This article features a Benjamin B Dale cover from my collection. It is the latest of my pieces to feature advertising covers from American musical instrument manufacturers and dealers. If you enjoy postal covers, you may like articles such as this one about a Mexican music store. Or this one about the Andreas Koch harmonica company.
I am especially interested in items that give an insight into the American music industry. For example, you can read about an early American stampless cover here, learn about a transaction from the Hook Organ builders here, and see an advertising cover from the Boston piano firm Chickering & Sons here. Or learn about Steinway’s World War II patriotism here.
This article is a bit different. It features a cover from an obscure musical instrument wholesaler that connects to some other research. The cover seems to be fairly rare and its discovery helps provide more information about this American music dealer.
Benjamin Dale
For years, I have been interested in the history and development of the drum set. Compared with other instruments important to American music such as the banjo or the electric guitar, the drum set has had little attention. Further, the references out there often boil down to a pat statement like it came from New Orleans jazz drummers around the turn of the twentieth century. Recent publications are doing much better at understanding the development of this important instruments.
However, when I was working on an article nearly twenty years ago, I came across a reference in a small pamphlet. The publication is Fifty Years a Drummer by Arthur Rackett and was published in 1931. Rackett writes the following:
“In 1882 I settled in Quincy, Illinois. This was about the time that the first foot pedal came out. Dale of Brooklyn made it. Everybody laughed at the idea, but I sent for one and started to practice in the woodshed.”
So little information. There is not even a first name. I surmise that the maker in question is Benjamin B. Dale, who I was able to locate in Musical Instrument Makers of New York (1991) by Nancy Groce. She was able to find him in directories for the city and says that in 1885, his business was at 29 Liberty street. Then in 1886 and beyond, he was at 35 Liberty street. She continues:
“Dale was first listed in the 1885 AMD [American Musical Directory of the United States and Provinces] (p.203), In 1886, his home address was listed as 335 South Fifth Street, Brooklyn, and during the 1890s, his residence was given as Cranford, New Jersey. Nothing more, however, is presently known about this maker.”
The Cover
The corner cover lists Benjamin B. Dale, “Band and Orchestra Supplies,” at his later address, 24 Liberty Street. The cover bears a 1 cent Franklin stamp from 1898. There isn’t even an interesting addressee, as it was simply sent to “Leader of Band or Principal Musician” in Comettsburgh, Pennsylvania. This was in hopes that a local postmaster might pass this along to someone in the community. A real shot in the dark.
Comettsburgh, it ends up, was the name of a post office (not a town) in Beaver, County, Pennsylvania from the 1860s until around the turn of the century. Here is a nice article about post offices in Beaver County, many of the names of which are now gone.
It was not a major leap of logic to connect the “Dale of Brooklyn” with Benjamin B. Dale, thanks to the Groce resource. Unfortunately, the cover does not give us any more information about Benjamin B. Dale and his business. Yet, at least now there is a known piece of ephemera connected to Dale.
Arguably, it also reveals a little about his marketing practices. The pre-printed envelope is very simple, especially compared with many covers of the period. Secondly, sending this cover to a post office in hopes it would get into the hands of a musician was certainly a strategy, but suggests he did not have a good mailing list. This is all consistent with the fact that we know so little about him, he was a struggling businessman and there just isn’t much left of his work. However, there are far more questions. The big ones are how did Dale become an early dealer of pedals for drum sets and how did Rackett in the midwest know about Dale? We may never know.
