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I thought you might like to know about another facet of me and my business experience. I have three passions in my life. 1 is helping people build their wealth, 2 is helping people build their body or build their wellness/level of health and 3 is my favorite genre of music. This last item is what I want to address here today. I grew up just ga-ga for piano music. Well it gets worse…I loved Razza-Ma-Tazz, honky tonk, and ragtime piano music. I learned later that ragtime is actually a classical music form designed by Scott Joplin. But I also love what was popular music of the ragtime era, most of which did not follow the classical form of actual ragtime but still has that raggedy rhythm found in ragtime and early jazz.

So the musical niche that I found most easily floated my boat was the 1890’s, the 1900’s the teens, and twenties popular music as heard on player piano rolls. This same music was also found on Nickelodeons, or coin operated player pianos (the earliest juke boxes) as well as the larger orchestrions and carousel organs which were found in larger restaurants, dance halls and at fairgrounds next to a carousel. So now you KNOW how weird I am. But you should know why I love this stuff—-

It is the happiest music in the world.

If you are down or blue, you don’t need a prozac, just listen to a nickelodeon play a happy tune. Here is a video of one of the instruments I recently restored all the pneumatic playing systems on. It is a miniature orchestrion. That term refers to a mechanically played orchestra and some of them got quite large and played 8 or 10 different instruments. This little Seeburg KT plays a small piano, flute pipes like those found in a pipe organ, as well as a tambourine, triangle, and castanets. There are extra holes in this special G-roll that play those extra instruments beyond what a home style player piano would do.