Roll On, Imperial

One of the most magniloquently named organizations on earth, Imperial Industrial Corp., was rolling steadily forward last week. Imperial Industrial Corp. belches no great plume of smoke over the industrial landscape; it is, simply, all that is left of the U.S. pianola roll business. But Imperial is a complete monopoly and it is enjoying a small boom, largely produced by A.F. of M. Boss James Caesar Petrillo's ban on phonograph recording (TIME, June 22).

Imperial Industrial Corp., under its portly, bespectacled President Max Kortlander, occupies the third floor of a rambling brick factory in the upper fringes of The Bronx. It seldom advertises, does much of its retailing through big concerns like Sears, Roebuck and Manhattan's R. H. Macy & Co. Its customers are mostly U.S. farm families. To this small but steady market, Imperial sells approximately half a million pianola rolls a year. Biggest current sellers: When the Lights Go on Again, Moonlight Becomes You, The Beer Barrel Polka, Let Me Call You Sweetheart, Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life, The Star-Spangled Banner.

President Kortlander has about 25 employes. One is J. Lawrence Cook, a dignified, 43-year-old Negro inherited from the company's once-famed predecessor, the Q.R.S.* Music Company. J. Lawrence Cook is a nearly indispensable man. Thereby hangs a tale and a technique.

In the heyday of 1923, when 197,252 pianolas (more than 50% of all the pianos sold in the U.S.) were sold in a single year, the pianola industry hired the greatest pianists, such as Paderewski, to record their performances on perforated paper. It also hired such early jazzers as J. Lawrence Cook and Harlem's historic James P. Johnson. But as the pianola gave ground to the phonograph, the pianola industry could no longer afford to pay for personal recordings.

Most of the pianola artists moved on to greener pastures. But J. Lawrence Cook stayed. He continued to make his own rolls, also produced rolls that accurately ghosted the performances of other jazz improvisers. He did this by listening to their phonograph records, carefully transcribing what he heard into a musical score, then playing his score on Imperial's perforating machine. Today Imperial issues pianola rolls by such jazz artists as Fats Waller, Ted Baxter and Pete Mendoza. All are ghosted by J. Lawrence Cook.

Cook was born in Athens, Tenn., where the Negro J. L. Cook High School bears the name of his father, a Presbyterian minister. As a boy he learned the clarinet and piano. He never made the big time as a jazz pianist. But as a good "paper man" (i.e., a musician who can read, write and arrange music) he got a job with a Harlem music publisher, later with Q.R.S. in The Bronx. He has made over 20,000 arrangements for pianola rolls.

Today, Cook spends his days with Imperial, his evenings earning a little extra cash as a clerk in the post office near Grand Central Station. His 19-year-old son, Jean Lawrence, studies medicine at Columbia University, his 17-year-old daughter, Annizella, takes a voice course at the Juilliard School of Music. Cook has found time to complete a course in short-story writing, also contributes a monthly column to the International Musician (official organ of the American Federation of Musicians) on jazz piano technique.

* The original meaning of the letters lost, Q.R.S. executives explained that they meant "Quality, Real Service."

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