"Womens Steinway"

[Les Smith]

On Sun, 1 Feb 1998, ralph m martin wrote:

> Hi Les
> How could I forget!! ...but I really liked the sound of the darn things.
> I have very distinct memories of listening to the late Franky Carle
> (Carlone) from Pawtucket, R.I and the late Carmen Cavallero. With the
> older voicing of pianos, they never seemed to be bordering on
> brassy....even with the triple octave Cavallero style repleat with ornate
> fills in the upper registers. 

Hi, again, Ralph; I agree with you about the difference in the sound
between now and then, and I've been enjoying Franky and Carmen and their 
piano stylings for a LONG time. However, I have to point out that not all
pianos back then sounded as good as their's did. The brilliant technician
Jack Fina played one of worst sounding pianos I've ever heard recorded.
It sounded like a really out-of-tune Brambach on which someone had put
thumbtacks into the hammers. Yet his technique was such that when he
finished playing the likes of "Bumble Boogie", they must have had to
call in a fire truck afterwards to hose down the piano to cool it off!
His tempo sounds like a 33rpm recording being played at 45! Incredible.
Heck, Ralph, you got me going. I think I'm going to pull out some of
those old recordings tonight and see if those guys were really as good as
we remember them to be. Maybe we just like them because they're not
younger than us, like everyone else seems to be, huh? :) 

All the best,

Les Smith