Around February-March 2024, I ended doing a fairly extensive deep dive into Dushkin recorders and posted/reblogged about it (of which, if you want to read the post with all the addendums, you can read it here).
After that, I found nothing else, but would do regular searches every few weeks to see if anything new cropped up. I ended up stumbling across a few interesting auction listings as of late.
First was for a Dushkin alto that had a beak with an outer plastic sleeve
It's very reminiscent of the Dushkin soprano recorder in the Powerhouse Collection in Australia.
Oddly, this alto and the Powerhouse soprano are the only ones I've seen with that beak design. My Dushkin recorder and other pictures I've seen of Dushkin recorders use an inner plastic sleeve for the beak, which could either mean that beaks with an outer plastic sleeve design did not have much lasting power or that few of them survived plastic degradation. Notably, take a look at the following close-up pic from the auction listing:
How... icky.
Second was a mundane auction listing for a tenor that included a sales receipt from 1953 and a sell pamphlet.
Other auction and sell listings I've seen only guess of the instrument of being from the 1950s, but since this listing had a provenance receipt from 1953, we can assume that the models in the pamphlet are also from around the early 1950's.
Last would be a listing for a fully plastic Dushkin soprano recorder.
My previous research into Dushkin recorders did reveal that he sold plastic recorders, but I could never find a picture of one until now.
I did mention in an older post that I suspected not many survived, and well, this one looks rather… bowed... and I hesitate to guess how it would sound today.
Sources:
Dushkin with plastic beak: https://www.auctionzip.com/auction-lot/lot_D91437F8E9
Dushkin tenor recorder with provenance (receipt) from 1953: https://blueboxauction.hibid.com/lot/105151679/vintage-1950s-dushkin-wood-recorder?ref=catalog
Despite my name and majority of my posts on Tumblr alluding to piano, I do also play the recorder.
Originally, I was playing on a cheap soprano recorder made of wax-impregnated maple that utilized German fingering (a bad "habit" from my school days that I put up with for some time). However, I did promise myself that I would switch over to Baroque/English fingering if I stumbled across a reasonable vintage alto recorder at an affordable price. And last weekend that promise came to fruition at an estate sale. Behold, my new alto!
It's a Dushkin, purchased for quite a steal ($20 USD!). No information was provided about its original owner, but whoever previously owned it seems to have been a woodwind enthusiast (the sale included various woodwinds) and likely played the Dushkin alto a lot (the thumbhole in the back looks fairly worn and could benefit from a bushing).
About Dushkin recorders:
There seems to be very limited information about recorder maker David Dushkin. The Powerhouse Collection in Australia has a Dushkin soprano recorder in its collection and helpful anecdotes on Dushkin's work along with links to its sources - David Dushkin, it appears, was the first recorder maker in the USA. Beyond that, searching up Dushkin recorders is more likely to show a variety of online sale listings, though one listing on Etsy was very useful as it provided images of the original fingering chart and instructions for use.
A look at the instructions say to oil the recorder with olive oil (a non-drying oil) or linseed oil (a drying oil) once a month or so. I used neither when oiling the instrument after cleaning (opted for a seed-based oil instead, so non-drying oil). The fire hazards of linseed cannot be emphasized enough (spontaneous combustion!); I think if I had to go for a drying oil, I'd opt for walnut oil because the recorder's wood structure is, well, walnut!
I think anyone familiar with wooden recorders will agree that walnut is a very unusual choice for recorder construction. An educated guess of mine is that Dushkin opted for walnut due to accessibility of this particular hard wood in North America (some Native American flutes are made of the same material).
Also unusual was Dushkin's mouthpiece design, which supposedly could be dissembled to some degree to remove the block.
The instructions on the Etsy listing indicate the mouthpiece can be pulled off when cleaning. During the cleaning process I was able to wiggle the outer wood sleeve by about a millimeter before it would not budge anymore - caution made push it back into place. I don't think it would be worth the risk of trying to figure out how the mouthpiece is supposed to be removed, and I'll settle for dripping alcohol into the windway if/when necessary.
Overall, it seems to be a well-made collector's item instrument that is sought-after for its historical value.
How it plays:
Brian Blauch's blog (online moniker reedplayerncnc) gives a brief firsthand description on its playability - "The alto has a beautiful tone, but it's super quiet. And you need to blow extremely hard." My experience was not quite the same as Blauch's - I needed to blow more softly!
