Everybody Wants a Key to My Cellar

Some paying work removed me from the Paramount for a couple of weeks. I took a nice breather last Thursday, when I returned to the Library and its stacks of unsorted music for a welcome change of scenery.

It was a special occasion: the Library hosted an august visitor, Kerry Stratton, Conductor and Music Director for the Toronto Philharmonia, scanning the Rudolph catalog and the Library's Filemaker database for selections he can use in some future salon orchestra programs. Unfortunately, we disappointed his hopes of finding the music for "Xylophone Stampede". But the Library's holdings provided diverting surprises:

• A script for an NBC radio program broadcast from San Francisco in the late 1940's. Reading aloud the corny between-song patter, with its obsequious repetition of sponsor names, scotched my illusion that mainstream radio was any less inane sixty years ago

• An instruction manual, Glenn Miller's Method for Orchestral Arranging, autographed by the famous band leader

• And a program for a recital by the students of Walter J. Rudolph, performed at Oakley Hall on March 7, 1912

Program, the students of Walter J. Rudolph in concert

Who was the romantically posed longhair on the program cover? Was it the young Mr. Rudolph himself?