Classic-Banjo
Cammeyer's Letters to Broomfield (kinda), a Question.
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 Technically, I believe all would still be under copyright, being unpublished letters.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?
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.
11 hours ago
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.
9 hours ago
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.
8 hours ago