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The guitar of the 1890s was either used primarily for vocal accompaniment or as a continuo instrument in mandolin and banjo orchestras of the time. Mandolins had position markers at the 10th fret. Basically, markers at the 10th fret, versus the ninth (found on a few guitars and banjos before the 1880s), was a strategy employed by guitar makers who intended to sell their instruments into the immensely popular mandolin orchestras at the time. Very likely they would also have had three dots at the fifth, seventh, and 10th frets. Probably not too many survived, but likely they were small acoustics that used with gut strings, and glued-on bridges. Very little information is known about the earliest Harmony-made guitars. In 1892, Schultz left Lyon & Healy and, with four employees, started Harmony in a loft of the Edison Building located at Washington and Market Streets in Chicago, later the site of the Civic Opera House. Knapp was bought out by a large instrument manufacturing giant, Lyon & Healy, and Schultz became foreman of the drum operation. Schultz, a mechanic, came to Chicago and got work at the Knapp Drum Company. Nobody ever played any better than he did, either.Wilhelm Schultz, founder of Harmony on left with factory worker and manager That's no surprise, seeing how he was the fellow who described his ascension in the music industry thusly: "I didn't play any better for 1,250 dollars than for 150 dollars." Which goes to show that even he considered what he did "playing," no matter how miraculous it sounded.
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Some of the titles add to the fun: "Tough Pickin'," "Guitarese," "Slippery Fingers," and "Nifty Pickin'." Smeck plays wonderfully whether the track was recorded in the '20s, '30s, or '40s. The results are imaginative and frequently wild, perfect musical miniatures with such a visual presence one might think they were landscape paintings. Exposure to jazz players such as Eddie Lang apparently inspired him to sit the guitar up straight in his lap and attack it with a plectrum, which is the same way he took on the banjo. His early pieces were pretty straight from the Hawaiian style, Smeck tinkering energetically around the edges of what might be acceptable to the "aloha" crowd while establishing his mastery of the genre's traditions. He used these techniques in the course of so-called "normal" music, but the fact that it is neither atonal nor really weird shouldn't make one think it isn't exciting or interesting to listen to. Listeners might be used to these types of techniques from avant-garde music, but the real innovators in this type of playing were musicians such as Smeck. He created sounds behind the bridge and nut, and on the body of the instrument as well. Smeck was a technical genius of stringed instruments and also an explorer. Crumb just adds to the class of the whole affair. "Ukulele Bounce" sounds like a man playing a ukulele, and very well at that, but creates more of a historical impact as one realizes recordings from nearly a quarter of a century are represented on this collection. His banjo work is more like a reordering of molecules.
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With Roy Smeck, what he does on Hawaiian guitar or just plain old regular guitar is more like a consecration. Sure, with most musicians it can be called "playing" an instrument. The only problem with this album is the use of the word "play" in the title.