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12  THE VOICE

Kansas City's Music and Record House

Kansas City can boast of the best equipped and most complete music and record houses west of the Mississippi River, if not in the United States. The house carries pianos, Player Pianos, Graphophones, Graphonolas, Stringed, Reed and Wind instruments. It also carries a complete stock of all standard records, specializing in blues and jazz, to many of which it holds exclusive right. Besides all this it operates a work shop in which any instrument can be repaired, rebuilt or repolished. 

Founded in 1920

Mr. Winston Holmes, the proprietor and founder, is an expert piano tuner and polisher. For more than twenty-five years he was employed in some of the best houses in Philadelphia, Chicago and Kansas City, as an expert in his line.

In April 1920, Mr. Holmes decided to open a repair shop for himself and carry a stock of records and player piano rolls as a side line. The venture proved a success and grew rapidly from the start. About that time the Black Swan Record was being marketed by Harry Pace of New York. After many letters and a trip East, Mr. Holmes secured the exclusive right for the Kansas City territory. A little later he secured the exclusive right of the Okeh Record which he controls to date and is the only successful dealer in Kansas City which that record ever had.

Discovers and Develops Talent

Not content with this, Mr. Holmes was constantly on the alert for other opportunities to put his business to the front. There was an abundance of local talent around Kansas City going abegging. A circumstance of which he was quick to take advantage. Possessing considerable musical talent himself, he discovered and developed Trixie Smith sent her to New York with introductory letter to the Paramount Record Company. Today she is the leading Paramount Star, having been presented a world honor silver and gold cup by Mr. Vernon Castle in a contest of which Al Jolson, famous blackfaced comedian was one of the Judges. Lota Butter Ball Beaman, famous Paramount Record artist, 

[[image - black and white photo of a well-dressed African-American man and woman]]

is another of his discoveries; Bennie Moten's Orchestra, now famous broadcaster over the Kansas City Star Radio - this entire organization together with Mrs. Ada Brown and Mary H. Bradford were taken to Chicago by Holmes for the Okeh Record people. The Pruitt Twins, Banjo and Guitar, Paramount Record artists, are also of his discovery. Another achievement to his credit is that of being the first to produce a race phonographic record when the Merit Record put out Cabbage Head Blues and City of The Dead by Sylvester and Lena Kimbrough. He is now negotiating with a couple of world record producers to place the George Lee Orchestra, another famous Kansas City aggregation on the market.

Not All Roses

In speaking of this, Mr. Holmes in a reflectant mood said: "But it has not been all roses. My first bump was from a local music house from which I secured my first record. I found a house

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APRIL, 1926      13

LITERARY DEPARTMENT
Herman Dreer, Editor

THE CALL TO BE AN APPRENTICE

If you feel that you are called to write, believe that you are also called to be an apprentice. No person is a born writer. It is a platitude to say that, if persons came into this world writing, we should worship them as divine. We have heard of persons writing at the age of two, but what sort of writing was it?

You may have a genius that will develop early like that of William Cullen Bryant who wrote the immortal "Thanatopsis," at eighteen; or a genius like that of Victor Hugo who wrote that grand novel, "Bug-Jargal" at the age of sixteen, as the answer to a challenge. Yet both of these authors had written much worthless material, or rather ephemeral material, before they produced those masterpieces. Both had within them the sense of rhythm and the appreciation of form. Both had vivid and comprehensive imaginations. Both had in bold relief the emotions of pride, love, sympathy, courage and generosity without prejudice. Both were sensitive to beauty - the beauty of landscapes, the beauty of buildings, the beauty of men, the beauty of women, the beauty of the soul, the beauty of God. These emotions, these appreciations, these imaginations, linked with the desire to have others feel as they felt were the calls that Bryant and Hugo received to write.

Their learning how to express the burdens of their souls, how to convey these elevated thoughts, hopes, and loves in a superb or elevated way was the apprenticeship through which they both passed. That is the apprenticeship thru which every writer must pass who expects to reach the hearts of this world.

If you would write, then learn how to write. Answer the call to be an apprentice. Every master carpenter has been an apprentice. Every master plumber has been an apprentice. Every master printer has been an apprentice. In short every master of a trade has had his apprenticeship. So must every aspirant to supremacy in letters have his apprenticeship.

Byron wrote many school boy exercises before acquiring the technique of a master craftsman. Robert Louis Stevenson began his literary work as an avowed imitator of Hazlitt, Lamb, Wordsworth, Montaigne, Hawthorne and Obermann, working hard to develop techinque. Lord Alfred Tennyson, the great English poet of the nineteenth century, even after having learned to write good poetry, spent twelve years perfecting his technique as a poet, during which time he published not a line. Shakespeare, the greatest writer of all time, began his literary career by reproducing old plays. The Comedy of Errors," "Titus Andronicus" "The Two Gentlemen of Verona," and "Love's Labor's Lost" are little more than free translation adapted to the Elizabethan stage. Go where you will, East or West, through antiquity to our present day, you will find every literature.. Therefore, if you are called to write, you are called to be an apprentice.

(To be continued)
The next article will be, "How To Master Technique."