Being a relative newcomer to the piano roll medium, I had always
assumed as correct the received wisdom that QRS had acquired Imperial
in 1922, and there had begun a process of assimilation of Imperial
rolls into the QRS catalog, with there even being a transition period
where QRS would issue rolls with numbers which were the concatenation
of the old Imperial and new QRS numbers.

The Imperial <-> QRS cross reference list, first published in the July
1972 AMICA bulletin and then rudely rehosted by Stanford University at
https://stacks.stanford.edu/file/druid:yz053fk5890/09-07.pdf (starting
at page 21), imply an exact correspondence between rolls with the same
title.

So it was with some amusement that I finally decided to test this
assumption, having been able to recently scan Imperial's #07662,
"Three Little Words", and also having access to the scanned version of
QRS's #8670 of the same title, which are attached here as MIDI files.

They are musically similar in that they are in the same key, have the
same basic rhythmic structure, and share a roughly similar measure-by-
measure left-hand accompaniment. Yet I definitely hear another's right
hand in the QRS version. These are demonstrably not the same rolls.

I confess that I am an occupant of an age which has long grown reliant
on the presence of electronic curation processes I've long accepted as
unquestionable. When I pick up a CD which lists author, performer, and
studio, I've never thought twice about the accuracy of the listing.

But piano roll artists lived in a time when such records were fluid and
largely subject to "what one could get away with", and I need to keep
reminding myself of that.

Marshall Jose

 [   scan of QRS #8670, Three Little Words
 [ https://www.mmdigest.com/Attachments/21/01/06/210106_010413_QRS-8670_ThreeLittleWords(1930)_eRollMIDI_Wexp.mid 
 [   scan of Imperial #07662, Three Little Words
 [ https://www.mmdigest.com/Attachments/21/01/06/210106_010413_ThreeLittleWords_IMP07662_eRollMIDIWexp.mid 

 [ "Three Little Words", by Harry Ruby (m) & Bert Kalmar, (c) 1930. It
 [ sounds like both piano roll versions are played by J. Lawrence Cook.
 [ -- Robbie