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  Technically, I believe all would still be under copyright, being unpublished letters.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.

[Joel Hooks]

Okay, will scan and upload to the archive, with pleasure.

Richard, I fully intend to scan every piece of paper I have and share with the world.  So far I’ve been able to upload a couple things a day, sometimes more.  My only concern is with things that might cause copyright conflicts.

I believe that most, if not all, of this banjo stuff would fall into the “abandoned” category. Meaning that no one can claim ownership.  Sadly, I am learning that there is a new form of scumbag similar to the patent troll that will claim copyright on YouTube to all manner of public domain music.  Then proof falls on the victim, not the person making the claim.

[Richard William Ineson]

It's good of you to share your collection, thank you. I don't think that I have anything very rare or anything which cannot be viewed on the internet somewhere. I do have some personal letters sent to  me by BillBall which I hesitate to share because he is quite critical of some banjo players/fans etc. some of whom may be still alive.

[Joel Hooks]

Ah yeah, the old "it has value" (meaning monetary value).  That still comes up with "collectors". 

To me, the value is posting a scan of some random piece of sheet music and a few weeks later some person I don't know on the other side of the country puts up a video of themself playing it. 

To me the value is making these documents available for folks to use to write interesting articles and books in the future using more complete information. 

To me the value is someone enjoying an article on tone production and shading written in 19whaterver by some dead guy.

To me the value is someone enjoying looking at the beautiful graphics of titlesheets, engraved music fonts, and catalog cuts of banjos.  Or enjoying the halftone photos.

Keeping it hidden away in a collection does no good for anyone.

With sheet music, people don't know that they what it if they don't know it exists.  

[Joel Hooks]

So here is a letter from D. L. Day (of the Bacon Banjo Company) written to A. P. Sharpe:

https://archive.org/details/letter-from-d.-l.-day-to-a.-p.-sharpe-a...

Stuff like this has more value being read than staying in a file folder and slowly turning to dust.