Special Collections
Kansas City Sheet Music Collection

Kansas City Sheet Music Collection Now Available Online
(virtuallymissouri.umsystem.edu/umic/scoresic)

The Kansas City Sheet Music Collection contains over 650 titles published from 1874 to 1966. The most significant Kansas City publisher of sheet music was J.W. Jenkins' Sons Music Company, which published from the 1880s to the 1940s. Jenkins' Sons published on a national level and is perhaps best known as the publisher of Euday L. Bowman's "Twelfth Street Rag" (shown left). The collection includes several notable compositions, one of which is Scott Joplin's "Original Rags," (shown right) published by the Carl Hoffman Music Company in 1899.

The collection includes several compositions that celebrate Kansas City itself. Of particular historical relevance are pieces about the Kansas City A's baseball team, Fairyland Park, the Plaza lights, Electric Park, and the city in general, such as "Kansas City Blues," "Kansas City High School Cadet March," "Kansas City My Home Town," "Kansas City Pep," and "Kansas City's Triumphal March." The collection also includes works by important local composers such as Charles L. Johnson and Lucien Denni, who formed their own publishing companies in order to publish sheet music.

Some of the more unusual publishing companies from the Kansas City area represented in the collection include the Kansas City Talking Machine Company and the Jones Dry Goods Store, the latter publishing music during the first decade of the 1900s. Publications by the Woodland Music Company represent the most recent works in the collection, containing the collegiate sports compositions of Milo Finley and items by Martha Fay.

The collection has been cataloged and can be searched via the Merlin library catalog by using the subject heading Kansas City Sheet Music Collection. The collection has also been digitized and may be searched and viewed online through the Missouri Digital Library at < http://virtuallymissouri.umsystem.edu/umic/scoresic > as well as through Virtually Missouri at < http://virtuallymissouri.umsystem.edu/ic/scoresic >.

Special Collections is a non-circulating and non-browsing resource center. The Special Collections Reading Room is open to researchers Monday through Friday during the academic year. Public service hours for the current semester are listed at http://library.umkc.edu/spec-col/index.html#hours but researchers are encouraged to call ahead for verification of hours due to University intersessions and other events. Special Collections is located on the fourth floor of the Miller Nichols Library at 5100 Rockhill Road in Kansas City, Missouri. All inquiries concerning access to the collections should be addressed to Special Collections Library Information Specialists Teresa Gipson or Kelly McEniry.