POP/ROCK - Aug. 21, 1987
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Dozens of player pianos and other music machines from the pre-jukebox era collected by a big, bald cable-car foreman nicknamed “The Big Cherub” are going on the auction block in San Francisco Tuesday. The sale is expected to raise about $250,000 for the estate of Charles A. Smallwood, a San Francisco native who died last year at age 73. The advent of the jukebox in the 1930s made the music machines obsolete and most were scrapped. But Smallwood, who loved to tinker, rescued many from the saloons and bawdy houses of Virginia City, Nev.
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