Tom Meijer, translation: Hans van Oost
In a very early issue of Het Pierement (1954/4 p.7) we find a letter to the editor by the, then 57-year old, Eugene Peersman. With some melancholy he described how the organs had vanished from the fairs and dance-halls in Belgium, although he was more positive about the future of the cafe-orchestrions. At the end of his letter Peersman promised that he would tell more about his organ book factory in a following issue. Unfortunately nothing came out of that. Here is a picture of the man who may be called the clown of the Belgian music markers.
Eugenius (Eugène) Peersman was born in Antwerp on 18th April 1897. His parents rented organs to big pubs and dance halls. According to Mr. Peersman's letter in HP they started with a 57 key Gavioli organ in 1904. Later four more organs followed; two Gaviolis and two Marenghis, with which father Peersman also toured the fairs. The last Marenghi organ was sold to Mr. Roelse in Brielle, Netherlands after WW I.
Peersman may have started making arrangements for his father's organs. In the nineteen-twenties he was working as an independent music marker. The oldest known address on book labels from that era is Lange Achteromstraat 29, Antwerpen. As usual at that time it is also mentioned that he sold rolls for electrical pianos and orchestrions.
During WW 1 Eugène Peersman met an Irish girl in the Cumberland Hotel, London, Margaret Fitzsimons. They married and had a doughter, who seems to have emigrated to the USA.
There are indications that Peersman worked for the Mortier firm in the late twenties. In the report of the managing council of 12th November 1929 we read the recommendation to effect a casualty insurance "for the three sons of Bax and the music marker Peersman". It is however not sure if he had a steady job with Mortier. In the thirties he worked for his own account and he delivered a series of music books, with successive three-digit numbers. Two different addresses were mentioned on the book labels: at first Juliaan Dillensstraat 56, Antwerpen Zwemdok-Zuid - 'book music for all sorts of Mechanical Instruments'. Later the housing number changed to 32, where he would live for the rest of his life.
After Marcel Bartier left the Mortier firm on 13th March 1941 Eugene Peersman joined the factory on 9th June of the same year. It was war then, and it is questionable if many music books were shipped at that time. I have only found two music books marked unmistakably by Peersman: Star of Rio (6204) and Music Box (6228). In the staffing register it is mentioned that Eugene Peersman left the company on 21st October 1944. The rumour goes that he then lived in England temporarily, but this is denied by others.
On 2nd January 1946 Peersman rejoined Mortier. During the first years after the war he made a lot of arrangements for this firm. New songs were in great demand again. The then popular South-American dances like rumba and samba songs sounded great on the dance hall organs.
On 19th July 1948 the contract with Peersman was renewed. Besides of a monthly salary of BF 3000 he would receive a 10% premium over the invoiced shippings of music books. Apart of this he received a premium of 400 BF for every newly built organ or orchestrion that left the Mortier works. At the end of each year he was promised a share in so far his division had gained "an appropriate nett profit". Other conditions of the contract were "the responsibility for the workers under your authority, and (...) for the maintenance of the machinery entrusted to you and your personnel".
Another important passage was: "You also agree to spend all your time and activities serving the company, and you deny yourself the right to devote yourself, outside the factory, to the same or other industrial or commercial activities, either directly or indirectly. In case your activities for our factory would come to an end, notwithstanding the time or reason, all work from your hand will remain property of the factories Th. Mortier".
This last condition was a serious problem for Peersman. His music markings were in great demand and presumably he wanted to serve his own customers. On 5th October 1948 he wrote a letter of resignation to the Mortier firm, which lead to a raise of 6000 BF. Although this gesture led to some delay, Peersman sent in his definitive resignation in a letter of 13th December 1959. By the end of his job on 1st February 1950 he was succeeded by Louis Somers, who would work for Mortier till its liquidation in 1952.
