The Mastertouch Piano Roll Co.
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The advent of television in Australia in 1956 had important ramifications for piano roll manufacture. This was the year that Len Luscombe died, his company consequently being acquired by G.H.Horton. It was also the year that Barclay Wright came to work for G.H.Horton as recording artist. This was a necessity as Edith's health was deteriorating rapidly as she was suffering from cancer. An immediate problem was that the Horton ribbon recorder had long fallen into disrepair and in fact its use had been disbanded. Edith had been expected to continue to produce new masters using the hand-cutter! This process required an enormous amount of knowledge which could only come from years of past experience, so the only way Barclay Wright could record was to resurrect the Broadway electric cutter that Len Luscombe had used as his recording machine in Melbourne. This Broadway cutter was not in fact a recording machine at all, but a roll cutter used to perforate pipe organ rolls! Consequently the perforated holes were "pin-hole" in size - Len Luscombe had used it more as "graph" to indicate hole patterns rather than as a faithful record of his playing! The "rebuilding" of the machine therefore required a great deal of work by John Booth,formerly of Watson Victor; and Geof Frazer of Frazer Engineering. The hole size was expanded to the standard piano-roll scale size; the machine was fitted with extra devices which would enable it to perforate its own timing holes and finally it was fitted with a variable speed motor which for the first time allowed the paper travel to be regulated to the speed of the artist's playing. The repair of this machine also allowed Lettie Keyes to return as a recording artist for G.H.Horton. No amount of innovation however, could overcome the fact that, with the advent of T.V.,roll sales had slumped to an all-time low, in an even greater decline than that caused by the Great Depression. Everyone began to trade-in their player-pianos as a deposit for the purchase of their television set! By 1960 G.H.Horton came to the decision that piano roll manufacture should be abandoned. This decision was reinforced by the fact that the entire Columbia plant and processes were to be removed from the Botany Road factory and transferred to a new factory in Lane Cove. The area dedicated for piano roll manufacture was reallocated to a huge new pencil making machine from Germany! Because of his sentimental attachment to the machinery and piano roll manufacture, George Horton agreed to the establishment of a separate corporate structure to continue to manufacture piano rolls until hopefully " good times came along again".
Since 1961, The Mastertouch Piano Roll Company has traded in its own right under the principalship of Barclay Wright, although initially in partnership with Graham Heimann. Barclay Wright gave up a promising teaching career to prevent an interesting craft from sliding into oblivion. He had developed a passion for pianolas and rolls during his teenage years for his family had an expensive reproducing (expression) grand player-piano. He was dissatisfied with the range of rolls available and with a strong family musical background - he had been taught to play piano and pipe organ - was of the opinion that the pianola should be able to give back the music of the age in which it found itself! Although he went to Teachers' College and the University of Sydney when he left school, his enthusiasm for player-pianos continued and a friendship with Len Luscombe ensued. Barclay Wright's unsuccessful attempt to buy Broadway after Len Luscombe's death resulted in his joining the firm which had defeated his objective - G.H.Horton & Co Ltd.. Because of the elderly G.H.Horton's affection for the roll business and his friendship towards Wright, he arranged for Wright to take over the rights to the Mastertouch label when it was decided that the operation would not be moved to Lane Cove. The plant and masters were removed to a former bakery in Canterbury; the plant was installed in the bakehouse fronting Jeffrey Street, while the shop in Canterbury Road eventually became the showroom opened to the public for sales. This was in itself an inovative step as originally G.H.Horton were manufacturing wholesalers, mostly selling through the large music chains such as Palings and Allans. Having set up shop, Mastertouch, to keep in touch with its new roll-buying public, began to print a broadsheet on an old Gestetner duplicator which was posted out as "Music Notes", creating a very humble beginning for today's Mail Order Department! The current "Music Notes" has been expanded into the voice of The Friends of Mastertouch and besides containing listings of the latest releases also affords interesting articles for members to peruse. It is posted out to nearly 8000 subscribers!
By 1963,despite the cramped quarters, piano roll manufacture was in full swing at Canterbury. Gradually a number of the older Horton employees joined The Mastertouch Piano Roll Company, firstly Ruby Berginey and Nell Bissaker, then later Hazel Solomon and Jack Hendry. This meant there was a smooth transition of the knowledge to make piano rolls commercially. The successful recommissioning of the Broadway recording machine allowed Lettie Keyes to return to work full time bringing out new selections of all the post-war musicals. The advent of Mitch Miller on television too, led to the revival of many of the popular songs of the Twenties. As Mastertouch had acquired the full library of the old Broadway masters these songs were reintroduced into the catalogue, but this time under their correct label - "Broadway". (G.H.Horton had introduced a limited number of Broadway titles when they took over that label in 1956, but they issued them as Mastertouch! This had been a serious mistake as the Broadway fans had lost sight of their product and Mastertouch appeared as a monopoly - not a very good situation from a practical business point of view!)
