A very dear friend and one of the world's top music roll authorities passed away recently. Ed Spranke was a wonderful human being and one of the most generous, sharing people you could ever hope to meet. It hurts to even have to write this so soon, Ed deserved at least another 10 or 20 years of retirement! I decide to create this page in his honor, and to honor a few other friends who I've had the pleasure to meet over the years and who have unfortunately left us.

(Left: Ed at the June 1993 ragtime festival in Sedalia, MO. The unsightly fellow to Ed's right is yours truly, wearing a hat for Don Rand's resurrected "Clark Orchestra Roll Company". Ed sent me this photo after the festival - his caption was "Hey - it's the happiness boys!".
Right: Ed in a typical position, in front of his pride & joy: a beautifully-restored Seeburg A-roll piano with violin pipes. Ed bought this at the famous Charley Smallwood auction, and paid a lot of dough to get the machine he had always wanted and have it properly restored. It was worth it, this is a beautiful piano and a great way to show off Ed's many outstanding A rolls!)
NOTE: Click on either of these pictures of Ed for a larger view

Ed was a warm, wonderful human being. You couldn't select a better friend if you had all the choices in the world. He was friendly, funny, and always incredibly generous and anxious to share everything he had with you. We met in June 1987 when I sent him a letter asking for piano roll information, and we soon were trading photocopies of goodies from our respective collections. Besides music rolls, Ed had an incredibly good eye for attractive ephemera of the era, and his music room was decorated with a most tasteful array of vintage advertisements, photos, and such. He was a consummate collector, and could find stuff that nobody else would. I've never seen an antique gear shift knob at a flea market, but Ed had a collection of dozens of them! All types of colors and styles, stuff you just never would suppose existed. He also managed to collect dozens of letters from piano roll manufacturers with marvelous old letterheads - which he would sometimes photocopy and use as his own headers, to a wonderful effect.

(First: Ed's art glass lamp with dragonfly base; picked up in the UK while on a trip with his good friend John Farrell.
Second: Ed's final 88-note recut, a terrific pair of tunes transcribed from rare National coin piano rolls.
Third: A short letter from Ed, this one using J. P. Seeburg letterhead! Fourth: another neat letterhead)

Ed LOVED great A rolls, especially all-blues Capitol rolls, and there again especially the all-black titles (as opposed to white, Tin Pan Alley stuff). He placed ads in AMICA and elsewhere to pay $100 and more for select A rolls, and was able to sniff a few out of the woodwork that way which none of the rest of us were able to find. And then he would arrange to have them recut, so we could all share in the bounty! If I were lucky enough to stumble on a great A roll that we didn't know about yet, Ed would be the first person I wanted to tell, because I knew how excited he would be to find out. The photos below are from a collection he was able to borrow, in return for which he would ID any unknown titles he could and recut anything he deemed worthy. Another example is a great roll that I discovered while visiting a collector in Georgia. I went through all of this collector's rolls, and discovered a Capitol all-blues title that was previously unknown. After informing Ed, the next thing I know Ed has arranged to borrow & recut the roll. If it weren't for Ed, that roll would probably still not have been reissued to this day.

(Left, Right: a collection of A rolls Ed pored through for potential recutting. Who else would send photos like this, so his friends could share in the excitement of another possible unknown gem? Ed had a great sense of fun and knew we would enjoy seeing a trunk crammed full of A rolls!)

Ed reissued 222 88-note rolls and another several dozen A rolls on his EchoeS label (get it? "Echoes", which is appropriate, and "E..S" his initials). He also loaned very generously to many other A roll recutting projects, including those of PlayRite, Ray Siou, yours truly, and most recently Ed Gaida. Ed's knowledge, enthusiasm, sense of humor (here's a typical joke Ed sent me) and especially his friendship will be sorely missed.

Ed's other musical interests / contributions include collecting rare blues sheet music, recording pianists at festivals, and sponsoring the release of several LP's and CD's of material he had recorded or otherwise saved from oblivion, including pianist Russ Gilman (Echoes CD), Jimmy Blythe rolls (Euphonics LP's; masters now owned by Bob Koester of Delmark label & Jazz Record Mart fame), and Lu Watters / Yerba Buena Jazz Band (issued by the San Francisco Traditional Jazz Foundation; you would not believe the story Ed related about how he rescued those masters from a chicken coop on Watters' farm!).

We seem to live in such a frustrating, hate-filled world these days and it's such a blessing to have had a terrific friend like Ed Sprankle. Thanks for all the good times, buddy, we love you very much and we will miss you greatly.