Guide to the

LESTER S. LEVY COLLECTION

of Sheet Music

Milton S. Eisenhower Library
The Johns Hopkins University
1984

PREFACE

The Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music, generously donated to The Johns Hopkins University by Lester S. 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 30,000 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 inquires about the Levy Collection should be addressed to the Kurrelmeyer Curator of Special Collections, Milton S. Eisenhower Library, The Johns Hopkins University.

INTRODUCTION

The 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