Don MacDonald knows his work won't last. But, he said, it's a natural part of the old-world enchantment that keeps him doing it.
MacDonald restores player pianos and "nickelodeons," the nickel-operated music machines that enlivened dance halls and speakeasies in the 1920s. He revives their unique sound for another few years.
The workshop at his home in Auburndale is filled with organized drifts of small parts, wood pieces, wire - and nickels to start the machines.
"I sometimes wish these machines could talk. The things they'd say," MacDonald said. "It's our musical history."
He gestured to a nickelodeon in his workshop that he's restoring for a friend. It survived a house fire and a burning rebar falling against the back. He's refinished the cabinet that houses the tambourine, triangle and xylophone, but he left a charred mark on the back for character.
Except for some work on the piano key mechanisms, MacDonald is almost done returning this machine to working order. It plays jaunty tunes from the 1920s with titles such as "You're the Cream in My Coffee" and "Evening Star."
"It's been sleeping for 70 years," MacDonald said.
This machine, like the other nickelodeons MacDonald owns, can "read" music. It unwinds rolls of paper dotted with small holes, and the holes trigger bellows and levers that play the instruments in the cabinet.
But every time he plays the machines, the rolls seem to disintegrate a little more. The paper is yellowed and brittle, and the edges of some rolls have been taped. MacDonald said it's likely the papers are the only recordings left of once-commonplace melodies from the 1910s and 1920s.
"A lot of these songs are going to be gone," he said. "This is a sound that will be lost."
Email
Facebook
Google
Twitter
Favorites
More
Advertisement
Advertisement