The Gregory Saga Part VI

When we last left the Saga at Part V, we saw that Gale Products, Inc. had dissolved.  Some of the Gale assets were sold to Cesar Tschudin, a salesman of redwood novelty items, as appear on an inventory dated April 19, 1949.  How did I get that inventory?  Same way we got most of the information.  Just blind luck.  Well, not quite blind.  

We were getting nowhere on our research when I decided to send some emails to businesses that might have had some interaction with Gale Products, Inc. back in the day. And by back in the day, I mean 1949, when Gale Products had gone out of business.  One of the emails was sent to Remlé Musical Products, Inc. because I knew that Elmer Beechler had started his business at about the same time.  I thought about sending one to Dukoff, Inc., but Bob Dukoff had left Los Angeles about the time Gale Product, Inc. had failed and I didn't think anyone at his Florida company could help (although there are some wild theories out there that Dukoff was involved with Gale Products).*

I got no responses until Judy Beechler Roan, the daughter of Elmer Beechler, sent me an interesting email response two months later.  

"Hello Mark,

Sorry for the long delay.  It has been difficult getting any solid information.  I do believe the company was purchased by Cesar Tschudin in the late 40"s.  Tschudin was a jeweler and knew nothing about mouthpieces and at some point partnered with my Father, Elmer Beechler.  This partnership did not last long.

I have tried to contact Charles Bay because he comes into the picture sometime later but have been unsuccessful."

Holy moly!  When I spoke earlier with Gale Satzinger, I was expecting her to tell me about Cesar Tschudin, the family attorney who ran her grandfather's business all those years.  She was not really familiar with her grandfather having fabricated mouthpieces.  I had hoped that she had received some kind of royalties or something from "his company."  Of course Gale Products was never Malcolm Gregory's company and all of that was just make believe.  She had never heard of Cesar Tschudin.  I then found that Tschudin had been a ski instructor, and later a "redwood novelty item" salesman, but after that it was a dead end.  Judy Beechler Roan's email was a gold mine.

"I do believe the company was purchased by Cesar Tschudin in the late 40"s."  Sort of.  We already had the articles of incorporation for Gale Product, Inc. and had already seen that the Gale company had failed to maintain its corporate status.  If Cesar Tschudin had purchased "the Gale company" he would have owned a corporation.  He could have executed a shareholder buyout of Carl Satzinger and been named to the Board of Directors with Roy Maier and Frank de Michelle (if they wanted him).  Or he could have bought all of the shares and owned Gale Products, Inc. lock, stock, and barrel.  

But that's not what happened.  It appears that Mr. Tschudin bought only $7,000 worth of the assets of Gale Products, Inc., a corporation that only a year earlier was valued at over $17,000.  Why wasn't Tschudin just brought on board at Gale Products, Inc. and continue the corporation with the Rico Products principals?  As Judy says:

"Tschudin was a jeweler and knew 

nothing about mouthpieces."  

That's why.

To actually discuss "Gale" and it's relationship, if any, to Rico Products, Malcolm Gregory, or Rico's M.C. Gregory brand mouthpieces, we need to differentiate between the various "Gale" businesses, both factual and fictional.  When we read something about "Gale," we need to be clear as to what we are talking about.  I'm going to concentrate on just the three actual iterations, as the other versions seem to be entirely fictional (if you are interested, here's the full rundown on the various actual and fictional versions in a footnote.**)

The three Gale businesses are:

•  Gale Products, Inc. (GPI) was a legitimate California Corporation with an attorney and two very experienced musical accessory businessmen on its Board of Directors, along with Carl Satzinger.  
•  Cesar Tschudin's Gale (CTG) was Mr. Cesar Tschudin, car washer and jewelry salesman, trying to run a mouthpiece business with some mouthpiece blanks that he had purchased from GPI.
•  A previously unknown third Gale business, in between GPI and CTG, apparently as short-lived as GPI.  Cesar Tschudin had temporarily partnered with Elmer Beechler and, as Judy related:

"I do know for a fact that the partnership with my Dad was short lived.  Apparently, Tschudin was a bit of a curmudgeon and, as I understand it, was almost impossible to work with.  He (Elmer Beechler) turned in his shares on the 15th of September, 1950."

