Mark,

Your comments makes me think you've missed my point...

I said "People LIKE Jim Cellini, Johnny Fox and Gazzo, Nick N." I would include all those street artists whose names I do not know but who also learned to engage and entertain the audience and not just perform the sleights and assume that the trick alone would bring them 'big hats.'

And by the way, how do you know how successful all those ancient greeks and romans were at their shows?
My guess is that those ancient greek buskers were probably wondering why their hats weren't bigger? Have you ever busked in Greece? I have and over there the standard reaction is people throwing small coins (the equivalent of nickels and dimes) at your feet. Not at all what I would call a 'big hat.'

Either way, I wasn't making a point about history.

I was agreeing with you. . . not looking for a fight.

My point was people have been making money with C&B longer than Gazzo, Cellini, et al have been around. . . which was NOT apparent in your original post. I wasn't calling you out in public.
Mark

I think the biggest difference is our "short attention span" generation of today. It was Gazzo, Cellini, and at a more esoteric level, Vernon and Ammar that brought this classic back in the spotlight and reminded a whole new generation of what a treasure it really is. Actually, it was technology that did it. I doubt that new magicians would even know of the above people if they hadn't seen them on television, or more recently, on the Internet.

A couple of exercises I did once, was was to flip my opener and closer to mix things up a bit.

Another exercise was, to do my opener and closer as my openening routines. This was scary because I felt like I did my best material up front. What it did though, was to force me to present my middle at the end and as such give it more weight in the balance of the show.

As previous posts have stated it's the performance and the performer. . . not the effect. I eneded my show for the last experiment with my coin routine. Manipulations, Silk and Silver into 3 Fly. Went over fine.

Percy press, Jim Haviland (Both of whom were also famous for their hat loads) might disagree.

I think we have the names mentioned above to thank for brining it to everyone and not just the few of us fortunate enough to have seen it live on the street. More so we have video tape and DVD to thank. Had it existed 80 years ago we might be sitting here talking about Charlie Edwards, Percy Press, and Payne. This guy Payne who was Charlie Edwards teacher was a household name throughout England. He was a big star of the turn of the century there. He was also famous for his cups and balls routine.

Because of a lack of any suitable media his act with the few mentions by Percy Press on the Martin Breese audio tape has been sadly lost to time.

Bob Read and I emailed back and forth on this subject a few times before he passed and he was as saddened as I was that this stuff, treasures really, were lost to time. Bob knew everybody who was anybody that was a cups worker and this Payne fellow was suppose to be the best of the best.

I will say that the best stuff I've seen has been found in books and from talking with people face to face and not the stuff on the video tapes. I am and probably always will be a student. The deeper I dig it seems the less I know. There really is a whole world of busking out there that is fantastic and amazing and some of it almost 500 years old.

Bob's pitch for example has had a magician working it for over 300 years. That was long before this country was a twinkle in our forefathers eyes. Those guys were doing the cups sure, but they were also doing the rings, the die box, the card sword, and a whole truckload of other stuff.

A lot of it is still in books. Some of the acts described in fairly good detail, but there is almost never a name mentioned other than, "The busker who does magic".

It would be nice to find something concrete and give these guys who have been lost to history their due. We are all standing on the shoulders of those who passed before.

Best,

Dan-