Hello Andrew, First of all, it is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.
And a fond "hello" to all the friends you copied on the email.  Some
are old friends, some new.  In any event, I am happy to correspond with
you and hopefully help to the extent that I can.

I was unaware of Mark Reinhart's posting on MMD in January, 2017.
I have not been current with MMD or written anything for the group for
some time now.  My wife Amanda passed away tragically on May 30, 2016,
from cancer, just after our family moved to a new residence in Georgia.
Since that time I have devoted myself to raising our three teenage
daughters and have lost interest in most other aspects of life.  I am
now retired (Amanda was much younger than me); my music interest is
still there, but I no longer play the piano myself or the rolls.

In spare time I work on completing the roll and MIDI archives which
I started around 1995, which now number at circa 500,000 and 77,000
records respectively.  I gave the A-, G-, O-, 4X-, APP, H/MSR and
probably other sections of my work to Matt Jaro the better part of
10 years ago.  Matt, being a highly accomplished programmer, worked
them up into a series of state-of-the-art Access relational databases
with enhanced search and sort capabilities that are far beyond my
original approach, which was strictly functional and not concerned
with aesthetics.  These databases which Matt re-worked (quite
beautifully) I believe are now posted on the MMD archives.

I will try to address all the questions in your letter in the order
you asked them, to the best of my ability.  First, on the LIND A-rolls.
In my experience I have physically seen, databased and likely recorded
a total of only six of them.  Interestingly, based on Dave Junchen's
comment which you mention, none of them were Clark masters.  Five
were Columbia masters and one I believe was an early Cremona.  Lind
re-numbered their rolls, so there is no relation to the original serial
numbers of the actual manufacturers.  I'm attaching a spreadsheet for
you with all my information on the LIND labeled rolls.

Now on to Kibbey.  This company remains quite a mystery.  I have
personally seen a few dozen Kibbey rolls, in multiple formats.  With
the exception of the 88-note issues, virtually _none_ of the rolls are
identified as being made by Kibbey.  Their labels are the plainest of
the plain, and that's actually one of the ways to identify them as
Kibbey rolls.  Often the labels are on white paper and the titles were
manually typewritten.  Another is the perforation shape, which was
unusual.  Kibbey rolls were perforated with "D" shaped holes; the flat
part of the "D" being what the tracker bar sees first.

They were probably one of the very first paper roll companies which
catered to coin-op machines.  Your date estimate of 1910-20 I would
say is reasonable, but they might have even started a bit earlier
than that, and probably folded before our involvement in WW1.  Their
perforating equipment would most likely have been acquired by U.S.
Music (or Columbia, if Kibbey survived until 1920 -- both were in
Chicago), but in any event those companies re-tooled the dies and
switched to round shape perfs if that in fact happened.  Many times
the older perforating equipment was sold as scrap.

Most of the surviving information about Kibbey rolls came to me
via a large package of photocopied original roll flyers that were
a gift from my late friend, Ed Sprankle, around 1995.  The owner of
the original flyers was a collector in Texas who if memory serves
was Mr. Dick Howe (I might be wrong on this).  What is important
about this, other than the serial number and tune information, is that
all the flyers contained a message at the end which said something to
the effect (and I'm paraphrasing) "we supply music rolls for _any_
coin-operated musical instrument."

In the earliest days, most of the coin-op instruments used endless
rolls, usually with 5 tunes.  As a result, most the Kibbey rolls listed
in those flyers are 5-tuners.  However, it is clear from both the
flyers and existing rolls that customers could request the rolls in
most any format.  Existing Kibbey 10-tune A-rolls are all composites
of two 5-tune master rolls, with some coding added for pedals, mandolin
and pipes or xylophone.  They didn't work much on the coding, it was
elementary at best.

However, they _did_ work very hard on the musical arrangements.  Many
of the existing Kibbey rolls in the ragtime idiom are simply the best
and most ornate arrangements that I have ever heard, even out-arranging
the USM masters.  For whatever reason, the 10-tune Kibbey A-rolls often
start out with 5 rags and end with 5 waltzes or ballads.

I have personally seen rolls that I believe were manufactured by Kibbey
in the following formats: 5-tune endless for Berry-Wood (11-1/4" width);
5-tune endless for Automatic Musical Company which later became LINK
(12" width); 5-tune endless for Standard Player Piano Co. of Oregon,
Illinois; A-rolls and G-rolls (there is only one known surviving Kibbey
G-roll, in the collection of Bob Gilson, and which he gave permission
for me to recut years ago).

I have never seen Kibbey rolls for any Peerless format , including
44-note, D, DX, Cabaret, or Peerless Style O.  For many years
I believed that Kibbey made the first Operator's O-rolls because of
the labeling.  However, this theory was disproved by an eloquent bit
of research by Art Reblitz, who showed beyond doubt that the earliest
O-rolls were in fact manufactured by QRS.  These articles are most
likely posted in the MMD Archives.

As for the 88-note Kibbey rolls, there were two series; arranged and
hand-played.  The arranged rolls had the label "Kibbey Klean-Cut (or
Kleen-Cut)" in green ink.  I have a couple of these but most of my
collection is in long-term storage so it's impossible for me to send
you an example at this point in time.

I am aware of the Kibbey hand-played rolls by Harry Archer and have
a few of those also.  These as you indicated are on the "Roth" label.
This might have been a department store Kibbey marketed the rolls for,
just a thought.  I did find a label photocopy of one of these in the
archives and am attaching it for you to see.  The only Roth rolls I've
seen were all played by Archer.

Also attached here is a spreadsheet containing all the information
I know about Kibbey rolls.  There were at least several hundred of
them, as you will see.  With regards to Kibbey A-416 which you
mentioned hearing at Glenn Thomas's home, years ago I also was able
to identify tune #8 as "I'm Crying Just For You."  There is a great
Al Jolson recording on YouTube, made in his later years with wonderful
fidelity.

The waltz which is tune #9 is still unknown to me.  For your
interest and hopefully some listening pleasure I'm attaching a MIDI
file of #9 and the whole of Kibbey A-416 as well.  If you listen to the
first track, which is Joe Lamb's "American Beauty Rag," I think you'll
understand my comments about the wonderful arranging skills of those
unknown folks who left us just a handful of Kibbey rolls.

I think that's about all I can offer on this subject, so I wish you and
all copied friends and/or acquaintances all the best.

Frank Himpsl

 [   ArtistPlayd_A901.jpg (68 kb)
 [ http://www.mmdigest.com/Attachments/17/04/08/170408_171117_ArtistPlayd_A901.jpg 
 [   Lind Rolls1.xls (51 kb)
 [ http://www.mmdigest.com/Attachments/17/04/08/170408_171117_Lind%20Rolls1.xls 
 [   Kibbey Rolls1.xls (473 kb)
 [ http://www.mmdigest.com/Attachments/17/04/08/170408_171117_Kibbey%20Rolls1.xls 
 [   Kibbey_A-416.mid (131 kb)
 [ http://www.mmdigest.com/Attachments/17/04/08/170408_171111_Kibbey_A-416.mid 
 [   Kibbey_A-416-9.mid (16 kb)
 [ http://www.mmdigest.com/Attachments/17/04/08/170408_171111_Kibbey_A-416-9.mid