John Wolff's Web Museum "Broadway" Pianola Roll Catalogue

Introduction.

The table following presents a partial catalogue of 88-note Pianola rolls manufactured in Melbourne, Australia by The Anglo-American Player Roll Company. Anglo-American was founded in 1921 by pianist and orchestra-leader Mr. Len Luscombe (b.1893). Following his death in 1957, the business was acquired by the Mastertouch piano roll company in Sydney. In its 36 years of operation Luscombe's company produced about 2500 titles on the Broadway label, and a smaller number of Regal, Monarch, and Dahlmont rolls. (Dahlmont was a house brand of The Myer Emporium, a major Melbourne department store). The illustration above shows the standard label designs for each type of roll.

Anglo-American was a fairly small operation. Most of the musical arrangements were prepared and played by Luscombe himself, with his assistant Charles Urquhart operating the perforating machinery and producing the physical rolls. Luscombe used many pseudonyms for artists on the roll labels - Dan Rawlings, Art Kaplan, Earl Lester, and Lennard Earl are all Len Luscombe. A number of rolls were also produced from American masters provided through an arrangement with the machinery suppliers, and during the 1930s these included performances by top American artists such as Max Kortlander and J. Lawrence Cook. Luscombe adapted well to the changing musical tastes of the times, from the "Roaring 20s", through the Great Depression and the war years, to the beginnings of rock-and-roll in the 1950s. His performances are still highly regarded today.

Unfortunately when the Broadway master library was transferred to Mastertouch in 1957 there were many gaps and inconsistencies in the catalogue. In 1988 Mr. Bill Denham completed an extensive review of the Broadway library and produced a "Reference Catalogue" containing the numbers and titles (only) of all known rolls. Despite his considerable efforts, there are still about 200 of the consecutive numbers for which no rolls or titles have ever been located.

The table following aims to complement Bill Denham's work by presenting the full details (rather than just number and title) from the labels of existing Broadway rolls, and to make this data generally available on-line. The table was commenced in about 1987 with contents transcribed by hand from the Broadway rolls in my own collection. It has since been expanded with data from other rolls that I have acquired or encountered elsewhere, and from photographs contributed by visitors to this site. There are currently over 1400 titles listed, or over half (56%) of the total Broadway production.

YOU can help to complete this table!

If you own Broadway, Regal, Monarch, or Dahlmont rolls, or come across them elsewhere, could you please stack them together (no more than 6 at a time) and take a phone photo of the box labels? Please make sure that the photo is clear enough to read the fine print on the labels (see example), then email it to me via the Enquiry and Feedback Form. Your assistance will be greatly appreciated.

Explanation of table columns.

Rolls are listed in numerical order. Broadway allocated groups of numbers to different categories of music, and numbered the issues sequentially within each group.

1000, 2000	Popular "Word Rolls" with red-bordered labels. These numbers were all used by about 1950, so the series continued at 6000. Numbers in the 2000 series were also used for occasional issues of green-label "Music Rolls" of mostly classical pieces. These are listed separately at the end of the main 2000 series.
3000	Ballads and hymns - about 60 titles.
4000	Long-play show selections - only 8 known.
5000	Medleys - about 20.
6000	Continued from 2000 series, 1950-1957 - about 220 titles.
7000	Marches - "Music Rolls", green labels, without words - about 40.
8000	Other "Music Rolls", green labels, without words - about 150.
Other	Miscellaneous rolls with irregular numbers.

A blank field in the table indicates that no information is provided on the label.
Question marks indicate that information may be present, but is hidden, damaged, or illegible.

The columns are presented exactly as on the labels, except for Series, Size, Pub(lished), Arr(anged), and Notes.

Some brief statistics.

This catalogue is a "work in progress" and is far from complete. As of December 2024 there were about 1400 Broadway titles listed in the table below, or about 56% of the total production. The list is biased somewhat towards the later years, due to the relative scarcity of original rolls from the 1920s. The percentages following may change slightly as further data becomes available.

Performers. 712 of the 1400 performances are credited to Len Luscombe alone, and a further 218 to names that were pseudonyms for Luscombe (mostly Earl Lester, Dan Rawlings, and Art Kaplan). Another 107 are credited to Luscombe in combination with other artists, most of whom were pseudonyms for Luscombe himself. Luscombe is assumed to be the performer of another 104 titles (mostly from the mid-1940s) which have no "Played by ..." credit on the label. Imported American master rolls contributed 43 performances by J. Lawrence Cook and 20 by his pseudonym Walter Redding, and another 34 by Max Kortlander (a real person). About 40 other performers are represented in fairly small numbers, mostly 1 or 2 rolls each, and usually from imported masters. It is clear that Luscombe himself played well over 80% of all the rolls listed.

Musical styles. There are 80 different musical styles listed on the labels of these 1400 rolls, most played by Luscombe himself. Over half (56%) of the rolls are listed as Foxtrots, 14% as Waltzes, 9% as Onesteps, and 3% as Marches. The other 18% include everything from classical pieces to the beginnings of rock-and-roll.

Composers. There are 920 individual names listed in the Composer column, in about 1000 different "words and music" combinations. Many composers appear with many different lyricists, and vice versa. 67% of the individuals and 86% of the combinations appear only once. The individuals with the most frequent credits are Irving Berlin, Joe Burke, Herb Brown, Mack Gordon, and Walter Donaldson. Four of the top five "words and music" combinations were actually written by individuals: Berlin, Donaldson, DeSylva-Brown-Henderson, Merrill, and Australia's own Jack O'Hagan (a contemporary of Luscombe, also from the Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy).

Detailed counts of performers, styles, and composers on these 1400 rolls can be downloaded in the spreadsheet attached.

Resources for further information.

• A short biography of Len Luscombe, written by Barclay Wright of Mastertouch, can be found on-line in the Australian Dictionary of Biography.
  
  
• Steve Rattle has produced a hard-copy catalogue of known Broadway rolls, with additional biographical notes and photographs of the Anglo-American operation. Please use the Enquiry and Feedback Form for further details.