Elmer Beechler had started a mouthpiece business in 1948 and had incorporated as Remlé Musical Products on March 28, 1949, according to documents I obtained from the California Secretary of State.  Beechler was later approached by Cesar Tschudin in 1949 to create a joint venture.  For a very short time, there was a Remlé-Tschudin mouthpiece business.  Charles Bay apparently wasn't aware of this "Gale" when he tried to figure out the history and narrated his M.C. Gregory Saga to Ralph Morgan.  

When Bay, decades later, alleged that Gale produced the Master by Gregory mouthpiece, we have to ask "which Gale?"  Since he was unaware of the complex Gale history, how did he know whether who did what when?  And why is he the only person who has ever made the claim (although others have since repeated it) that Tschudin's business was somehow related to Rico or Malcolm Gregory?

We learned a lot of additional things while trying to reconcile the facts with the original Saga.  Bay did not know, and maybe neither did Cesar Tschudin, that Carl Satzinger was Malcolm Gregory's son-in-law.  He did not know that Carl Satzinger had been one of the three principals in starting GPI.  He did not know that GPI was started with the assistance of the principals of Rico Products, Ltd, the manufacturer of the M.C. Gregory brand of mouthpieces.  Finally, he apparently did not know, and Tschudin certainly did know, that Tschudin had attempted to partner with Elmer Beechler because Tschudin was a jeweler and knew nothing about mouthpieces.  The latter would obviously not be necessary if, as some have asserted, Tschudin was actually working directly with Malcolm Gregory from 1949 until Gregory's death in 1955.   

This newly discovered evidence also answers other questions, like "did Gale ever have a contract to produce the Master by Gregory for Rico Products?"  First, which Gale?  Claiming that Gale Products, Inc. had a contract to produce the Master doesn't make any sense now that we know something about GPI.  GPI was essentially a subsidiary of Rico Products, Inc.  Roy Maier and Frank de Michelle were equity owners and on its Board of Directors.  Why would they need a production contract with themselves?  That makes no logical, legal, or business sense.  And Rico introduced the Master by Gregory in May of 1951 as best we could tell, two years after GPI was dissolved for failure to continue its corporate status.

Claiming that the Remlé-Tschudin partnership, or the later CTG business, somehow ended up with that production contract is just as unbelievable.  First, a production contract would be quite an asset for either securing financing or trying to join forces with a knowledgeable mouthpiece fabricator and business partner like Elmer Beechler.  Any Rico connection would have been an asset that would have been listed in Cesar Tschudin's valuation inventory of 1949.  Yet, as with all things that might indicate any Malcolm Gregory or Rico connection, there is no mention of it on the list of assets or to Elmer Beechler during the year that Tschudin worked with Beechler.  How could Tschudin keep a production contract hidden from Elmer?  And remember, Malcolm Gregory was alive and well at the time (and some allege working with Tschudin).  If that were true, I'm guessing that Mr. Beechler would have noticed Malcolm Gregory hanging around.

But it is Mr. Tschudin himself that proves that his subsequent "Gale" mouthpiece business did not have any production contract with Rico to produce the Master by Gregory.  The "Remlé-Tschudin" venture may have started in 1949 (with Elmer Beechler) and, when Elmer bailed out in September of 1950, Tschudin later fabricated Gem and "Gale" mouthpieces, possibly up until 1969.  (I've searched at the California Secretary of State, and there are no records of Tschudin filing for a business name of Gem or Gale after 1947.  He called some of his mouthpieces "Gale," but the business was never a continuation of Gale Products, Inc.).  And we don't know yet if this was just one of Tschudin's business ventures and not his main source of income.  He clearly had a wide variety of occupations over the years.

