Automation replacing mandolins?
In the early 20th century, New York saloon owners were trying to cut expenses by eliminating musicians (is there anything new under the sun?). "After 1911, more and more saloon owners and managers bought electric pianos fitted with coin-slot attachments and placed them in their backrooms. And not only pianos, for they also installed slot harps, slot organs, player pianos with mandolin attachments, and at last one 'German band orchestrion'." Of course the customers paid directly for this music; one proprietor said that the slot instrument paid his rent.
Information and quote from:
Cockrell, Dale. Everybody's Doin' It: Sex Music, and Dance in New York, 1840-1917. NY & London: W.W.Norton, 2019, p. 192.
Robert Johnson's mother, describing blues musicians:
"I never did have no trouble with him until he got big enough to be round with bigger boys and off from home. Then he used to follow all these harp blowers, mandoleen (sic) and guitar players."
Lomax, Alan, The Land where The Blues Began, NY: Pantheon, 1993, p.14.
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