100 year old piano, or close to it

[Conrad Hoffsommer]

At 04:56 1/15/2006, you wrote:
>pianotune05 wrote:
>
>>I hear a 68 year old piano on an old recording of a Chicago Blues jazz 
>>boogie woogie player, Albert Ammons.  The piano sounded out of tune.
>>I often comment to my wife how some pianos sound out of tune on 
>>recordings, even in some of the 50s and 60s oldies I 've noticed out of 
>>tuneness in their pianos as I listened.
>>Marshall
>
>    Many many records have out of tune pianos on them, especially in jazz 
> and blues recordings, and some country-western.  I have recordings by the 
> greats in those fields and the pianos are out of tune, even for the likes 
> of Duke Ellington, Art Tatum, Horace Silver, Fats Waller, Otis Spann, et 
> al., ad nauseam.   A lot of them are live recordings in clubs where the 
> club owner wouldn't spring for a piano tuner,  especially for
>"low-down" music like blues and jazz, and especially if the artist was 
>black.  But some are in recording studios.  If it wasn't "classical," a 
>lot of times they wouldn't bother to tune the piano.
>    Things became a little better, but only a little, as jazz began to get 
> some respect.  And probably the artists started insisting on having an 
> in-tune piano, at least if they had the clout to do so.  But even in the 
> late 70's, I saw Keith Jarrett at the renowned Village Vanguard in New 
> York and Keith had to come in early with his own tuning hammer to touch 
> up the tuning because the cheap-ass owner wouldn't pay to have it done.
>    It's not the recording -- the pianos sound out of tune because they 
> ARE out of tune.    --David Nereson, RPT
>


Hence the expression, "close enough for jazz."...

A different tack is taken here.  The jazz orch director is the only 
director/artiste/faculty person who mentions the piano tuner in the program 
notes.

anon