We now know that Mr. Tschudin had no knowledge of mouthpieces, so he would have required training in order to produce the Master by Gregory for Rico.  We can fantasize that he would have likely been trained by either Malcolm Gregory or Carl Satzinger in order to fulfill any alleged contracts with Rico.   If that were the case and Tschudin worked with either of them, (or even had contact with them) he would certainly have known that Malcolm Gregory didn't commit suicide in 1950, as alleged in the original M.C. Gregory Saga.

Mr. Tschudin would also have known that Carl Satzinger wasn't just some engineer, he was Malcolm's son-in-law.  In fact, if Tschudin had had any contact with Rico Products, he would have learned from Roy Maier and Frank de Michelle that they were directly involved in the startup and dissolution of Gale Products, Inc.  He would have known that Gale was Satzinger's daughter, not Gregory's, and didn't die in a house fire.  All of the mistaken allegations in the original M.C. Gregory Saga were possible only because Cesar Tschudin and his Gem and Gale mouthpiece business never had any meaningful contact with Malcolm Gregory, or Carl Satzinger, or Gale Satzinger, or Gale Products, Inc, or Roy Maier, or Lloyd Broadus, or Frank de Michele, or a production contract with Rico Products to produce any Rico brand mouthpieces, including the Master by Gregory.  

All that Mr. Tschudin had were some molds and equipment that had once belonged to Gale Products, Inc. before it was dissolved. We know from Tchudin's 1949 inventory that he did not have any serial number embossing equipment (used on all of Rico's Gregory brand mouthpieces).  We now know from the all of the newly discovered evidence that purchasing some of the Gale Products, Inc. assets was as close as Tschudin's business ever got to Rico, which produced the Master by Gregory.   Part VII.



*  So how how do garbled stories get turned into mouthpiece lore (both in print and on the internet?  Let's take this story as an example.  The mouthpiece is claimed to be an M.C. Gregory-Gale Hollywood-Bob Dukoff metal piece.  A what???  We are going to need some extraordinary evidence.

A white rubber tooth guard vulcanized into a Gale mouthpiece.  Click to enlarge.

Okay.  Let's look at this mouthpiece based on what we now know.  There is no evidence that Malcolm Gregory ever had anything to do with Gale (any Gale), so a Gregory-Gale mouthpiece is really an incredible claim for which there is no evidence, let alone our required extraordinary evidence.  We know that Gale Products, Inc. used a round GALE logo stamp, not a stamp with generic block type as on this piece, so this mouthpiece is likely a later CTG (Cesar Tschudin Gale) product.  There is no evidence whatsoever that Tschudin ever met Gregory, or Dukoff, or that Dukoff and Gregory ever met.  And we know that Bob Dukoff had already moved to Florida by the time Cesar Tschudin began making these pieces.  Without musical make believe, this is just a metal mouthpiece produced by Cesar Tschudin using a commercially available casting.  In fact, the metal tenor castings are actually listed in Tschudin's 1949 inventory provided to Elmer Beechler (at the end of Part V).

And whoever stamped this this piece GALE seems to be new at the job.  You won't find such sloppy double-strike imprinting on a Rico (Gregory brand) piece, or a Dukoff piece, or a Beechler, or even a Gale Products, Inc.  I wonder who could have stamped this mouthpiece?

A "double stamp" of GALE to get the name on straight.

There is a clue on the shank of this mouthpiece.  Remember that Cesar Tschudin had a "California" stamp listed on his 1949 inventory when he was trying to partner with Elmer Beechler (shown at the end of Part V).  

It appears that Tschudin may have later gotten a "Hollywood" stamp and decided that Hollywood sounded better.  Hollywood in script is stamped over California.  Not the same level of craftsmanship seen on a Rico Gregory or Dukoff "B.D." mouthpiece.  I doubt that either of those businesses would have let this mouthpiece out the door.

First stamped "California" and then over-stamped with "Hollywood."

Not the same quality as a similar casting used by Bob Dukoff.

