About 12 years ago, while I was writing my dissertation, I purchased two home-recorded seven-inch lacquer discs on eBay (four sides in total), featuring a Henry L. Chelt on keyboard. I listened to the harpsichord side briefly when they arrived, but didn’t quite know how to incorporate it into my dissertation. So, I photographed the label for my site and put the discs away to rest.
Recently, I had the opportunity to have it transferred by the great and esteemed engineer Seth B. Winner, along with the other three sides that came with it. I’ve found the set of recordings useful for thinking about the 1940s-1950s middle-class American milieu occupied by Henry L. Chelt, as well as what was conjured for him by the term “harpsichord.”
I know nothing about Chelt except that there is mention of a Henry L. Chelt Trio in the December 27, 1959 issue of the Santa Cruz Sentinel as playing on the radio station KSCO. Based on the discs, I can also sense his musical points of reference as Classical piano repertoire, boogie, and pop. Chelt’s performance practice tells us that he was likely trained as a Classical pianist. (Scoff as one might at the irregularities in his performance of Chopin’s Polonaise Op. 53, the fact is, the piece is damned hard, he gets the left hand chords right and has some facility with the right hand octaves, too). His performance of Mozart’s “Turkish” Rondo (the disc side labeled “Harpsichord”) shows less evidence of Chelt’s pianistic skill. Likely, he was playing the piece from distant memory, based on chord changes and ornaments that he recalls as being the piece’s essence. For Chelt, the purpose of that disc side seems to have been to demonstrate the “harpsichord” sound on his piano, an effect he seems to have achieved with tacks, or some other alteration to the piano’s hammers.
