In answer to Dave Saul's question, the appearance of Duo-Art masters on
Melodee was the norm, rather than the exception, especially for dance
music.  In the course of cataloguing UK issues of Aeolian dance rolls,
I have looked into this area, and the things Aeolian got up to were
quite extraordinary!

Aeolian, usually in the guise of the Universal Music Roll Company, were
masters at 'badge engineering', and made the widest possible use of
their roll masters.

Having obtained a performance at the recording piano, the decision
to code it for Duo-Art seems to have depended on the style of music.
Jazz, for instance, wasn't usually coded but issued only on Melodee
(or earlier things like Universal Uni-Record and Metro-Art).  Wouldn't
it have been nice to have James P. Johnson or more Eubie Blake
Duo-Arts?  I suppose the 'race' market wasn't affluent enough to own
reproducing pianos.

Some recordings were borrowed for Artrio-Angelus; for instance,
a few Gershwin rolls were not issued on Duo-Art but were issued for
Artrio.  A lot of other Artrio rolls appear to originate from Duo-Art
performances.

After this, a typical pattern in the UK seems to have been to issue
the 88-note version on an Aeolian 'house' label (one they would sell
themselves) and a 'third-party' label (Universal, for resale by
independent dealers under its own name or with any other name stuck
on).  The roll would also be issued on the Angelus label.

Some form of the same thing happened in the USA, although brand names
were different.  For instance, Rob DeLand's Bluestone Spring 1997
catalog had a Les Copeland Rag, recorded by the composer for Metro-Art,
located on the 'Virtuolo' label - this having some odd expression
coding added.

Classical rolls were issued in themed 88-note versions - various 'hand-
played' series appeared.  Even the World's Music series of annotated
rolls appeared in Pianola 88-note form, identical in every way except
for removal of expression coding.

The use (or not) of artist names on the different labels is character-
istic.  I would love to know why Melodee named artists only on box
labels.  In the UK at least, the World's Music Pianola versions often
do not carry the artist's name.  Dance rolls only had the artist's name
in the more expensive word series - the otherwise identical non-word
rolls have no artist name!

Julian Dyer