photo courtesy the commercial appeal
Promoted as “The Coney Island of the South," East End was an amusement park located where Overton Square stands today. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the wooded area — so named because in those days it was indeed at the "east end" of Memphis — offered a rather stunning variety of attractions.
Visitors could ride a miniature locomotive around a scenic lake, hop aboard a merry-go-round, and hold on tight on a huge roller-coaster which (by some accounts) was the original Zippin-Pippin, before it was dismantled and relocated to the Tri-State (later Mid-South) Fairgrounds. There was a heart-stopping loop-the-loop ride in tiny cars, a roller-skating rink, and all sorts of your typical midway attractions.
You can see and read about these, and some of the other amusements and events here. It would take me all day (and all of this column) to describe some of the events that the management offered Memphians, night after night.
East End, you see, became a regular stopping place for some of this country's most talented vaudeville performers. Oh sure, there were the usual singers, dancers, musicians, jugglers, magicians, and trick-animal acts. But Memphians were also wowed by such performers as "The Human Bomb," who ascended in a hot-air balloon high above the park, leapt out, opened a parachute just before he hit the ground — and then lit a fuse to detonate a bomb strapped to his back, apparently blowing himself to bits right before the horrified crowd. And of course, there was Madame Irwin, billed as "The Iron-Jawed Wonder," who ...
Okay, look, I'm trying to tell you about ONAIP here, who made his first appearance at East End Park in May 1910. And yes, his name does spell "piano" backwards, but that doesn't begin to explain his entire act.
Let's see if I can try. This man, whose identity was never revealed, didn't exactly play a piano backwards. No, he played it while it rose high in the air, drifted out over the audience, and even turned upside down and began to spin!
Here's how The Commercial Appeal announced that he was coming here:
"Nearly everyone has heard of 'ONAIP' but few have seen him. He is a marvel. He is a wonder of the age in the world of magic. Some say he is a Hindu. Probably he never saw India. That makes no difference. The Yogi of that country are not more clever than he."
So what does ONAIP do, exactly? Well, here's how the newspaper described it:
"ONAIP is a hypnotic player. Not only does he play well, but before the eyes of the audience, the piano begins to rise from the floor and suddenly float in the air. It floats towards the ceiling. The player, the stool, the entire combination then begin to whirl and revolve like some maddened thing.
"Never once does the player lose the keyboard. Never once does the playing cease. The musician continues uninterrupted. The music becomes faster. The revolutions are more rapid, and then peace returns, and the player and piano settle back in their old position, and the act ends."
What in the world?? How is this done? (If nothing else, what keeps the player on the piano stool?)
According to The Commercial Appeal: "That is the question that everyone asks. ONAIP can tell, but ONAIP will not, and that is why he is the highest-priced act in vaudeville today."
The old Commercial Appeal story notes only that this performer "came here from a foreign clime, and since his first sensational appearance here, his act has been continuously before the public. This is the first time he has appeared in Memphis, and it is one of the big acts Manager Morrison has arranged this season for East End Park."
An internet search of vaudeville performers and old newspaper databases turns up little more than what I've told you about ONAIP. All of them describe the performance as sensational. In 1910, the Pittsburgh Press put it this way: "All the mysteries that have come before are said to be mere tyros compared to the illusion of the hypnotic piano player presented by ONAIP, the Hindu who has completely mystified the gurus of his own country and baffled the wisest heads of America."
The Pittsburgh newspaper offered some possible explanations: "The Spiritualists who have witnessed ONAIP's mysterious piano player maintain that it is only possible to accomplish this stunt with the aid of unseen forces that control the world across the border. Hypnotists assert that by the mystic power of Mesmer's art, both player and piano, the animate and inanimate, may be propelled through space by the simple but powerful forces of suggestion. And the occultists advance the idea that psychology may be responsible for all the things that ONAIP does."
Psychology??
The July 3, 1910, edition of the Des Moines Register devoted considerable space to this act (assuming it IS an act):
"ONAIP has been performing at the New York Hippodrome before thousands. The eastern newspapers have widely discussed him, magazines have devoted chapters to descriptions of his work, hut not one word has been written that sheds the faintest light upon the mystery. ONAIP himself allows the spectator to form his own conclusions. 'Here is the piano, and here the piano player,' said an experienced performer. 'The performer is a living, breathing mortal, they come upon the stage before you and they float Into space. Tell me if you can, how they do it? You may attribute it to hypnotism, you may say it is telepathic suggestion, you may even cross the border and declare it is moved by the spirit, but none of these assertions answer the single-word question, HOW?"
(I have to say that the Register story only adds to the confusion, since it seems to imply that ONAIP himself is not the piano player. Unless he is referring to himself in the third-person as the performer.)
But, here's the really frustrating part — for me. Despite all this coverage, these newspapers rarely, if ever, included a photograph of the man or the act. In fact, the grainy photo you see here, taken from the microfilm copy of the 1910 Commercial Appeal story mentioned above, is the only image I could find. I think you can get the general idea of what the heck is going on, though.
If I turn up more information about this remarkable performance: who ONAIP was, and how in the world he accomplished this trick, then I will let you know.
Well, maybe. If I learn how to do it. I may keep that little secret to myself, and use it to amuse visitors who come to the mansion. Of course, I'll have to learn how to play the piano first.
