When people think of traditional music players, they may think of CD players and record players.

They may remember seeing phonographs in a museum. Then, of course ,you have various musical instruments that play a pre-recorded song, such as a player piano, playing music from specially perforated paper.

Unless you are really into the history of music players, you may never have heard of a roller organ or organette and the “cobs” played on them. We have one of these unique players in our collection, a Gem used by Gil Atwater of Glen. Gil and his wife Ruth ran a store and tavern called Gil’s Place just south of the Glen store. Opening in 1939, they ran the business 37 years, until retirement in 1976.

Gil Atwater was also a member of the Aitkin Community Hospital Board, the Aitkin Masonic Lodge, the Aitkin Odd Fellows and served as the Malmo Community Hall secretary from 1950-1989.

These artifacts were donated to the ACHS by Gil and Ruth Atwater’s daughter.

In the late 1880s, the Autophone Company of Ithaca, New York, began producing a line of hand-cranked roller reed organs. The early models were operated by pressure, with exposed bellows. When the company began producing vacuum-operated models, some were called simply “The Roller Organ” or “The American Music Box.”

Roller organs came in a variety of sizes and costs. One of the smallest, and thus named “organette” was the Gem. It weighed only 6.5 pounds, making it easily portable. The Gem is a 20-note suction-operated reed organ. Basically, it operates by opening and closing valves, admitting air into a series of vacuum tubes to make musical notes.

How did the valves move? 6.5-inch-long metal-pin-studded wooden cylinders that meet the hinged ends of organ valves and cause them to lift. Basically, a wooden cylinder covered with tiny spokes or “pins,” and the spokes hit the valves making them lift or open. These cylinders earned the nickname “cobs” due to their resemblance to an ear of corn with kernels covering it. “The 20-note Rollers, mass produced and pinned by machine, and priced as low as 18 cents each, ‘cost less than [...] ordinary sheet music’, and so hundreds of thousands were sold, of over 1,200 titles.”

Among the “cob” titles in this collection are America, Home Sweet Home, Battle Hymn of Freedom, When the Roll is Called Up Yonder, and Rock of Ages.

Mass produced in the 1880s and 1890s, they were considered the common man’s music box and less expensive than cylinder or disk music boxes. By the late 1890s, the phonograph had become more affordable and soon began replacing the organette in the home.

https://www.rollerorgans.com/Roller_Organ_History.htm

https://organetterepair.com/organette-history.html

Heidi Gould is the administrator of the Aitkin County Historical Society.

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