ABSTRACT
Beginning about 1916, Herman Winterho of the Leedy Manufacturing Company in Indianapolis experimented o and on with a variety of motor-mechanical arrangements in his quest for a vox humana or tremolo eect from the bars of a three-octave f-f3 steel marimba, a novelty vaudeville instrument with thin steel tone bars mounted to the keybed on tapered felt strips. He succeeded in 1922 by mounting a motor on the frame at the narrow end beneath the bars to drive dual shas tted with metal discs centered in the tops of each resonator tube. As the discs (pulsators) revolved in the resonator columns under sounding bars, a tonal phase shi was created resembling a vibrato.4 A vaudeville headliner, Signor Friscoe (Louis Frank Chiha), was intrigued by the unique sound and in 1924 recorded “Aloha ’Oe” and “Gypsy Love Song” on the instrument (then described as a “metal marimba”) for the Edison label.5 e novel
recording proved popular on radio, then in its infancy and desperate for musical variety. Interest in the new sound was soon aroused among musicians. George H. Way, Leedy sales and advertising manager, had earlier coined the name vibraphone, which was adopted in 1924 for the rst promotional literature on the instrument. About twenty-ve of the original-design Leedy vibraphones had been produced (of which several were exported to Europe) when manufacture was halted in the fall of 1927.6
e previous April, in Chicago, the vibraharp had been introduced by J.C. Deagan, Inc., a rm then in its fortyseventh year of development and manufacture of mallet instruments and organ percussions and the originator of the steel marimba many years earlier.7 e Deagan vibraharp was developed by chief engineer Henry J. Schluter, who conceived the design as an entirely new mallet instrument, not a modication of an existing design. He drew upon his experience with such earlier Deagan devices as aluminum-bar song bells and the large organ vibratoharp for his rst design,8 which was placed into production as the now-famous Model 145. is model, with its cord-suspended, half-inch-thick, graduated-width, tempered aluminum tone bars with harmonic tuning, had a pedal-operated damper and adjustable vibrato speed. Introduction of the three-octave f-f3 Model 145 rmly established the Deagan vibraharp as the signicant new musical instrument, which became the basic design concept for all future instruments of this type. Soon aer ace Chicago drummer Roy C. Knapp, with the Chicago Little Symphony, demonstrated the expressive potential of the vibraharp in a solo arrangement of “Mother Machree” on radio station WLS in the early fall of 1927,9 it became
a favorite instrumental voice for many bandleaders and featured drummers. Two more compact and portable Deagan vibraharp models were developed and introduced by 192910 to satisfy the increasing demand and performer needs of pit drummers and students.
