How to Sell a Musical Instrument [by Amy Allara]

When I recently returned to my stack of Etude magazines, I came across the following:

 

The first ad is titled “Sister Susie and the Steno’ Job” and I assure you that I am quoting it word for word and as it appears in terms of caps, quotation marks and italics.  I could not invent this:

 

“SHE FINISHED HIGH SCHOOL, with honors!  Then Business College gave her a “training” in six months and she started out to beat typewriters for a living.

 

Fine! But Susie was temperamental.  Grinding drudgery might do for the type of girl whose only aim is an early marriage.  For Susie it was killing.  So Sister Susie took up the Saxophone.”

 

Now Susie was just an average girl.  You could never call her gifted or talented.  But within a week she was playing tunes and in six months she could handle her Saxophone like a veteran. 

 

Then things happened.  First, a little club orchestra.  Next, a local sextette.  Then some “home town” entertainment;--a sharp-eyed scout from a well-known booking office—a contract—and little Miss Susie hit the “big time” vaudeville, drawing down as much cash weekly as the salaries of half a dozen stenographers.

 

You Might Be a Star, Too…”

 

   

 It goes on to inform the reader how they can order a Buescher band and orchestra instrument and get started on their bright future.  If only I hadn’t gotten rid of that clarinet and saxophone of mine—instruments I played in school bands that only the ears of proud parents could tolerate.  I wonder, was Susie a real person?

 

 

The second find was an ad for pianos, appealing to a parent’s wish to give their daughter the best life and future possible.  And all simply by way of purchasing a piano.

 

 “Your little girl…for her you have dreamed and planned as you have watched her unfold…to her you are giving every opportunity that lies in your power to give. In every child…boy or girl…there runs and instinctive urge to musical self-expression.  Give your child the opportunity to develop this inborn desire through the piano, the natural, logical musical instrument.

 

Of all the accomplishments that enhance the loveliness of womanhood the ability to play the piano is perhaps the finest.  Give your daughter the means to acquire this accomplishment.  What worlds she’ll conquer!”

 

It’s a lovely sentiment—even if a little dramatic and culturally outdated.  And it left me wondering what it is that I have conquered.  My parents made sure I had a piano and years of lessons—first an old, less than perfect green piano and then an Otto Altenburg upright when I was 10.  I quit lessons at 15 and didn’t exactly go on to set the world on fire as a concert pianist. 

 

Yes, I am making fun, of both the ad, and of myself, but you just don’t see ads like this anymore, anywhere.  And in 1928 life was a bit different.  No computer, no Facebook, no reality television, no cell phones—and one has to wonder if there are parents out there right now who might like to read this ad, and consider, at least in part, what it has to say. A piano certainly might offer more opportunities for self-development than a brand-new bright pink iPhone.  Let’s hope. I would definitely think about trading a few of my electronic devices to get back that old green piano of mine.

 

Comments

[Laura Orem]

I have some old "Etudes" - they are a lot of fun to look through! It is fascinating how musical training was viewed as a necessary accomplishment for a fulfilled life, too, rather than as an extracurricular activity, as it too often is seen now.

And if Susie wasn't real, she ought to have been! Go, Susie!

[Amy Allara]

And aren't some of the covers great? Unfortunately, my scanner wasn't big enough to capture the full cover of the one I posted today...

[jsc]

Dear Amy--

A lovely post. You might like these links, to Robert Pinsky's poem, "The Green Piano," http://www.ibiblio.org/ipa/poems/pinsky/the_green_piano.php,

and to a poem that probably, partly inspired it, D.H. Lawrence's "Piano,"
http://homepages.wmich.edu/~cooneys/poems/dhl.piano.html,

yours in the common pursuit,

jsc

[Amy Allara]

Thanks very much--I look forward to checking out the links...