I remember the first time I came across a working player piano. At first I didn’t know that it was any different from a regular piano, the doors over the keyboard which hid the secret of the piano's workings were closed, all I could see was the typical eighty-eight keys and two peddles. Then the friend of my family who owned the machine sat at the bench and began to play, and had only played a few bars when he lifted his hands, and lo and behold if the keys didn't keep playing on their own.

Of course he was still pumping merrily away on the foot pedals when he reached out and slid the doors open that had hidden the piano roll from view. I remember thinking that the apparatus reading the scroll reminded me of pictures I had seen of people reading braille. As far as I can recall there were two or three metal arms that traced a series of bumps and cuts, and they somehow were translating that into instructions the piano was able to turn into music.

I was fascinated by the machine and would have spent countless hours playing the same tune over and over again if given the opportunity, and remember being bitterly disappointed finding out that the friend of the family had disposed of the piano. Lacking any musical skill, the player piano represented an opportunity to at least feel like I was playing an instrument. So ever since, I've always been on the lookout for another to play.

Although they still make the rolls for player pianos, they have become increasingly hard to find. Their heyday was from the late 1880s to the the 1930s when millions of them were made. According to the folk at Delmark Records who have begun the process of transferring some of the old scrolls onto CD, there were two types of the scrolls made during this period. The earliest type were drawn by hand by skilled musicians, but by 1915 most of the companies had developed recording equipment that allowed a piano player to sit at a specially equipped piano and create the rolls that way.

In fact the quality of these recordings was so good they far surpassed the results achieved from using the primitive audio equipment of the day. It's because of these rolls that we have records of some performers whose work as a soloist would be lost. Jimmy Blythe was known as a great accompanist, playing with such luminaries as Ma Rainey and in small combos around the south side of Chicago. But he also recorded over two hundred piano rolls for what was first The Columbia Music Roll Company as well as under their new name of Capitol.