
Paul Eakins - Nickel Music: The Sound of the Nickelodeons
From the liner notes:
THIS RECORDING was made at the Gay Nineties Village in Sikeston, Missouri, which boasts the world's largest collection of nickelodeons. The Village was the creation of Paul Eakins, a mechanical engineer who used to operate a plumbing and heating business. Ordered by his doctor to slow down, Eakins started collecting and repairing old-time nickelodeons as a hobby, which eventually developed into an almost full-time job. The nickelodeons in this recording and the others at Gay Nineties Village come from all parts of the United States and 20 foreign countries. The smallest of Eakins' nickelodeons is known as a pianino, and measures three feet wide and five feet high. The largest is eight feet high, weighs 1,800 pounds and contains a piano, mandolin, 17 viola and 21 violin pipes, 38 flute pipes, xylophone, bass, kettle and snare drums, triangle, castanets and cymbals.
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Step right up, folks, and welcome to the famous Gay Nineties Village. Hear the world's greatest collection of old time automatic music machines - the one and only Wurlitzer Fascinator, designated by the United States Government as one of the greatest inventions of the decade 1900-1910. Hear the Encore Banjo, the Eakins Special, the K.T. Special and Mr. Sam, the world's greatest orchestrion - all unique instruments of their day. See the exciting Indian Trading Post, with its fabulous collection of shooting irons, bows and arrows, tomahawks and other relics of pioneer days. Ride in an authentic Wells Fargo stagecoach and thrill to the actual bullet holes that splintered the wood a century ago. Visit the Back Room Cafe, and see the kind of place where ladies of easy virtue met their hard-drinking, quick-triggered men folks. Drop a coin in a slot and have your fortune told; try your skill in an authentic shooting gallery, and see the award-winning movie of 1905 - "Nights of Shame in Gat Paree."
Nickel music, like nickel candy and the five-cent cigar, holds a secure place in American history. No one is quite sure how the phrase "You pays your money and you takes your chance" originated. But a fairly safe presumption is that it stems from nickel music - that characteristically American form of freedom of choice by which you put a coin in here and the music goes 'round and 'round and comes out there. The present-day ubiquitous juke box is further proof of the unique and permanent place the automatic music machine has in the American scene.
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Nickelodeons come in all sorts of shapes, forms and sizes, and produce a great many different types of sound, depending on the kinds of instrumental effects built into them. Included in this recording are several which come from San Francisco, manufactured long before the earthquake of 1906, and in once-wild Chicago. Others heard here are considerably more modern and more elaborate. One, for example, is the Encore Banjo, patented in 1893 and first used in railroad passenger stations, restaurants and other places where large numbers of people congregated. The banjo plays four strings and ten notes on each of the strings, for a total of 44 notes. Picks are actuated by pneumatics capable of ten strokes per second. Each of the small pneumatics is connected to a tracker bar, which is equipped with 46 holes less than a tenth of an inch in diameter, with rubber tubing. A long paper roll is perforated with different types of music. When in operation, all motivation is supplied by pumping the entire chest assembly to 30 inches vacuum water gauge. When a coin is inserted, the motor and pump start, and simultaneously the paper roll is started through a combination of leather belts, wooden rollers, pulleys and gears to move over the tracker bar. As a perforation in the paper roll moves over a hole in the tracker bar, air rushes in through the hole in the paper, through the tracker bar, through the rubber tube to one of the small pneumatics which instantly opens and raises a lead valve which, in turn, opens a small tube leading to one of the finger button pneumatics. This pumps all the air from the finger button down firmly against the string. This action applies to each string pick - also to the nickel trip for which two holes are cut at the end of each tune, thus assuring only one play.
Other instruments heard in this recording include:
The Wurlitzer Fascinator, an orchestra piano with mandolin attachment, 38 violin pipes, 38 flute pipes, orchestra bells, bass and snare drums, and triangle.
The Coinola Orchestrion, which has solo flute pipes, xylophones, snare and bass drums, tympani, cymbal, Indian block, triangle, castanets and tambourine.
The Eakins Special, assembled by Paul (himself) Eakins from four different machines and consisting of 49 flute pipes of eight-foot tone, 37 quintadena metal pipes (eight-foot tone), 12 diapason pipes (eight foot tone), seven-and-a-third octaves of piano, a 61-note organ manual, and the same percussion instruments as in the orchestrion above. This, incidentally, operates by electric blower pressure plus a six-and-a-half-inch water column.
The Red K.T. Special is essentially a piano nickelodeon with mandolin attachment plus xylophone and percussion similar to the Eakins Special and the orchestrion. The Memory Lane Special, also heard in this recording, has the same features as the Red K.T. Special.
Tracklisting:
Side 1
1. King Cotton {1:56}
2. Dixie {1:38}
3. Patriotic Medley {1:28}
4. Georgia Camp Meeting {2:21}
5. Hands Across the Sea {1:52}
6. The Jolly Coppersmith {1:57}
7. The Irish Washerwoman {1:45}
Side 2
1. Battle Hymn of the Republic {1:47}
2. My Wild Irish Rose {1:58}
3. March Medley {3:07}
4. Carry Me Back to Old Virginny {1:45}
5. Yankee Doodle & Ta Ra Ra Boom De Ay {1:21}
6. Over the Waves {2:24}