Claiming that Bob Dukoff had M.C.Gregory hand finish this Gale pieces is a great fantasy.  What if we don't want to give that up?  We could stamp our feet and claim that unless somebody can prove that Bob Dukoff and Malcolm Gregory didn't work together, and that Malcolm Gregory didn't hand finish the piece at his "company" (Gale Products), then the claim of a Gregory/Gale/Dukoff mouthpiece is absolutely true.   Or, we could claim that Gale Gregory finished the mouthpiece (working with Bob Dukoff) before she died in a house fire.  We could even claim that M.C. Gregory's attorney (Cesar Tschudin) finished the mouthpiece (working with Bob Dukoff).  

It becomes a matter of the burden of proof.  Who has it and what is considered proof.  "I read it on the internet" meets the standard for some people.  For those people, it is now up to someone to show them that the internet lore isn't true.  I'll admit that I didn't start from that perspective.  As I said, I started from the position that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.  And the evidence that I see, even if some of it is circumstantial, simply doesn't come close to supporting claims of a Gregory/Gale/Tschudin/Dukoff fusion mouthpiece.  

From what we actually know, it appears that Gale Products, Inc. had purchased some similar, maybe even identical cast pieces to those that were then being used by Bob Dukoff (as did Woodwind Co. N.Y. and others).  Many tenor castings (510) were apparently later sold to Cesar Tschudin and show up on the inventory that he provided to Elmer Beechler as part of the 1949 Beechler-Tschudin mouthpiece business.  We know that Tschudin started out with a Gem stamp and a California stamp, as individually itemized on his 1949 inventory.  It appears that on later castings he may have changed to "Hollywood" after having already stamped some pieces "California."  

Some of these casting could have been finished by Carl Satzinger, a non-musician and Malcolm Gregory's ex-son-in-law, and stamped with the round GALE logo.  Some could have been finished by Cesar Tschudin, a non-musician and ex-salesman of redwood novelty items and stamped with the Gem logo or a later GALE in block letters.  Or, maybe, some could have been finished by Elmer Beechler, a musician of some note and an experienced mouthpiece facer during his short association with Tschudin.  It is only the Dukoff/Gregory part for which there is not a scintilla of plausible evidence.  If you play a Gem mouthpiece and feel that you are channeling the skills of Bob Dukoff, feel the resonance of a Rico M.C. Gregory piece, and maybe get a little of that West Coast/Paul Desmond vibe, that's great.  That probably means that Cesar Tschudin was a fast learner.  Or it could mean that you have a an active and flexible imagination, which is good for a musician but not necessarily for an historian.

** The first "Gale" is the one where Malcolm Gregory changed the name of "his" company.  We haven't found any evidence that he had a company or changed its name, but that was alleged in the original M.C. Gregory Saga and is mandatory to make the Saga plausible.  Then, there is Gale Products, Inc. (GPI), which we discovered was a California corporation started by Rico Products and Satzinger.  That was apparently unknown in the original M.C. Gregory Saga.  Then there is the "Gale" operated by Gale Gregory, Malcolm Gregory's non-existant daughter who died in a fire.  We now know that Gale's involvement was also fictional, but it was alleged in the original M.C. Gregory Saga and is absolutely necessary to make the Saga plausible.  Now, there is the newly discovered Beechler-Tschudin business venture.  This fourth version of "Gale" was apparently unknown by Bay or Morgan when the original M.C. Gregory Saga was published.  Beechler's working with Tschudin, and not working with Gregory, makes the Saga truly fictitious. Finally, there was an unrelated business, which I have called Cesar Tschudin's Gale (CTG), that was started with hundreds of blank mouthpieces purchased from the defunct Gale Products, Inc.  Tschudin faced mouthpieces which he stamped both Gem and Gale.  This business was later sold to Charles Bay in 1969.

Confused yet?  I know, we are musicians and like to play fast and loose.  But playing fast and loose with the facts is what got us into this mess.   A superficial assertion like "Gale produced the Master Model Gregory" must be clarified before we can even start to examine it.  In this instance, an examination shows that the story is often repeated, but is not true.