From 1950 Peersman started arranging music under his own name again. He took the old book labels from the thirties and started numbering his arrangements from nr. 2009. Under the early hits were Rumba d'Espagne (2005),the third man (2009), Carnaval in Cuba (2031), Music, music (2032) en Wer soll dass bezahlen (2036). From the start he had many customers, under whom the De Nijs Brs. In Oosterhout. When 78 RPM recordings were made of their "Blue" Mortier nr. 1044 the name of Peersman started to appear on record labels of DECCA and Philips - a privilege formerly reserved to August Schollaert.
Peersman arranged almost all hits of the fifties. He did not keep away from the new popular "teenager" music, as appears from a 1958 single of the 101-key Mortier "De Krab" for which he made books of rock-n-Roll songs like "Bird Dog" and "When". The more traditional repertoire, however, was more in demand.
In 1962 his list numbered 2752, which means that Peersman arranged about 800 songs in 12 years, for several scales naturally. We regularly see Peersman book music without a series number written in, so the amount of arrangements may well have been bigger.
Peersman went on arranging great hits after 1962. He even managed to make a trustworthy arrangement of the Twist -that year's craze. Until July 1964 his advertisements were found regularly in HP. He made his last arrangements around 1965. In this period he made contact with some British organ owners like Charles Hart of the St.Albans organ museum and David Barlow, who just had bought the "Kluisberg" Mortier organ in 1962. For the British he made arrangements of medleys with English and Scottish traditionals and several marches and concert pieces. These were his last works, of which some were later recorded and issued as cassettes and LP's. After a heart attack in the late sixties he almost stopped working and he died in January 1973 at the age of 75. It took some days before he was found in his home. In Worlds Fair and Het Pierement a short notice was placed about his passing away. Obviously the Belgians had already forgotten him by then. Arthur Prinsen told me that he was one of the few present at Peersman's funeral.
Although there may not be many lovers of Peersman's arranging style nowadays, his book music was very succesful between 1945 and 1962. In the harbour pubs of Antwerp and surroundings pub owners drew crowds of people playing his music. In the Netherlands too there were organ owners, under more the De Nijs Bros. In Oosterhout and Jan van Elteren, owner of the organ "de Krab", who never ordered other music than Peersman's. No one could make better music for fairs.
I have always been fascinated by the humorous fantasy in Peersman's arrangements. When I was 16 years, I often visited the "Oranjestad", a rebuilt Mortier organ. I liked to crank the old dance hall books which were still with the organ. Peersman's music sounded as a refreshing interpretation of the songs I knew from my earliest youth.
There is no doubt that Peersman made his best arrangements around 1947 for the Mortier firm. At that time he also composed dances of his own. There is a music book with the Mortier organ in the Utrecht museum called "mazurka IV" (nr. 6716) with his name as composer. It would be expected that there must be at least three more mazurkas in existence, but these are not known to me.
People who knew Peersman state that he was a rather nervous personality, and that this would be audible in his arrangements. I think, however, that this explanation is somewhat simple. Peersman knew very well what he was doing; making arrangements was simply his profession. In my opinion he rather used certain styles to get a comical effect. He dit not begin to work in this style untill the late thirties. Two of his arrangements from the twenties -which now can be heard again thanks to the computer- show that his style still was rather simple by then. This music closely resembles the French arrangements that we know of recordings from Belgian street organs of around WWI. His typical, rather busy style making use of full chords, many rhythmical decorations, yodelling jazz-flutes, interruptions in the melodic line and constant changes of registers was founded in the early fourties.
There may be an explanation why Peersman made his best arrangements during the time that he worked for Mortier; he only had to make musical arrangements then, while others took care for punching the music and the fuss-and-bother of the administration. After 1950, working for his own, the pressure to make many productions grew steadily. He had to work more commercially and he was forced to lean more and more on his round. He began to use his style, formerly comical, as a routine. From 1958 his arrangements gradually became a caricature of his former style. The music was recognizable, but it sounded as if the inspiration had vanished.
