The Gregory Mouthpiece Saga Part V

When we left Part IV of the Gregory Mouthpiece Saga, we were looking at Gale Products, Inc., incorporated in 1948, and supposedly (one person claims) a continuation of Malcolm Gregory's mouthpiece business.  It was implied in the original Saga that Gale Products, Inc. continued production of Gregory mouthpieces until it was sold to Charles Bay in 1969.  Further, the original Saga, when published in the Saxophone Journal, stated that the newly formed Bay-Gale Products began producing mouthpieces "one of them being the Gregory sax mouthpieces."  I can't wait to find some evidence a Bay-Gale-Gregory mouthpiece.  I'm not holding my breath.  The entire Bay-Gale-Gregory Saga is based on a strange theory of "corporate inheritance" that is factually inaccurate and legally impossible.

First, let's go back to the founding of Gale.  The 1948 Articles of Incorporation list the founding shareholders and the complete Board of Directors for Gale Products, Inc.  They are Carl Satzinger, Roy J. Maier of Rico Products, Ltd., Frank V. De Michele of Rico Products, Ltd., plus a well known L.A. attorney, Nathan H. Snyder, and his secretary.  (It's not unusual for an attorney, and even his secretary, to sign incorporation papers at the inception of a corporation if there are insufficient principals to comprise a full five-member Board of Directors.)  The business venture was named Gale, after Carl Satzinger's daughter.  

There are two immediate things in the Articles of Incorporation that don't support the story related in the original Gregory Mouthpiece Saga.  First, Malcolm Gregory is nowhere to be seen in the newly formed Gale Products, Incorporated, which was claimed in the Saga to be "his" company.*  The company needed five directors to incorporate under California law, yet Malcolm Gregory was not one of them.  Second, Maier and De Michele, the primary partners in Rico Products, are listed as Directors of Gale Products, Inc. and the Articles seem to indicate that there was a $17,600 infusion of capital to start the new company.  Why would all of this be necessary if Gale Products, Inc. was merely a continuation of Malcolm Gregory's existing mouthpiece business?  Why would Malcolm take on the principals of Rico Products as business partners and leave himself out?  The short answer is he wouldn't and he didn't.  Gale Products, Inc. was a distinct business entity completely separate from whatever Malcolm was doing for Rico.

We have two choices here.  Either Malcolm was never an officer or director in "his" new company or it was not Malcolm's company.  That is an easy choice for me.  I should also note that the attorney, Nathan Snyder, was not just any attorney.  His father, Herman Snyder, was an employee at Lockie Music Exchange in Los Angeles and, along with the Lockie family, was a silent partner in Rico Products.  So on the Board of Directors for Gale Products was Roy Maier of Rico Products, Frank De Michelle of Rico Products, and Nathan Snyder of Rico Products.  Given this new evidence, can anybody now seriously claim that Gale Products was M.C. Gregory's company and not a subsidiary of Rico Products?

There is no evidence at all that Gale was any type of continuation of Rico's prior "M.C. Gregory" line of mouthpieces (which was never independently incorporated) or that Malcolm Gregory was ever involved in any way with Gale Products, Inc.  In fact, there is really no evidence that Malcolm Gregory was anything other than an employee of Rico Products.  Based on what we now know, to support an extraordinary claim that Malcolm Gregory was involved with Gale Products we are going to need some extraordinary evidence.

At about this time, the catalogs that had featured Rico's M.C. Gregory Model A and Model B stopped advertising those mouthpieces.  It is not clear whether those pieces continued in production and, if so, who produced them.  The newly incorporated Gale Products, Inc. began making completely different models (a torpedo shaped piece, and later, the Gale Companion, apparently the same model re-badged, although the Gale Companion went through several changes over the years.)  There were also some oddball pieces like the Gale Triple Rail.     

Early Gale pieces were imprinted "Hollywood" in script.  On Rico Gregory pieces, "Hollywood" (and the earlier "Los Angeles") were always in block text.  Gale pieces never had serial numbers.  M.C. Gregory pieces always had serial numbers.  Looking only at the models and stamping on the mouthpieces, it is difficult to assert that any Gale Products mouthpieces are related to any Gregory pieces, as was alleged in the original Gregory Mouthpiece Saga.  It appears more likely that the pieces were fabricated at different facilities.  

