Using Vintage Advertising to Help You Collect Sheet Music

One thing that has helped lead the direction of my sheet music collecting has been the advertising found along with the sheet music I've previously collected. Often publishers would include a page showing the first few lines from each of four pieces in their sheet music line, or if space was limited, stuck at the bottom of the last page. In my adventures collecting sheet music, and especially when I've stumbled onto something I've never seen before, those advertisements have led me to many levels of discovery when it came to finding equally -- or sometimes -- more precious items that are related to each other. Included below are eleven different advertisements found at the bottom of a small band arrangement of "Margie" and I think you will see how many new and exciting things I found to collect as a result of purchasing this one arrangement from 1947:

Welcome to Collecting Sheet Music

Welcome to Collecting Sheet Music, the chronicles of one man's quest to collect and preserve old sheet music. Rather than collecting for art purposes, as do many collectors of old sheet music, I am a professional musician and collect old sheet music for performance, study, and preservation. Most of my collection is from the jazz genre, but I also collect film music, Broadway show tunes and standards, pop and rock music, and many other types. I'll be posting details on specific aspects and parts of my collection, but more importantly, I'll be posting the many tips and tricks I've used to track down the vintage sheet music I'm looking for quickly. I hope this can be a both a resource and a community for other collectors of old sheet music -- please join the dialogue by adding comments. Thanks for visiting, and welcome to Collecting Sheet Music!