There was also still a great deal of customer resistance to buying new rolls at this time - not so much based on quality, but on price. There seemed to be an endless, in fact ever increasing supply of second-hand rolls everywhere, usually at the princely sum of sixpence! To cheapen the price of the new rolls and to make them more eye catching to the buying public Barclay Wright changed the traditional two piece black leatherette covered roll box to a brightly printed carton. This allowed the selling price to be kept low but it also had serious adverse effects over time. A carton is not a successful long-term storage proposition. Rolls fell out through the ends of the box, often breaking their plastic spools when they hit the floor. Another serious disadvantage arose in export sales. When QRS moved its operation from New York to Buffalo, the supply of QRS rolls in the States was temporarily halted. The Wise brothers of the Music Sales Corporation wanted to import Mastertouch rolls into the States to fill this void. Music Sales of course wished to offer their buyers the widest repetoire of music possible but were equally determined that the piano rolls were to be offered in the one standard size. This is what QRS did at that time. Consequently Mastertouch selected the middle or long-play roll as the best way to present the broadest representation of their product. Large single tune rolls and the smaller of the large Golden Jubilee selections were forced into the so-called American "standard" roll format, which was presented in the carton style packaging! This bewildered and antagonised the American customers who abandoned the Mastertouch label and returned to buying QRS. The only positive to come from this futile marketting exercise was that QRS realised that Mastertouch were still making "hand-played" selection rolls from the latest musicals. QRS followed suit and recommissioned their old pencil marking recording machine calling in famous artists such as Liberace to record for them. A new Golden Age of Piano Roll had begun.
In an attempt to rectify the export problems of Mastertouch rolls Barclay Wright and his sister Dr Deidre Wright undertook an extensive tour of the United States. Both became somewhat celebrities when the player piano enthusiasts discovered there was another piano roll manufacturer in the world besides QRS! They were swept under the wing of AMICA and later the Aeolian Corporation. This bravura may have been occasioned by the fact that Barclay Wright took with him a Mastertouch recut of an expression roll. All the enthusiasts wanted reliable but reasonably priced recuts of rolls by Welte, Ampico and Duo-Art! Barclay Wright was somewhat premature in this marketting ploy as an electronic interface to simplify the reading of the original roll forrecutting never eventuated!
Two things became obvious during this tour. Firstly there was a renewed interest in new forms of the "old" player piano and secondly there was enormous interest in the "Collectables" associated with the Golden Days of the Player Piano. Barclay Wright returned to Australia determined to attempt to manufacture or at least assemble new player pianos here and became even more conscious that the Mastertouch factory complex should become the "centre piece" of a mechanical music museum.
The factory at Canterbury was not suitable as a venue for a museum although its proximity to both post and rail had encouraged retail customers and the growth of mail-order in the purer commercial sense. Barclay Wright therefore purchased the building complex belonging to the former Fifth Church of Christ Scientist at Petersham; again only one block from the railway station but this time closer in to the city. The Sunday School building became the roll factory and piano repair section; the Reading Room became the roll showroom and the Church proper (a beautiful octagonal room) was initially retained as an auditorium and display room for the many instruments now forming part of the "Mastertouch Collection".
The Mastertouch Collection had expanded steadily from 1970 onwards and the Mastertouch Collection Advisory Council was set up in an attempt to make the Collection into a viable Mechanical Music Museum. The uniqueness of many of the items in the Collection however, attracted the interest of a number of public bodies who looked into means of including Mastertouch in their instrumentalities.
In historical sequence these bodies were:-
Each of these bodies was unable to find a workable solution to Barclay Wright's request that any museum so created should be a "working" museum - that is, that the plant and machinery should continue to operate and produce piano rolls and boxes while the public "looked in"!
The National Film & Sound Archive, under the auspices of its then Mimister for the Arts, Senator Barry Cohen, came the closest to realising this "dream", beginning negotiations to establish such a museum in the basement of the Archive in Canberra. Part of the Collection was acquired and taken to Canberra before the scheme was abandoned when Cohen lost the Ministry. This has had an unfortunate effect in that the material of the Collection is now divided - some of it remains with Mastertouch at Petersham, while some of it is with the Archive in Canberra! Only recently was Mastertouch able to buy back the large Style 50 Photoplayer for reinclusion in the Mastertouch Collection.
In the matter of assembling new player-pianos, under the auxiliary arm of The Pedal Piano Company and later The Anglo American Player Company, Mastertouch had been repairing player-pianos for a number of years. This work was now supplemented by importing electrically operated player actions. These were installed in the very elegant English Kemble piano and labelled "Electrelle". This same player action was adapted so that ordinary piano rolls could be played within the compass of the modern electronic organ. This adaption was installed in a variety of brands of electronic organ but all were marketted as the "Orchestrelle". When a new "state of the art" electric player action was imported ( The Superscope) operated by a tape playing in a tapedeck, Mastertouch recreated an elaborate Nickelodeon, with a leadlight panel in the top door and operated by a coin in the slot mechanism. This same device was also installed in a number of grand pianos. which together with the Nickelodeon became very popular in hotels and restaurants.