Though, for full disclosure, I have a tendency to overblow so I could be biased. My particular Dushkin alto seems to be fairly forgiving at the upper registers for both overblowing and underblowing, but the lowest note requires significantly slow air flow, so much so that I have to drop my jaw when playing he lowest note, otherwise the note is at risk of squeaking.
An unusual one-time observance was that I somehow managed to get lowest note, 'F', to emit a wolf tone despite the bore being conical, but I've only been able to recreate this once during my very first play during the break-in period, and I have not gotten a wolf tone since then, just squeaks from bad fingering or overblowing.
An eBay listing mentions "the sound is a bit airy and responsiveness is on the slow side", which is more closer to what I experienced. When comparing the head of my alto to Blauch's photo's and the eBay photo, I noticed my alto's head more closely resembles the eBay listing, and that the head of Blauch's alto is different around the base of the mouthpiece (slightly more fancy) - so therefore Blauch and I have different models. My suspicion is that the models might also have some variation in bore size, maybe mine might be an older model given how less fancy it appears (and the poor placement of the stamp!).
Sadly, this is where my research into Dushkin recorder models comes to a dead end. Dushkin is mentioned in a few old articles published by the American Recorder Society, and one PowerPoint presentation in particular shows a few more of his recorders, but no documentation online exists regarding how Dushkin's recorder models changed over time.
Perhaps when I have the recorder fully played in and have sufficiently practiced enough, I'll do a reblog of this post with the sound of my Dushkin alto.
In the meantime, if you wish to follow in my footsteps down the Dushkin research rabbit hole, my sources are below.
American Recorder Society PowerPoint presentation containing images of some Dushkin recorder models. https://www.google.com/url?client=internal-element-cse&cx=011443274990293341649:ouyrdo9fbeu&q=https://americanrecorder.org/docs/von_Huene_ARS_FIN.pptx&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwj19bOz64aEAxUwD1kFHTsIA3AQFnoECAUQAQ&usg=AOvVaw21O3FmjQIOBp2lcz2bmuiR
I know, yet another post about Dushkin recorders! I thought I would be done with the Dushkin recorder rabbit-hole, but apparently not!
One of the distinctive characteristics of the Dushkin recorder is the sleeved beak design to allow for easier cleaning of the windway. And from what I've seen on the vintage marketplace so far, the sleeve was either fully plastic or a plastic-wood composite (wood exterior and plastic interior). So, you can imagine to my surprise seeing a Dushkin recorder having a beak with what appears to be a fully wooden sleeve!
Or... maybe the plastic is brown-colored? It's hard to tell from the auction photo the composite nature of the beak how the sleeve was intended to be removed.
As for why I call it the '266' Dushkin recorder: Interestingly, this particular recorder does not contain a 'Dushkin' stamp anywhere, but was stamped with the number '266', on all three pieces of the recorder.
The design of the 266 recorder appears to be very similar to the Dushkin recorders with the fully plastic sleeves (single holes, cork on the middle joint). I wonder if 266 preceded this design, or if came after. I'm also wondering what the '266' signifies. Was this an experimental recorder and the number a way to track prototypes? Or are there more recorders with this beak design out there and this was an identification number of some sort?
I suppose only David Dushkin knows. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Source:
WorthPoint listing #4943028535, Dushkin Recorder -Vintage Wooden Recorder Instrument made in USA. https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/dushkin-recorder-vintage-wooden-4943028535
If you have been following me for the past few years, you have likely already noticed that I've went into a rabbit hole research about Dushkin recorders, with my last post being about different models produced by David Dushkin. One of those models was an alto with a plastic sleeve for the beak, sold on AuctionZip.
Today I've located another Dushkin alto with a sleeved beak, on HiBid. Unusually, this one came with a fancy case.
Looking further into the photos, I immediate noticed that the HiBid Dushkin recorder has single holes instead of double holes for the bottom notes. (HiBid auction image below)
At which point, I had to go back to the AuctionZip listing, and whaddya know, it also had single holes! (AuctionZip auction image below)
Now, my Dushkin alto and others I've seen online where only the tip and windway roof are in plastic have double holes.
So at first I thought: "Could the Dushkin recorders with full plastic sleeves on the beak have been an earlier model for the Dushkin recorders? After all, double holes are more 'modern'* in terms of recorder history". (*I say this with knowing the nuances of historical recorders with double holes from around the late 1600-1700s).
