Welte "Mignon"
Rob Perry said : You've just piqued my curiosity about the the Welte rolls now, Adam! I'd love to hear that mangling of Kitten on the Keys! The only Red Welte rags I've heard are the few that Terry Smythe has scanned, and the MIDI expression emulation is pretty dire (due to the scarcity of instruments to compare with, I'd suspect). The original german rolls have really dire renditions of American material. The rags are awful, the foxtrots are awful. Mind you, this is seeing things through 21st century eyes where we now think the real McCoy is the american self-same stuff from the same period. To be fair you need to understand the broadly popular music scene of the US, UK and various European countries pre-WW1 ...or at least have some feel for the material. Accepted and acceptable playing styles were quite different and each country had a different experience of the growth of popular syncopated music throughout this period. There are rags from England and all the european countries from the early 1900s but they have their own ways. People tend to (now) look back on the ragtime era with a very odd skewed enthusiasm to my mind. American ragtime seems to have become a little over-estimated in the process. A lot of it was published in pretty rural states / counties and existed quite happily on its own without any major influence over anything else in the same way that early french rags really never influenced the English market nor was anyone really mightily bothered as there was plenty other stuff around every bit as much as there is now. What are really rare are the Welte "Mignon" American recorded rolls i.e. the wide T-100 rolls recorded in the US. It is on THOSE that you will find some interesting "popular" US-material. Fancy tracking down 13 rolls of James Europe and Ford Dabney duets? Oh yes - that's more like it! They really did exist! I have a midi of one of them, the Ernesto Nazareth piece that latterly became "My Croony Melody". Reading a roster of german-factory Welte "Mignon" recording artists is really turning and touching the pages of history far more than Ampico or Duo-Art ever will in posterity. All systems have their shortcomings and Welte is no exception but the repertoire overall excels all other comers for the crown.