It is good to learn that Ed Openshaw is not going to let his B.A.B.
perforators sit idle.  I occasionally get inquiries about the avail- 
ability of B.A.B. rolls of various sizes (as well as Artizan rolls); 
so there is at least a small market for them, even for the big 87-key 
rolls now used by only two organs that I know of.

It sounds like we have the makings of a B.A.B. historian in young Mark
Elbasoni, who recently joined the MMD list.  I'd be glad to share with
him copies of Ozzie Wurdeman's notebooks which I have.  They show all the
masters which Ozzie took with him from Virginia City, Montana, and also in
some cases the masters which remained in Virginia City under the owner-
ship of the Bovey family.  It is important to know that Ed Openshaw does
not have all existing B.A.B. masters, but only those that Ozzie Wurdeman
actually came to own.

Mark is correct that virtually all B.A.B. arranging was done by 
J. Lawrence Cook (of QRS roll fame), and that Cook's arranging is 
distinctively different from that of Wurlitzer and other companies, 
being marked by prominent counter-melody, often to the detriment (in 
my opinion) to the basic melody.  Ozzie Wurdeman's rolls were sometimes
flawed by tempo errors and cutting errors, which I presume are not in 
the Cook masters themselves.  

But the chief defect of Wurdeman rolls derived from Ozzie's practice of
letting his customers select and combine any old tune from his stock of
masters with any nine other tunes of the customer's choosing to make up
one really god-awful musical program -- resulting in some tunes appearing
many times over on various rolls, while others were never used at all.
I would hope that Ed Openshaw tries to re-establish the contents of the
original B.A.B. rolls and decides to issue recuts only in that one form,
not at every customer's whim.

Matthew Caulfield