This is a quote from the website Saxophone.org Mouthpiece Museum "From what we have seen Gale Hollywood mouthpieces were kind of all over the place as far as stamping goes.  It seems they never stuck to one thing."  Further, Gale mouthpieces never used the embossing stamps used on known Gregory pieces.  Gregory pieces seem neat and tidy compared to Gale pieces.  If Malcolm Gregory was directly involved, how did things get so loosey goosey?

Satzinger family members were familiar with Carl Satzinger having developed a logo for Gale Products, Inc.  Carl was proud of the round circle formed by the letters GALE.** Here is the custom logo on a Gale Products, Inc. metal tenor piece.

Here is Satzinger's GALE logo on a hard rubber piece.

The Rico partners involvement with Gale Products, Inc. didn't have nearly the success that Rico was having with the M.C. Gregory brand.  Gregory brand Rico mouthpieces, when advertised in the 1930's and 40's, sold at a slight premium even over the Otto Link hard rubber Tone Edge mouthpieces of the era.  Then, the Gregory brand was dropped from the Selmer catalogs, but Gale Products, Inc. mouthpieces were not picked up.  In fact, it appears that paid advertising for Gale mouthpieces is non-existent, although other Rico Products accessories continued to be offered in the later Selmer catalogs and advertised elsewhere.  And none of the Gale mouthpieces ever stated "Rico Products, Ltd. Distributors" even though we now know that the partners of Rico Products were directly involved with Gale Products as members of its Board of Directors (and certainly shareholders and investors.)

So how long was Gale Products, Inc. in business?  Some people, based only on what Charles Bay claimed, think that it was sold to Bay in 1969.  Not true.  Gale Products, Inc. was incorporated on April 5, 1948, as shown in Part IV of the Saga.  In order to remain a California corporation in good standing, it would make yearly corporate filings and pay excise tax by April 15th of each succeeding year.  That never happened.  Here is the record of the Franchise Tax payments made by Gale Products, Inc., which I also obtained from the California Secretary of State.  



It is blank.  That means that the corporate status of Gale Products, Inc. was revoked and it was administratively dissolved in 1949 for failure to make its mandatory corporate filings.  Gale Products didn't last a year!  A legal courier service in Sacramento was hired and found that there are no further documents or filings of any kind at the Office of the Secretary of State.  Malcolm Gregory was never added to the Gale Board of Directors.  By April of 1949 the corporation was dissolved.  Satzinger, De Michele, Snyder and Maier were "out" of the business and it was shut down.  There is no evidence that Malcolm Gregory was ever "in" and there is plenty more incontrovertible evidence, as we will see, that he was never involved with Gale Products in any way.  

Going back to the Articles of Incorporation for a moment, Carl Satzinger lists his address as 1096 Stueben Street, Pasadena, in April of 1948.  In the 1949 LA City Directory, Carl is back temporarily living at his mother's home (where his daughter Gale lived) with no occupation listed.  Satzinger family members said that this was not uncommon, based on his life-long battle with alcoholism and drugs.  It looks like something went wrong with Gale Products, Inc.

We also found evidence that when Gale Products, Inc. was dissolved in 1949, some of the corporation's assets were sold to a local jewelry salesman named Cesar Tschudin.  Remember Cesar Tschudin, alleged to be the "company attorney" who "tried to run the business for some 20 years" after Gale died until it was sold it to Bay in 1969?  When I first read this I thought it was goofy.  In what world does a "company attorney" inherit a client's business when his client dies?

Okay, first we know that there was no Gregory company, so there was no Gregory company attorney.  The California Bar Association has no record of Cesar Tschudin (no surprise).  And there is no evidence that Cesar Tschudin ran the family business after Gale died (which she did not).  Or that Tschudin ever met Malcolm Gregory.  Or that Tschudin ever worked with Rico Products.  Or that Tschudin played a musical instrument.  But we do now know that Cesar Tschudin was a really good ski jumper, photographer, and later a jewelry salesman.  I'll bet Charles Bay and Ralph Morgan did not know that.

Cesar Tschudin emigrated to the United States from Switzerland.  He worked in New York as a newspaper photographer before moving to Estes Park, Colorado, where he taught ski lessons in the 1920's.  Here is an excerpt from the newspaper Estes Park Trail from January 18, 1924:

Swiss Ski Expert will Direct Activities in Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park 

Cesar Tschudin, a Swiss army ski instructor, will arrive in Estes Park Monday from New York City, New York, to take charge of the winter sports season in Estes Park. Mr. Tschudin for years was director of winter sports at the famous winter sports resort in Bergen, Switzerland, previous to his connection with the army ski corps, and is well versed in all the winter sports activities, as well as the Scandinavian sport of ski jumping. He will not only direct the winter sports activities in Estes Park, under the supervision of the Outing Committee of the Estes Park Group of the Colorado Mountain Club, but he will give instruction in the various sports as well, being at the command of all who wish to spend a few days in Estes Park during the winter season from 15 January 1924 to 15 April 1924, this being a part of the service the community wished to extend to its winter visitors. Free instruction is offered the visitors in the following sports: Ski jumping, fancy skiing, tobogganing, bobsledding, and crosscountry skiing.

