Pulling Strings: The Legacy of Melville A. Clark

2.The House That Clark Built

14 2 The House That Clark Built P I C T U R E A S M A L L S T O R A G E S H E D with a window and a working door on a back street in a small city. Inside the shed sits a young man with his tools laid out before him, tinkering with a musical instrument that resembles a square piano. He calls it a melodeon. The young man was George Waldo Clark, who went from being a tinkerer in a shed to the founder of a large musical enterprise that still exists today in upstate New York. At the age of seventeen, George was working on a farm in Jamesville , New York, ten miles south of Syracuse, New York. He was, however , a fine harp and zither player, having played harp with the Cal Wagner Minstrels.1 His father, a school principal in Marathon, New York, was also a fine harpist. In the 1850s George was dividing his time between farm chores and following his secret ambition: to invent and repair musical instruments. He combed the countryside in search of old, broken-down musical instruments to mend and rebuild. In the fall of 1858 George Clark left the farm with ten dollars in his pocket and walked to Syracuse to save the price of a rig. Unable to find work as an itinerant instrument repairman, a few months later in 1859 he opened the Clark Music Repair Shop.2 It was a humble beginning in a small, obscure storeroom on East Genesee Street, near the Hills Building, which stood on the former site of the Barton Opera House, in the vicinity of the State Tower Building. He began in a small way to repair musical instruments and to sell square pianos and organs. In 1860 he started building melodeons, sometimes referred to as reed organs, which were common in churches and homes in the late 1800s.3 The melodeon’s tone comes from one or The House That Clark Built | 15 more series of different-size reeds like the ones in an accordion or harmonica . Pressurized air, powered by the player pumping up and down on two pedals, passes over the reeds, producing the sound. In the early 1860s the A. C. Chase Organ and Melodeon Company , located at South Salina and Fayette streets (known then as the Pike Block), hired Clark as one of their craftsmen.4 On his own he began to experiment with ways of improving the melodeon’s tonal quality as well as its all-around appearance, which tinkering caused him to lose his job. However, six months later Chase requested that George return at twice the salary, and, after the Civil War, Chase also hired George’s brother Melville because “he had not been able in all America to find men to do such fine reed voicing.” Together the brothers embarked on a program of tedious experimentation, tackling and solving many baffling challenges. Shortage of adequate tools and an almost complete lack of sufficient parts were two of their biggest problems. During the course of their work, they were successful in bending and shaping the reeds in a certain manner to produce an entirely different tone. This solution led to the first reed organ stop, a boon to the entire organ-manufacturing industry.5 In 1884 brother Melville teamed with Hampton L. Story in Chicago to become organ and piano manufacturers under the name of Story and Clark.6 Melville continued to experiment and tinker with keyboard instruments. In 1901 he produced his first Apollo player piano, securing the patent in 1905. Seven years later, in 1912, he produced the first marking piano, which recorded live performances. The unusual recording of the machine could produce accurately every shade of expression and mannerism, preserving the tempo of the artist with every change as faithfully as phonograph records reproduce instrumental or vocal music.7 Meanwhile, in Syracuse, George Clark moved his fledgling business , now called the G. W. Clark Music Company, to 84 South Salina Street (later renumbered 352 South Salina Street). It was a little store, not much bigger than a storeroom, but it was located on the major thoroughfare of the growing city. Here he shared a storefront with the Krause Jewelry and Watch Repair Company. 16 | Pulling Strings Then came the Civil War. His son Melville A. Clark reminisced: Father often related...