Thought folks would find this interesting...

I recently came across a box of unusual piano rolls during one of my regular
flea market expeditions up to Adamstown, PA. It was a carton of about a dozen
88-note rolls, in plain, dark green boxes. The titles were hand written (in
beautiful, old-time script) on white end labels. Tunes are all classical --
Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn -- piano Sonatas, Trios, etc.

I pulled out one of the rolls, and the title was also hand written on the
roll itself, along with tempo, and other instructions (forte, ff, etc.).
Penciled at the edge were two dates, a few days apart, in 1927. I realized
that these were some sort of home-made rolls, and the dates must be "begin"
and "end" dates for each tune.

Suspecting that this might be worth taking home, I scarfed up the carton (12
rolls for $24!). Arriving back home in Virginia, I immediately put one of the
rolls (the Mozart trio) on my 1925 Weaver/York player, and started
pumping...WOW! Whoever the unknown creator of these rolls were, he was a
master! By following the expression notations carefully penned in throughout
each roll, these rolls sound wonderful! The nice thing is that they're (I
believe) note-for-note transcriptions off the actual scores, not like some of
my other classical rolls that are a bit too heavily "orchestrated" for my
taste. (Also, because they're not heavily orchestrated, they're a breeze to
pump!)

Has anyone else come across home-perforated rolls such as these? The guy I
bought them from didn't know anything about them, except that they came "from
someone in Philadelphia." The perforations are small round punches, and the
rolls ends are the regular black bakelite type.

-- Jim Canavan