On 5 November 1974, William L. & Mary Gleeson donated a collection of over 3,500 musical orchestrations to Brigham Young University’s Library Special Collections. Gleeson, then president of KICO Inc. (a local radio station in Oakland California), donated the music with the hopes that future BYU musicians would appreciate and perform the repertory. The collection consist of popular arrangements used in vaudeville productions, dance halls, for silent films, and radio broadcasts.
This library of orchestrations was originally used by the Keith-Albee-Orpheum (KAO) circuit of theaters. These theaters were located across the country, from Los Angeles and San Francisco, California to Boston, Massachusetts and New York City. Vaudeville acts, such as those performed by Harry Houdini, James McIntyre, and Thomas Kurton Heath, would travel from theater to theater, performing for audiences and showcasing their programs.
The music used in these performances was kept in New York and loaned out to the different theaters to use in their productions. When films started to replace Vaudeville acts, the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) combined with KAO and formed the Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO) Corp in 1928. As films became more and more prominent, the sheet music library was put up for auction and purchased by the former music director, Gustav Hoffman.
Hoffman took his new library of music to Oakland, California, where he was hired by Gleeson, then working as station manager for KROW. Gleeson hired Hoffman and 18 musicians to perform live music for KROW from 8-9 PM, seven days a week. This arrangement lasted for approximately three years.
As Hoffman aged, his eyesight started to fail. He spent most of his life’s fortune trying to remedy his eyesight. Gleeson wanted to help Hoffman, and so purchased the library from him providing enough funds to help with his eyes and move back to New York to be with his family.
In 1974, after over 40 years in storage, Gleeson felt that it was time to allow another worthy group host the music. He reached out to several different studios to see if they would like to purchase the library, but none of them expressed interest. The University of California in Riverside heard about Gleeson’s desire to sell the collection and sent out three music experts to appraise his collection.
While the experts were appraising his work, and while Gleeson was debating if he should sell the music, he was invited to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 144th Annual General Conference in April of 1974. He was impressed by the music that was performed and felt impressed that BYU students and musicians would be able to make good use of his music.
On 5 November 1974, the gift was signed over to the possession of Brigham Young University. Gleeson filled out a News Release Data Sheet to declare his gift. He described what the music library had been used for in his own words:
This music library was the RKO Theatre’s Central sheet music and was bought at auction about 50 years ago and used by my radio station at Oakland Calif. for 16 years. When live music was eliminated by our schedules the library went into storage. So, believing BYU can bring more pleasure to the people by its use, [I have donated it to their library].
Gleeson also sent a voice recording describing the history of the collection, which we have used in compiling this history.
By late December of the same year, the collection was received and thank you letters from Director of Libraries Donald K. Nelson, University President Dallin H. Oaks, and Dean Lael J. Woodbury of the College of Fine Arts were delivered to Gleeson.
