When searching those rollography pages which are sorted alphabetically by song titles, it is important to recognize there has been a great effort to insure accuracy. However, to achieve the goal of locating the title you are looking for there has to a be a slight compromise between the way the original box label (and /or bulletin) was actually printed and the actual published title name from it’s composer.

As we have found in the verification process, the title (and even style) of a particular song is not guaranteed to be accurately represented on the box labels or roll bulletins. In those early days of music roll production there was not so much a focus on “accuracy in identity” as much as there was the effort to make the titles of the day recognizable to those potential purchasers of these rolls.

The titling process the roll manufacturers followed was also not consistent. For the sake of brevity, published tune names were often truncated to the “basic theme name” by the manufacturer on its printed labels or bulletins. (i.e. In the case of some titles that started with the word “The”, the word was dropped entirely from the name as printed on the box label.)

To aid in identifying the actual tune on a roll, we have taken license to actually include missing words from the published title as given in the source document. This is especially needed in the cases of different tunes with similar titles.

Our goal here is to allow the collector or historian the greatest ability to identify actual roll IDs by the tunes contained therein.

Please enjoy the use of this resource and feel free to submit corrections or additions as discovered.
Submit all entries to: Rollography Manager .