Inventing Entertainment

With remarkable economy, Brian Dolan takes us on a journey into a neglected but important corner of American cultural history, the player piano. Far more than a novelty, this instrument remade the entire piano industry in its image, forming a fascinating link between the Victorian piano-in-the-parlor and the modern era of mechanical reproduction. Dolan analyzes the player piano from a variety of angles, bringing to life the rich, human dimensions of the culture in which it developed and thrived. -- David Suisman, University of Delaware
A fun read with some interesting stories. The author writes in an easygoing style and the book can be a quick read. Anyone who owns a player piano will surely want this in his or her collection. -- Steve Ramm * Amazon.Com Review, July 1, 2009 *
The book is an absolutely delightful read that chronicles the author's travels in the West-coast world of player piano connoisseurs, collectors, aficionados, fans, museums of mechanical instruments, and sepia-toned memories as much as it illuminates the history of the invention. Dolan writes with all the fascination of a man in a museum filled with previously unseen masterpieces by his favorite artist. Much of the book gracefully oscillates between an ethnography of modern player piano culture, which roves through the houses of collectors, museums, and the National Association of Music Merchants convention, and a history of the growth, development, and demise of the industry. The descriptions and narratives are spotted with colorful figures, visionaries, and the myriad musicians who were part of player piano culture. While this book may seem from the outset to be a niche book, it is much more than just a quirky book about a side-slice of Americana. It artfully jumps genres, is a consistently smooth read, and presents thoughtful theoretical queries about the history of technology and socio-auditory culture. * Southwest Journal Of Cultures Online, Summer Post 2, July 2009 *
In this fascinating book Brian Dolan shows that the player piano was the iPod of the early twentieth century. The piano rolls—an early form of digital storage—sold in the millions and transformed popular music and Tin Pan Alley paving the way for the arrival of radio, the phonograph, and the juke box. Based on original research and interviews with collectors, Dolan traces the practices of the hidden musicians who made this first form of recordable music and shows how artists likes Fats Waller first learnt their trade listening to the player piano before themselves adopting a unique style suitable to the new medium. This is a book for music lovers and scholars alike. -- Trevor Pinch, Goldwin Smith Professor of Science and Technology Studies, Cornell University