At the same time Mastertouch also secured a substantial contract to repair much of the mechanical musical memorabelia belonging to The Powerhouse Museum in time for exhibition in the Bicentennial Year. In modern times this proved the most exciting thing involving the whole company! The items varied from the very small (the lawyer automaton) to the very large (the Photoplayer, now in the Kings Theatre in the Museum) and the very complex (the Mills Violano). The most fun was had in restoring the papier-mache children's nursery toy - the lawyer automaton! Colin Parker,the famous Australian artist, recreated the face, Doug Drummond sorted out the intricacies of its marionette -like leverage, George Jones rebuilt the oak desk, which concealed its operating mechanism and Helen Ryan, an authority on dressing prize-winning dolls, went to inordinate lengths to correctly recreate his robes and undergarments - all this work for something that had been made at the end of the last century in Strasbourg and which probably sold for five shillings! The Photoplayer, Style 25, was the smaller of the two machines which Barclay Wright had bought in South Australia in 1975. This Photoplayer had survived almost intact from the Twenties in the Mechanics Institute in the town of Goolwa, near the mouth of the River Murray. It had been installed in the Institute by a South Australian philanthropist, a chemist called Wells, and was used to accompany silent films, just as it is now in its new setting in the Kings Theatre in the Powerhouse Museum! The most complicated job was the restoration of the Mills Violano - a violin and piano, played by a paper roll! This machine, the Juke Box of the Twenties, had come to the Museum from the old Luna Park in Sydney. The case had lost all its veneer. The mechanism, especially the wiring, was in a parlous condition. There were no reprints of manuals for these machines, readily available today! Mastertouch was very proud of the finished product and by courtesy of the Powerhouse Museum it became the centre of attraction at the 1987 Founders' Day Celebration.
When the National Film & Sound Archive looked at taking over Mastertouch as a working museum, they expressed no interest in the piano workshop, despite the fact that Barclay Wright was of the opinion that it was one of the best restoration departments available in Australia! Its operation was therefore wound down and the department closed. Some of its most important staff members were transferred into the roll manufacturing section so that their specialist abilities would still be available should the Archive ever require them. When it became apparent that the Archive was not going to proceed with the museum matter at all, most of those workers, especially the younger ones left, and all this expertise was irretrievably lost!
From the commercial point of view the most significant aspect of the Petersham years was that there was a gradual withering of the "support" industries to roll manufacture. The roll leader tags for example, had always been made "out of house". Suddenly with accounting rationalisation the suppliers decided it would only be practical to supply orders of 500,000 or more! Mastertouch was forced to make its own tags! It then became Company policy that the whole product should be produced "in house". This meant that there was a sudden proliferation of machinery and plant in the building, which kept Reg Scofield, the mechanic, very busy, as he was expected to recommission it all. This policy was also instrumental in preserving quite an amount of archaelogical industrial equipment. Mastertouch became the final repository for machinery from some of the great packaging companies, who began their operations in the first half of this century - P.J.Firth Pty Ltd., J. Fielding Ltd., Taylors Boxes Pty Ltd., and many others. Much of this expansion could only be achieved through the help of Mick Dolphin of Dolphin & Hannon, who made it possible for Mastertouch to acquire this plant rather than see it exported out of the country.
Regrettably in the case of box manufacture, however, there was no smooth transition in acquiring the knowledge of how to manufacture the product, as there had been in piano roll manufacture, as no old employees came with the machinery! Box makers David Firth, Ken Ellis, Bob and Betty Field, Tony Maggs and Trevor Lewis all rallied to the rescue and were helpful in getting the wheels turning again.
The acquisition of anciliary box plant led to a gradual transition whereby the Company began to produce boxes other than piano roll boxes. Since 1982 production of gift packaging, perfumery and games boxes has expanded, leading to the development of a whole new department - the packaging division. Box making has contributed significantly to the survival of piano roll manufacture and as part of the celebration of the 75th year of the production of Mastertouch piano rolls in Australia plans have been put forward to purchase the former Stanmore Fire Station. If this project is successful, it will allow the packaging division to be relocated in a more workable situation and what is more important, allow the beautiful auditorium in the Crystal Street building to be re-established as a music room and display area for the instruments in the Mastertouch Collection.
As the two buildings are virtually "round the corner" from one another and within easy walking distance, the public will still be able to inspect the operation of both plants, but under much more comfortable conditions.
1994 marks the 75th year since G.H.Horton first began the production of piano rolls in Australia. Mastertouch has earnt a special place in any record of Australian social culture, as not only did the company encourage Australian artists to stay and record in their own country, it was probably the single major contributor to "creating" the Jazz Age in Australia.