Any sizeable music roll collection has at least _one_ piano roll by
Herman Avery Wade.  You know the one: lots of notes played by one
person with five or six hands.  Usually the selections are held
loosely but skillfully together with lots of repeated notes, everywhere
on the keyboard.  There is even an example of one of Wade's rolls in
the sound section of this forum's Archives.

I did some research in the MMD Archives and came up with three posts
about Wade.  They were from back a few years, but offered some insight
into the man in question.  Maybe I should say the _men_ in question for
there has been speculation that Wade used several names in his stint
with Aeolian.

One name linked, at least on paper, to Wade is Ellis Linder and,
indeed, I have scans of thirty-four rolls arranged by Linder.  Then
I noticed some other arranger's names that "played" the same style
of roll as Wade.  I have scans of forty-seven George Swift rolls.

To further muddy the waters I found others who were not so prolific,
however, the music sounds about the same.  Those talented men are:
H. M. Higgs, F. W. Meacham, George W. Martin, J. Bodewalt Lampe,
R. I. Halle, and Al LaRue.  Raise your hand if any of those names
sound to you like they were a figment of someone's imagination!

Wade, Swift and Linder shouldered the load of most of the rolls I have.
All told, the files contain 149 rolls of the "medley" type with show
tunes, Popular Hits of the Day, Follies of (you fill in the year) and
other such names.  My favorite is Timely Tunes No. (?), which can mean
just about anything.

I spent a rainy Saturday afternoon going through all of my music roll
files and came up with scans of over sixty-five of Herman Avery Wade's
rolls.  I had planned to re-cut some but never gotten around to looking
as to just what I had.  A lot of the scans would take hours of editing
to get them ready for the perforator so chances of truckloads of "Play
As Many Notes As You Can" rolls will not be leaving San Antonio anytime
soon.

I did, however, make a list of all of the rolls, the songs on them and
the roll numbers and put them in a makeshift Adobe file.  It is rough,
to say the least, but if you want one it will be available to you just
as soon as I can ascertain how to put a PDF on my web site so the world
has access to it.  If our august editors would like a copy just let me
know and it can be available to millions and millions of people.  Well,
maybe thousands and thousands!

Hat's off to all those people who scanned the rolls.  Yes, I know some
of them will never be punched in paper but they sure as hell are fun to
listen to.

Ed Gaida - Preserving music by punching holes in paper
San Antonio, Texas