In May of this year, I republished my uncle's book along with additional items of his writing and publishing. It is Pioneers in Brass, by Glenn D. Bridges, edition 4.0. It is in a multi-media CD-ROM format, with search and print capabilities. While this has not been my first book published, it is by far the lengthiest (starting in 1988 working with International Trombone Association (ITA)), and often frustrating project I have experienced, but the accolades for making this work again available have not stopped and have made it a most fulfilling project. Reviews are expected in major music journals and one on the Internet can be seen at: http://www.brass-world.com/pob.htm.

In 1988, the Glenn D. Bridges archive was formerly named as part of the International Trombone Association’s archive. Many researchers considered Glenn’s collection of recordings, the premiere collection of recordings of brass players of the late 19th and early 20th Century in the country. It included the letters and memorabilia that helped Glenn write his renowned book, one of the few reference narratives of early brass musicians of the era available. Glenn himself was part of this scene and knew and heard many of the players he wrote about. It was the intention of the ITA to republish this important book, but they were unable to find a publisher or the funding to do that, and after 1995, as nephew, I took over the project for the family.

The first problem experienced was the fact that the ITA could not get the work published, and I had promised my aunt that I would see that it did get published, and while she died shortly after the collection was given to ITA it appeared that the ITA had found someone they could trust to get this book republished. That person died also, and left the book status in limbo. This was in 1995. I moved from Michigan to Issaquah in 1996. I found that the 1972 edition had not been registered with the copyright office, and people were telling me it was in the public domain. I then found out by calling the copyright office that indeed it was still in copyright, but that I should register it, requiring me to get the assignment of copyright from the estate. Having done the latter, and sending in two photocopied copies of the book, and having to write as to why these were only photocopies (there were no extra copies extant.) 

I suspect this took about a year. In the meantime I paid a computer friend $500 to digitize a copy of the book that was my brother’s. After six months, I finally picked it up from this person who had done nothing and still had my money and gave me back a book that was cigarette smoke damaged. I was able to bleach this staining out and air out the book. At that point I started buying a new computer and scanners and software to do the scanning myself. I was still working on this in 1998 when I re-married and moved again. I had most of the work done and found a business in Bellingham who would help me. I had to convert the 100s of files I had scanned first to .RTF, then .PDF, then break out the text as .TXT and redo the photos as .TIFF. All of this, just to make my file compatible with the Bellingham folks. 

While doing this I was looking for some of the other articles Glenn had written; looking for other copies of the book to redo some of the photos that didn’t do well coming from my brother’s book, and found that my sister’s book, same edition had additional materials. We tried to sequence everything exactly like it had been published and found that that did not work well with the software platform we were using, so we had to give up the idea of a reprint. Along with help from a Texas library and the music librarian, John Gibbs of University of Washington, we discovered the other articles I was interested in along with a book of lectures of Herbert Clarke that Glenn had published in 1970, it had additional photos. We found that we could not get to the archives for recordings, so we asked for permission to use some of the reissued recordings of which I was aware, but which was far too expensive. We were able to find a few of the pieces, which are discussed in the book on the Internet and received permission to use a set of tapes of public domain recordings issued by a trumpet performer. I then had to convert the recordings to MP3 format in order to work well with the multimedia software platform.

Having finally gotten all of the material on the platform and most of it formatted, we found many errors and some missing files that again had to be corrected and I had to phone Michigan to get some of the information that had been garbled. Upon getting the final disc for pre-publication reviews, I found a spurious file from another project in my work. That was easily corrected and now the final disc was ready for press. We had press releases and advertising already published when I learned that the company that was doing the “pressings” wasn’t able to come through. I went to another company who said the turn around time would be two weeks, and was more than 30 days, but with a handy credit card, we got the materials to ITA and to the distributor in time to fill orders and be at the ITA conference. I sent out about 30 complimentary copies to those who had some hand in helping with the project, and a few orders that the distributor wasn't handling (requiring me to find and invoicing software package.) The work was supposed to be available in December 2000, in time for Christmas gifts, but was released finally in mid-May 2001.

Pioneers in Brass has seen three previous print editions. The first edition was a thin paperback released in 1965, the second was hardbound, expanded and released in 1968 with some copies having errata tipped in. The 1972 edition included revised pages, additional materials and a new section on Trombone and Euphonium players, and some of those hardbound editions were added to with tipped in pages up until 1988 when the work went out of print. Pioneers in Brass continues as one of few reference sources of these early brass players, and is the most cited as the source of information in recent Internet articles. The new edition offering nearly 70 biographies of important brass musicians also includes "The Cornet and the Cornetist," Historical cornet talks by Herbert L. Clarke originally written in 1918, 1921, 1923, compiled and published by Glenn in 1970. The CD includes an additional article missing from the 1972 edition, photos and inserts that were not bound with all of the 1972 editions, and 45 audio examples of some of the players profiled. In the added notes section, references are given to additional resources of some of those profiled.

Colligo of Bellingham helped greatly in digitizing the photos and processing the text. We were unable to work with the originals. It is the platform software Ultimatebook by Colligo (http://www.ultimatebook.com/titles.html) that we are using for the book and the book is being distributed by an independent bookstore here on Whidbey Island, www.bookbay.com/PioneersInBrass.htm.