the MMD Gallery I have included a picture of the Loesche factory in
Leipzig-Mockau, Germany as well as a photo of my Loesche with the front
panel off showing the slide whistle and its pneumatic mechanism which
is to the left of the whistle.

 [ See http://mmd.foxtail.com/Pictures   -- Robbie ]

The pneumatic mechanism pushes up on a horizontal wood bar drilled with
holes.  This bar then is attached to the slide on the whistle.  As the
bar is pushed up or falls back, the slide on the whistle follows thus
creating the slide whistle effect.

I am especially interested in mechanical instruments like my Loesche and
the Popper Roland which feature animated musical novelties.  I would
enjoy hearing from collectors who have such instruments including the
unusual J. C. Deagan instruments.

Tim Trager
Trager@idt.net


 [ Editor's comment:
 [
 [ I accompanied a musical saw performance not long ago.  The artist
 [ told the audience, "I practice at home with my 'skill saw', but for
 [ playing with this group tonight I brought my 'band saw'!"
 [
 [ After the groans from the crowd subsided he sat down and took a bass
 [ viol bow in his right hand, squeezed the saw into a gentle S-curve
 [ with his left hand, and played "The Sheik of Araby".  For an encore
 [ a band musician played "Whispering" on a slide whistle while the saw
 [ played an obbligato.  Vaudeville still lives !
 [
 [ -- Robbie