My good friend Jerry Bacon wrote a few days ago of different roll
companies using different brands on the same roll, and how to recognize
manufacturers.  I'd like to elaborate on this a bit.

When I began collecting rolls, I decided to go after odd brands, and
wound up with many odd brands that somehow looked familiar.  Jerry
mentioned looking at how the words are printed.  There are many other
ways to determine who made a roll, but this is a good one.  Another
is to look at the tab.  Many roll manufacturers had some kind of
distinctive tab.

Also, it's helpful in determining a rolls origin to be familiar
with the various types of flanges used by the major manufacturers.
For example, rolls by U.S. Music Co. had their very distinctive
"Friestedt" flanges.  Sometimes flanges can help date a roll too.
Many manufacturers altered their flange designs over the years, and
knowing when a particular flange type was used (approximately) can
give an inkling as to when the roll was produced.

Another helpful way to determine (in some cases) the manufacturer of
a roll is to look at perforator idiosyncrasies.  For example, all of
the word rolls made by Capitol/Columbia (and there are lots of
different brands there) will have a perforation in the extreme margin
of the roll every foot or so, which they used to assure that the words
were synchronized properly.

 [ See http://mmd.foxtail.com/MMMedia/brands.html and
 [ http://mmd.foxtail.com/MMMedia/CoCap/supertone.html

Yet another clue to a rolls origin is, oddly enough, the format of the
tempo indication.  The first clue I often have that an odd brand was
actually manufactured by QRS is the distinctive format QRS used to mark
the tempo on leaders.

On another topic entirely, Joyce Brite mentioned using the same melody
in different songs.  One example of this that immediately came to my
mind was from the musical "The Music Man".  Composer Meredith Wilson
slowed down the tempo of the famous march from the show, "Seventy-Six
Trombones" and artfully crafted from it the melody of the love ballad
"Goodnight My Someone".  Wilson did this so well that many people
I know, even musical theater folk, have never noticed that the melody
of both tunes is the same.  I certainly would never have noticed, had
it not been pointed out to me.

This afternoon I'm off to an AMICA meeting in Dallas, where I will
see and hear what may quite possibly be the world's only electric
blue Duo-Art (don't ask!).  Then next weekend I will be visiting my
significant other in Chicago, and we plan to visit the Sanfilippo
collection.  If any Chicago AMICA members or MMDers would like to join
me and my beau for lunch over the Labor Day holiday, just email me.
I arrive on Thursday and go home on Monday.

Regards,

Bryan "Catt" Cather =^:^=
Arlington, TX