Just reading about the passing of Henry Robert Heller, former CEO of Aeolian- American before all assets were sold, according to the article in The Music Trades, The family sold the company to Sears during the depression and at the close of WW II repurchased the company back from Sears and started expanding it into the largest piano company in America.. I would assume that Winter made the Beckwith pianos for Sears since the article says The Winter piano Co. to Sears . I did not know the Sears connection before this. When I began my career with Aeolian Co. of MO in 1962, one of the piano we sold was a Bradbury spinet , model H, which I assume stood for Heller. Along the same lines, Yamaha Artist services is located in the building that the Aeolian Co built in 1926 and in just a few years had to sell the building because of the depression. They built it to showcase their reproducing pianos, and then cheap radios came along and changed everything. timing timing timing James Grebe Piano-Forte Tuning & Repair Artisan of Wood WWW.JamesGrebe.com 1526 Raspberry Lane Arnold, MO 63010 pianoman@accessus.net
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