Do you remember last year’s epic story about our friend James Waterbury, the champion piano torturer? It turns out there’s a spinoff starring one of his chief adversaries, Charles Wright:
After practicing on a piano for twenty-seven consecutive hours, a Michigan near-Paderewski was removed to a sanatorium, and will probably die. What happened to the poor, defenseless neighbors is not stated.
At least death by piano playing is more respectable than death from misadventure through mussel eating. Fortunately, the wanna-be Paderewski didn’t die. As you probably don’t remember, less than two months later:
J. M. Waterbury of New York is no longer the champion long time piano player of the world. He lost that title. . . the other day to Charles Wright, a Battle Creek musician, who played for twenty-seven hours and forty-five minutes without cessation in a Battle Creek theater.
. . . after which, he was promptly returned to the sanatorium:
When Wright passed the record held by Waterbury by one minute he was removed from the piano, placed in an automobile and hurried to a sanitarium, where he arrived completely exhausted.
Just like with his rival James Waterbury, not everyone cheered him on:
It must have been a great thing to have played the piano incessantly for twenty-seven hours and forty-five minutes, something that this young man’s descendants will mention with pride, provided he ever gets out of the sanatorium.
There may be, it is true, some worldly minded prosaic people who will aver that Mr. Wright might better have been occupied laying a street car track, or repairing plumbing, or selling dry goods.
There are even some to aver that to play the piano continuously for nearly twenty-eight hours is not a championship performance, but a crime.
I hope Charles’ descendants do indeed still speak of his heroic feats of piano pounding. His record, however, didn’t stand the test of time: As of this writing, the world record for marathon piano playing is 130 hours.
If earplugs aren’t enough to withstand that level of torture, there’s a way to prevent such egregious crimes altogether:
Did you click through Facebook or Twitter? We got lucky—don’t let social media algorithms keep you from seeing a post! Save yourself a click, and subscribe to have stories delivered to your inbox as soon as they’re published.
Disclaimer: The modern era is far from the first to grapple with rampant “fake news.” As I am neither a historian nor journalist, I make no claims about the accuracy or lack thereof of the above sources. I assert only that they make for a good story.
Welcome to Second Glance History! This blog seeks to uncover the people and the stories forgotten by history and give them another read through a modern lens. Join me every week as we examine the differences that divide and the common threads that connect the then to the now.
He was just trying to prove the person wrong who said piano was not his forte.
…And that person was clearly already in the Guinness Book of World Records for Best/Worst Pun!
Are you saying his pun fell a bit … flat?
😂 What a “sharp” observation!