He later moved to L.A. where city directories and census reports list him as a salesman of redwood novelty items (1930) and jewelry (1940).  There is no evidence that he manufactured redwood novelty items or jewelry (i.e., that had any fabrication experience).***  In between these two occupations, several L.A. city directories list Cesar Tschudin's occupation as "auto washer."

Here he is in a 1937 petition for the naturalization of his Swedish wife.

 At the time, he was living here in Apartment number 6 as an auto washer.

In late 1948 or early 1949, Cesar Tschudin purchased some equipment and the remaining inventory of the defunct corporation Gale Products, Inc. and attempted to start his own mouthpiece business (it is still unclear whether he continued his auto washing or jewelry business while trying to start a mouthpiece business).  How do we know that he purchased some of the assets?  Here is an inventory (on his jewelry business letterhead) that Tschudin prepared in April of 1949.  

We don't know if he prepared the inventory in order to recruit a partner or to secure a lender for the purchase of some of the remaining assets of the defunct Gale Products, Inc.  It appears that he was going to call his new business "GEM," a good choice for a jewelry salesman.  He already had a two embossing stamps for GEM (final items in the inventory) and a "California" stamp, neither of which were used on the Gale Products or M.C. Gregory brand mouthpieces.  We will see Cesar Tchudin's use of both of these stamps in a subsequent blog.

That's enough for Part V of the Gregory Mouthpiece Saga.  In Part VI, I will continue with some of the additional documentary evidence and my theory as to how all of the history got jumbled up.


*  The claim that Gale was M.C. Gregory's company has been repeated all over on the internet, but all of them rely on the same source, i.e., the original misstatement in the Saxophone Journal that M.C. Gregory had a daughter named Gale and incorporated a new company using her name.  We now have documentary proof that is not true.  The duration and repetition of the Gale/Gregory claim makes the incorrect assertion hard to correct, but it does not change the facts (for me).  The same is true for the internet claims that Malcolm Gregory had his own business, or that Cesar Tschudin was an attorney, etc., etc.

**  Carl's niece told me that Carl was watching his mother knit one evening when the idea came to him.  That information required me to do some crazy research (just like with everything else in this blog).  Carl's mother and father (Anna and Otto Satzinger) had close connections to the old country.  Otto was born there. Apparently, so were Anna's knitting needles.  There is a well known Swedish company, Gunnar Anderssons Vävskedsfabrik, that started making knitting needles in 1926.  The abbreviation GAV appeared on the round head of their wooden knitting needles in the shape of a circle.  Carl used the same design for his logo GALE.  You can still see the old logo at the top of the Gunnar Anderssons Vävskedsfabrik website, although the company has since changed its name.

***  Not that being a jeweler, as opposed to a jewelry salesman, is a bad background for metal mouthpiece fabrication.  Arthur Goldbeck was a Chicago jeweler who patented a metal mouthpiece in 1920 that was used by others, including Mr. Otto Link.  The design patent (good for 14 years) was for a metal mouthpiece, cast in two pieces, that was then carefully brazed together.  When that patent ran out in 1934, the spectrum of metal mouthpieces increased.  Otto was able to change his metal design to the Tone Master.

I should note that the actual design in the patent was petitioned and held by Frank Kaspar (1888-1979), a noted mouthpiece facer.  For some reason he partnered with Goldbeck and used the Goldbeck name on the mouthpiece.

After the patent ran out and others started using the two-half process for metal mouthpieces, the Goldbeck metal mouthpiece was discontinued and Mr. Kaspar returned to using ebonite blanks and concentrating on clarinet mouthpieces, for which he was well known.  Frank Kaspar clarinet mouthpieces using a Riffault blank, sometimes mistakenly called a "Chedeville" blank, are discussed at the end of this blog.


It is possible to contact me confidentially with information in the comment section below.  Simply include your email.  That way, if you choose, we can converse without your comment or email being made public.