Custodial History
In 1997, the Library of Congress was contacted by Edward Joffe, a musician and teacher at the New Jersey City University. Joffe had played in the orchestra for the last show that Billy Byers had orchestrated, Victor/Victoria, and the two had become friends in the last two years of Byers’ life. Joffe acquired several of Byers’ arrangements for Count Basie and Frank Sinatra when Byers had visited him, along with their mutual friend Bill Caiza. Caiza mentioned that he had acquired these scores when working for Byers’ primary copyist, Emile Charlap, and offered them back to Byers; instead, Byers suggested that he give them to Joffe. Eventually, Joffe felt that the scores should have a more permanent home where they would be available to generations of musicians and scholars; an inquiry at the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization led to the suggestion that the Music Division of the Library of Congress would be an ideal place to house the collection. Joffe gave the scores to the Library, and assisted the Library in contacting Byers’ widow, Yuriko Byers, in the hopes that she would have additional scores that she might be willing to give to the Library as well.
Ms. Byers had several cartons of additional scores by her husband and was delighted to give them to the Library, also in 1997, to form the largest component of the Billy Byers Collection.