But then, I immediately remembered the Powerhouse Dushkin soprano recorder also has a plastic sleeve, and double-checking myself, I saw it has double holes! (Powerhouse museum image below)
I'm curious if this would be indicative of Dushkin recorders being available in both single-hole and double-hole models, and I wonder how different the single-hole and double-hole Dushkin recorders are like in terms of sound and ease of playing.
Source:
HiBid Lot #112 Vintage Recorder Flue in case: https://hibid.com/lot/243818316/vintage-dushkin-recorder-flue-in-case?ref=lot-list
"Fun With Flutes" by David Dushkin is a public domain book...
... and I copied all of the scores from that book into a MuseScore file, which you can view and download for free on my MuseScore profile if you have an account there.
This was a "labor of love" type of project, and also partially for myself since I wanted more beginner-intermediate free sheet music for recorder that was more adult-friendly or aimed at the serious player rather than simple pieces aimed at children. Although the book itself is in public domain, a MuseScore file with editing and playback features helps bring it into the more modern age of learning, and it's my hope it would be useful to others who may be walking the same music-learning path.
I've also added a copy of the scores under the cut for non-MuseScore users (wherein you right-click the images and choose "Save As" on your desktop computer).
WARNING: The full post is a whopping 29 images at high resolution, I would not recommend viewing the post on a limited internet connection.
No, this is not a post nerding about recorders again, haha, though it is slightly adjacent. Last February (2024), woodwind player Brian Blauch (reedplayerncnc) who I had mentioned in some of my previous posts, had posted on his blog about a mysterious keyed Dushkin alto that came into his possession. It piqued my interest since I've never seen anything like that before in my research into Dushkin recorders in general.
While looking into this mystery, I ended up coming across information pointing to David Dushkin being capable of manufacturing other instruments, as well as teaching students how to manufacture their own.
... David’s shop, where he designed and manufactured musical instruments, first in collaboration with the Wurlitzer Company (31 December 1934, DDSD), but then independently, particularly high-quality recorders. In the basement workshop, the Dushkins’ students and their own children visited, studied, and learned how to make a variety of musical instruments: not only recorders, but
dulcimers, marimbas, and xylophones as well (Polikoff 2006, 7).
Source: Briggs, Kaitlin. "Caught in the “Language Forest”: Dorothy Smith Dushkin’s Diary (1919–1988) and The Glassy Interval Manuscript." Lifewriting Annual: Biographical and Autobiographical Studies 4.1 (2014).
Which leads to my next point. As one might guess from my online moniker, I play the piano. David Dushkin's wife, Dorothy, wrote an article ("Making Musical Instruments in School Shops"; published in Industrial Education Magazine, Volume 40 in 1938 by Manual Arts Press or Manual Training Magazine, Volume 40, published in 1938 by University of Chicago Press), which gave a non-exhaustive list of example instruments that David and his students worked on. There are two keyboard-like inventions on this list that stuck out for me:
11. Clarison - Invention combining reed wind instrument with keyboard facility of playing. Range from one octave below middle C to two octaves above. Tone resembling clarinet and French horn, according to register and breath pressure used. Is capable of very great variation in nuance and phrasing. Beautiful tone for solo and ensemble. (Undergoing revision.)
My guess is that "clarison" is a mix of "clarion" and something else. For me, the description read like something similar to a melodica at first, but my guess is that this is something different entirely if register and breath pressure is involved.
12. Clavalum - keyboard invention resembling celesta, adding great flexibility of action, dynamic variation and damper pedal. Five octaves. Liquid, clear tone, admirable to develop clean touch. Excellent for children, as well as an opportunity for adults to get a refreshing lightness of tone in classic compositions. Sounds extremely well with piano and orchestra instruments.
A clavalum is a lot more easier to imagine, but I wonder what makes it different than a celesta. Based on the name, I would assume it might be a mix of a "clavichord" and something else.
If information about Dushkin recorder manufacturing wasn't obscure enough, information about Dushkin keyboard instruments and non-woodwinds are even more obscure - though I suspect many of them were probably sold under the Wurlitzer name than David's own. It would be interesting if I ever come across a Wurlitzer instrument made at or around the 1934s, that would be the most likely period Dushkin would have made them.
