Popular Mechanics

The classified ad section of the March 1955 issue of Popular Mechanics included numerous ads for song-poem music companies (as well as a lot of ads for accordion instruction, which we deleted for space purposes). These ads provide a telling glimpse of the song-poem world in the interim period following its transformation from sheet music to records but before its big boom of the 1960s and '70s. Some of the companies advertising here actually began back in the sheet music days, while some others are still operating, in one form or another, in the present era. Many thanks to AS/PMA field rep Tom Leonard for finding and scanning these ads for us.