Cammeyer's Letters to Broomfield (kinda), a Question.

[Joel Hooks]

Alright, I have this file folder of stuff.

As far as I can tell, George Collins (founding member of the ABF) was going to write an article for the Fretted Instrument News on the Zither Banjo (I don't know if it was ever published as there is a draft of it with a rejection letter stapled to it).

So it seems that Collins started writing to Broomfield on the subject.  This prompted Broomfield to sit down and type out excerpts from many (all?) of the letters Cammeyer wrote to him.   Each excerpt includes the letter date.

Also in this file are Broomfield's letters to Collins as well as a single actual letter from Cammeyer to Broomfield (I suppose this was sent to Collins as proof of legitimacy to the excerpts).  There is a very nice drawing of a zither banjo (I don't know who did this) and some other info including the page from the BMG about Broomfield getting Cammeyer's first zither banjo. 

None of the info in the letters is groundbreaking, though they do serve as evidence to put this "Temlett invented the zither banjo" nonsense to rest.   But all is very interesting.

So to my question... what to do with it?  Technically, I believe all would still be under copyright, being unpublished letters.  But I think this is important stuff.  Should I go ahead and scan and post it and take the risk that some ancestor of Broomfield, Collins or Cammeyer's sister might complain?

[Jody Stecher]

I don't think an ancestor  of these people is likely to complain as I am sure they are all dead. But there is a remote chance that a descendant might object, although I don't see why;  you are not selling these, you are essentially showing them to friends in a public place.

[Russ Chandler]

I think it's a very small risk compared to the value of having the correspondence available.

And if anyone were to complain its not like you'd end up in the Supreme Court, you could just apologise and remove it.

[Richard William Ineson]

'Publish and be damned'. Too many people in the banjo world keep their personal collections of banjobilia to themselves, or sell it on to other people who will also hide it all away, until he day they die and their relatives throw it all away. Earlier this year a banjo acquaintance of mine wrote to me telling me that he'd just bought another copy of Cammeyer's book, 'My Adventuresome Banjo'; inside the book was a letter written by Cammeyer to the original owner of the book. My banjo acquaintance, knowing of my interest in Cammeyer, told me that he would send me a copy of the letter, which he did. Unfortunately he photographed the letter with the book placed on top of it so that the letter could not  be read (Could any psychiatrist reading this explain his action to me?) . Bill Ball used to tell me about going to the ABF events with Joe Macnaughton/McNaughton/Mcnaughten/McNagten/MacNaghton,using him as a mule to carry piles of  old banjo 78rpm records and banjo memorabilia which were/was destined for one of the members of the ABF. Bill asked MacNaghten etc. if he could record these records before they left the UK forever, but MacNaughton refused his request saying that if he allowed this to happen, that it would devalue the records. 

[Richard William Ineson]

Here is the Cammeyer letter.