Playing an old tune
A jukebox attachment from the 1940s made by the Chicago Coin Co. at DeBence Antique Music World in Franklin
Prescott Greene, executive director of DeBence Antique Music World, plays an Aeolian Orchestrelle pump organ from 1899.
Prescott Greene shows off one of the many vintage music machines at DeBence Antique Music World.
A Violano Virtuoso, from 1911, at DeBence Antique Music World, was declared one of the greatest inventions of that decade by President William Howard Taft.
Prescott Greene, executive director of DeBence Antique Music World, stands alongside a Wurlitzer prototype band organ, the only one that was made. It is believed to have once been at Cabana Beach Park in Hendersonville.
Ed Bottegal, a volunteer at DeBence Antique Music World, does some repair work on one of the many items owned by the museum in Venango County.
A “magician” attached to one of the vintage music machines at DeBence Antique Music World
The exterior of DeBence Antique Music World in Franklin. The museum houses vintage devices used to listen to and make music from the 19th century through roughly the middle of the 20th century.
FRANKLIN – People were slimmer 100 years ago, and there are many reasons why.
They toiled at strenuous jobs in fields and factories that made the calories melt away. They heedlessly smoked appetite-suppressing cigarettes. Food was neither as abundant nor as cheap as it is today.
And when they played a pump organ like the Aeolian Orchestrelle from 1899, they got one serious, sweaty workout.
After vigorously pressing down its foot pedals so it blasts out a rendition of “Onward, Christian Soldiers” at a steady, marching-band tempo, you feel like you’ve been on a StairMaster and start thinking that these groaning contraptions should be in fitness centers, not museums.
“This is one of the earliest organs in the music business,” said Prescott Greene, as he explained its workings. “The manufacturer still exists today.”
Greene is the executive director of DeBence Antique Music World, which sits at the center of Franklin, a picturesque borough located in Venango County, about 100 miles north of Washington. With Nipper, the old RCA dog, peering into a gramophone in an upstairs window that looms over Liberty Street, the museum is a wonderland for vintage-music enthusiasts – it contains close to 300 different objects, with examples of the earliest known music boxes from the 1850s, going up to mechanical music machines that rolled out of factories through the middle part of the last century.
DeBence Antique Music World grew out of a private collection maintained over several decades by Jake and Elizabeth DeBence, farmers in Venango County who snapped up ancient Edison phonographs, carousel organs and calliopes whenever and wherever they could find them, then stashed them in their barn, along with a sprawling selection of Tiffany-style lamps. Occasionally, they would show off their treasures to people they took a shine to, and they displayed other items in a general store they operated.
Jake DeBence “was kind of a character,” Greene explained. “If he liked you, he would take you on a tour. If he didn’t like you, you wouldn’t get a tour.”
The DeBences had no children, and when Jake died in 1992, Elizabeth decided it was time to sell the collection, with the proviso that it not be split up and cast to the four winds. From that, DeBence Antique Music World was born, after Venango County residents raised more than $1 million in 1994. It has been housed within a former G.C. Murphy store since then, and draws about 3,000 visitors every year. It has a staff of one paid employee and more than 30 volunteers, and for them it’s a labor of love.
“It brings back a lot of memories,” said Louise Aaron, one of the volunteers.
It’s open every day except Monday, in the afternoons, from April to October, and by appointment during the cold-weather months. They’ve received visitors from as far afield as Austrlia and Europe and many parts of North America. It’s also become a popular site for bus trips made by both senior citizens and elementary school students.
Considering that they’ve grown up in an age where music is doled out in clicks and bytes, “It’s interesting to see the kids react to this,” Greene said. “They’ve never seen anything like it.” The oldest item in the collection is a Swiss Mandoline Basse music box from 1850. It boasts metal bumblebees that strike bells, and must have been a revelation to the people who owned it or came in contact with it – it was almost certainly the first time they heard music when it was not being created by them, or by someone within earshot. Within years, the industry for mechanical and pre-recorded music expanded, and eventually came to include the gramophone after it was created by Thomas Edison in 1877. By the later part of the 1800s, player pianos, with their long rolls of paper with holes punched in them, were mainstays in saloons and were sometimes to be found in the parlors of the well-to-do.
Then there were the behemoths that churned out music at public events or recreation facilities. DeBence Antique Music World has a Wurlitzer prototype band organ from the 1920s, but it was never fully put into production. It can play in every key and is said to have once been at Cabana Beach Park near Hendersonville. Visitors can go behind the organ and see the tangle of mechanical parts and clattering gizmos.
It may not have been their explicit intention, but the DeBences were fulfilling an important curatorial mission through their long-running obsession with old-school music machines. Curators from the Smithsonian Institution have paid a visit to the museum, and while they were impressed with the extent of its holdings, they objected to one crucial aspect of the museum’s operations – playing the machines for visitors. Greene explained that the curators were displeased that the museum actually operated the items, suggesting instead that they mothball them in a strictly climate-controlled environment. If they don’t occasionally fire up the machines, Greene counters, the fragile parts inside will dry up and crumble.
He explained, “What do you do when you do that? You guarantee it doesn’t work. What we’re here for is to provide an authentic experience.” In addition, the museum does offer a number of recordings on compact disc of the machines, which preserve their sound in all their glory.
Another collector not affiliated with the Smithsonian offered more than $200,000 for the museum’s Berry-Wood A.O.W. Orchestrion, a nickelodeon that plays 10 instruments on a paper roll and is the last one that is still functioning. The offer was turned down. Parting with the machine would have violated one of the museum’s central tenets, which is keeping the collection intact. DeBence Antique Music World houses a handful of other rarities, including an Artizan Air-Calio Calliope, of which only three were known to be manufactured, and a Violano Virtuoso, which uses a paper roll to play both a violin and piano. One like it was aboard the Titanic when it went down in 1912 and, the year before, President William Howard Taft proclaimed it one of the eight greatest inventions of the decade.
Greene, who has an engineering background, and a dedicated crew of volunteers who also have some mechanical acumen, work to keep the machines in functioning condition. They strive to include original parts when they are available, but will include new, nonvintage parts if they are necessary to make the machines function, or make them work better.
“I’m amazed at what (the inventors of the machines) did,” Greene admitted. “They did what they thought was right, and fooled around with it until it worked.”