Twenty years a fakir

by S. James Weldon

“Good. All that won’t hurt you just now. I have been working the cheap music racket by daylight, and it has not turned out so badly. I expect to do a bigger business in the next place, though, and I’ll work it in a different way. My pens are all sold out, and I’ll have no side lines to sell till I meet my next lot.”

At that I asked him some questions about the music business, and he briefly explained.

In these degenerate days music, like everything else, has become cheap. In the times I am speaking of sheet music commanded a pretty stiff price at retail; and if we could only sell enough of it there was a chance for an enormous profit, even when sold away below regular rates, and there were chances to buy at wholesale “cheap” sheet music which cost but a song.

All this my companion, whose name was Carter, explained as we went along. There was really so little of a “fake” about what he proposed to do that I hardly believed he would have the success he seemed to anticipate.

Nevertheless, it all worked to a charm. The town selected was just large enough to have a number of amateur pianists and vocalists, and not sufficiently extensive for a store which kept sheet music in any great quantity.

There was a piano in the parlor of the hotel where we opened up, and almost the first act of Carter was to thump it vigorously, and after what looked to be quite an artistic fashion. He had me plaster the town with bills and posters which we found there in a bundle awaiting us, announcing the presence of Prof. Carter and an immense stock of the most popular and fashionable music, which, in consequence of business affairs calling him to the east, he would sell on the easiest terms. Music for which the stores usually charged from thirty-five cents to several dollars he would sell at from fifteen up to seventy-five cents. And he had a list of the very choicest selections, which would be sold even lower. The names of the most classical and popular pieces were given, and it was also announced that the Professor could be consulted on musical matters, and the choice of pieces for consecutive practice, during his short stay.

For the first few days the ladies came flocking in, and usually bought from three to six pieces. Sometimes we sold as high as ten selections to one lady.

I soon saw that “The Professor” had a fair knowledge of his business, although, no doubt, his musical acquirements were somewhat superficial. The advice he gave gratuitously was sometimes equal to a high-priced lesson, and I wondered why he did not make an effort to follow the profession after a legitimate and exclusive manner. But he would not have been a fakir had he done that; and I confess he was one of the best all-round men I ever saw.

While he had a fair stock of the popular, catchy songs of the day, I noticed the price of it was the nearest to that marked by the publishers; while his greatest efforts to sell were made along the lines of “classical gems,” and easy selections, which he would rapidly arrange together as a graduated system of practice. These pieces cost him the least of any in the lot. He could generally gauge pretty accurately the musical acquirements of a lady, and once she entered into conversation with him he was pretty sure to sell, not only the one piece she had thought of buying, but half a dozen or more.

I was of some slight assistance in the music deal, but the part I had to play related to something else, of which, in the start, I knew little or nothing, but under the rapid instructions of the Professor I soon comprehended sufficiently to elicit his strong approval.