Sheet Music Buffs and Their Collections

By the 1930s a few collectors had recognized that the popular music of the day, along with the music that had been published in America for the past 150 years, represented an aspect of our history that need to be preserved. Only a few institutions, such as the Library of Congress at Washington, the New York Public Library, Brown University at Providence, Harvard's Houghton Library, and the Grosvenor Library in Buffalo, had had the foresight to solicit and organize collections of this form of America. Let me recall my experiences with this group of men and women who developed the odd precedent of searching for and garnering popular music. dean of our group was Joseph Muller (1877-1939) of Closter, New Jersey. Born in German, he had once been the chief steward on J. P. Morgan's yacht. He left this position around 1930 to become and assistant in the music division of the New York Public Library. For years Muller's special interest was American patriotic music, especially the early published editions of The Star-Spangled Banner. His search eventually resulted in his bibliography of all the then-known pre-Civil War editions, a book that remains the most important guide to its subject as well as a collector's item in its own right.' Muller worked quietly at the library, and he attracted the attention of a small but growing group of people with a longing for knowledge about America's early music. What a varied lot they were! Close in age to Muller was J. Francis Driscoll (1875-1959) of Brookline, Massachusetts, a construction engineer and sometime church organist. Around 1898 Driscoll began to acquire the music of Stephen Foster, whom he greatly admired. Another of his special interests was Boston music imprints. Another man of almost the same age was W. Lloyd Keepers (1886?-1978) of New York. He had shown great promise as a financier after his graduation from Princeton in 1907, but he was beset by series of misfortunes that not only destroyed his family relationships but also wiped out his financial accumulations. Keepers thereafter spent much of his time haunting the centers of used book material in

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