INTRODUCTION

This guide describes briefly the collection of music which I have built over a fifty year period.

It was approximately that long ago when I began to acquire popular sheet music. My first purchase consisted of twelve lithographed sheets which I saw in a Baltimore shop window, and on which I spent the tremendous sum of six dollars.

Not many months thereafter an opportunity arrived to make a second and larger purchase, for a much higher price, $15 or $20, and I was on my way.

It was soon evident that music of a period was closely tied to the history and mores of the country's development. It became important to me, therefore, to demonstrate how popular music followed America's fortunes, and that, in the main, is the background of the collection as it exists today.

We sang the virtues of a war or a president. We touched on the American sense of humor. We sang about our mode of dress or advances in technology, or the prevailing attractions of the people at any particular time. Our popular music covered every situation.

Love, mother, humor and patriotism were the most predominant subjects, though not necessarily in that order. But songs about presidents and dancers and ballplayers and comedians and state militia and modes of transportation came and went, and I seized the opportunity to preserve the subjects and their chronology for posterity.

Lester S. Levy
Baltimore, Maryland
January, 1984

INTRODUCTION to the Lester S. Levy Collection Web site

In 1984, my great uncle Lester penned the original introduction to this Guide to his sheet music collection, and there is not much I can add to that introduction. This Web site attempts to reproduce the look and feel of uncle Lester's Guide. At the same time, however, it also attempts to enhance the Guide through Internet technologies and magic that have been developed since the original Guide was put together.

Uncle Lester's collection, and certainly any guide to that collection, literally cry out "multimedia!" This Web site is a multimedia version of the original. It attempts to add new dimensions of color, sound and supplementary material. It is meant to serve, not only as a guide to the physical collection, but also to the extensive online version of that collection which has been put together by Johns Hopkins University. Johns Hopkins has done an amazing job in scanning in the covers from the entire collection, and indexing that collection, and I highly recommend you check out their Web site at http://levysheetmusic.mse.jhu.edu.

Just as Uncle Lester's original Guide is a microcosm of the original collection, I hope this Web site will serve as a microcosm of what the collection can evolve into through the use of multimedia and Internet magic.

I would thank those without whom this Web site would not have been possible: Cynthia Requardt, the Kurrelmeyer Curator of Special Collections at the Milton S. Eisenhower Library where my great uncle's collection is stored, Ann Saslav, uncle Lester's pianist of many years who played all the music for this site, my great aunt Eleanor who provided the initial spark for this project and who assisted Hopkins greatly with the collection as a whole, and, of course, uncle Lester himself.

Alan B. Oppenheimer
Ashland, Oregon
December, 1999

GUIDE TO THE LESTER S. LEVY COLLECTION

The Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music, generously donated to The Johns Hopkins University by Lester Levy over a period of years starting in 1976, is now housed in the Special Collections Division of the Milton S. Eisenhower Library. It is hoped that this brief guide, which is intended to be an overview of the scope and contents of the collection, will provide a starting point for researchers who are interested in using this material.

The guide is arranged alphabetically by the subject categories assigned by Mr. Levy while he collected the material. Each subject category has box numbers and within each box the sheets are arranged alphabetically by song title and numbered. There are over 190 boxes of approximately 26,000 sheets of music, as well as 55 bound volumes of various types of music. A card catalogue in Special Collections indexes the collection by song title, composer, author, publisher, lithographer and first line of song. Individual pieces are easily retrieved, therefore, with a box number and sheet number. Limited photocopying services are available.

Further inquiries about the Levy Collection should be addressed to the Kurrelmeyer Curator of Special Collections, Milton S. Eisenhower Library, The Johns Hopkins University.