Hard to imagine these two fellas as being avant-garde or on the cutting edge of anything besides a motel lounge nightmare or perhaps guest judging Project Runway. And yes, the second half of their career saw Ferrante & Teicher going the mersh route and spiraling down an easy listening, creativity sucking drain. Laughed all the way to the bank too, they did. But yet, in the early 1950′s these dudes brought the prepared piano of John Cage into the plush lined, afro/tiki decorated parlors of middle America.
The video below looks like it was filmed much later than 1955 when Soundproof caused folks to doubt that the sounds on it could be produced by just two pianos. But by tossing sandpaper, sticks, rubber, wood blocks, metal bars, chains, glass, mallets, and other found objects on piano string beds they produced sounds startlingly close to moogs before they were even invented.
As Mike Burma of Brow Beat (thanks for turning me on to it) points out, Being able to see both their hands in the split screen brings home how impressive a composition it is:
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