On top of this Peersman was a rather shoddy puncher. Because the holes for the snare drum and wood block were punched after the line instead of before it (a technical necessity to let the pneumatics fall in time) the percussion makes a disorderly impression upon the modern listener. Despite of this (Peersman must have been aware of this effect) he never changed it. This shoddiness may have contributed to the care-free cosiness, the only reason why the last visitors still kept visiting the pubs with organs in the fifties and sixties.
The times, they were a-changing. In the sixties many dance hall organs which had served their turn in Belgium were sold to English owners. Here the instruments were used for another purpose, as concert organs. Peersman found a new theatre of operations in England. He advertized several times in The Key Frame, the FOPS magazine, between 1964 and 1966. He took at last two visits to Charles Harts St.Albans Organ Museum, which had collected many dance hall organs of Mortier and Decap. David Barlow took contact with Peersman as well, to order new book music for his "Kluisberg"- Mortier. These English organ lovers, however, did not ask for the latest hits, but for marches and pretentious concert pieces as Wagners Tannhäuser Ouverture and Händels Entry of the Queen of Sheba. Peersman had some experience with these more complex arrangements; in the late forties he had made arrangements of Rossini's La Gazza Ladra and Waldteufel's concert waltz Mon Rêve for the 121 key Decap scale.
When he was already in his sixties Peersman discovered that there was a sudden demand for another style of music than the dance hall songs he had always made. Bill Walker, then assistant to the St. Albans Organ Museum, remembers that Peersman was overjoyed having the chance to work on another kind of music: "He wished to be ten years younger". Still Peersman stuck to his old habits and techniques in arranging this concert music. Obviously he could not get loose of his old ways.
Or did he not want to give up his style? If we take the line that Peersman was a professional and that he knew exactly what he was doing he may have added comical decorations in these arrangements. Perhaps he wanted to make it clear to the English organ owners that their new concert organs were, in fact, still ordinary dance hall organs. His arrangements of "serious" music sounded as a collision between two worlds.
True or not, things did not work out as Peersman had imagined. Probably his music books sounded rather odd in English ears. There was, and is, only appreciation for his arrangements of medleys with English and Scotch traditional songs. Soon the British sought contact with other music markers, who knew better how to handle concert pieces. Moreover, Peersman began to suffer from bad health and he could no longer stand the strain to mark and punch so many metres of carton. The clown retired in his home in Antwerp.
Some more stories about Peersman are still going round. Mrs. Constance Decap-Hertoghs: "After WWII my father owned a pub with a Mortier orchestrion in Putte (a border village between Belgium and the Netherlands) and regularly ordered book music, which were delivered by Peersman himself, usually on Saturday in the afternoon. He loved a good atmosphere, which was also expressed in his style of arranging. He always drank a firm pint and the inevitable result was that the book music turned out to be a lot cheaper when it came to settling the bill".
Some parts of Peersmans arrangements were surprising, some even ridiculous. This could have still another cause: some people ordered music not known to him; for instance Louis Heynen from Tilburg. He called Peersman to give the title, and afterwards the song was sung through the telephone by his organ assistant Woutje Besselsen. The results of this can be heard quite clearly in some arrangements!
When they asked Sjef van Dorst why he did not order Albert Decap music for his Marenghi organ he answered something like: " I don't have that kind of business, my friend, my customers only like cosy misic".
Written with thanks to Maarten van der Vlugt for his stories, and to Bill Walker, Ken Slow and Peter Craig for their information about Peersman's visits to England.
Illustrations:
1. Book label
2. Eugène Peersman (left) and blacksmith Jef de Herdt with the 101-key Mortier no. 1085, in 1946. This was the first organ built after WWII. Later on it was named "the velvet saxophone".
3. This picture was taken in 1948, at the 50th anniversary of the Mortier firm. Eugene Peersman stands fourth from right.
4 and 5. Peersman working at the marking barrel and the punch machine, abt. 1963.
6. Joint advertisement by Peersman, Prinsen and van Wichelen in the Key Frame, summer 1965.
7. Oscar Grymonprez (left) and Charles Hart visiting Eugène Peersman