INTRODUCTION

Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, born 30th October 1864, Chicago, Illinois — died 4th November 1953, Cambridge, Massachusetts, holds an esteemed position in the history of American music. As founder of the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation at the Library of Congress, her gifts helped shape the Music Division of the Library of Congress and much of musical life both in America and abroad — as no benefactor has since.

Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge was already well known as a patroness of music before she approached the Library in 1924, seeking a permanent home for the chamber music festivals and musical commissions that she had sponsored in western Massachusetts for a number of years.

Working with Librarian of Congress, Herbert Putnam and the new chief of the Music Division, Carl Engel, she submitted a letter of intent on 12th November 1924, to provide for the donation of an auditorium. (and personally presented a check for $60,000 to cover the cost of its construction to Mr. Engel) to the Library. President Calvin Coolidge (no relation) signed into law the bill accepting Mrs. Coolidge’s offer of the Auditorium on 23rd January 1925, and construction began immediately. The actual cost of the auditorium exceeded $60,000, but Mrs. Coolidge made up the difference.

The Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Medal for Eminent Services to Chamber Music was inaugurated in 1932. The Coolidge Foundation Program for Contemporary Chamber Music was established to lend scores and parts of contemporary music to enable performing groups to broaden the repertories.

Honorary degrees were awarded to Elizabeth Coolidge by Mount Holyoke Smith College, Yale, Mills College, the University of California and Pomona. She was inducted into France’s Legion of Honor in 1931, received a key to Frankfurt, and in 1935 was awarded the Order of the Crown of Belgium, and in 1937 the Order of Leopold, King of Belgium.

BACKGROUND TO THE RECORDINGS

It was record collector Sidney Martin who introduced Jelly Roll Morton to Alan Lomax to discuss details for the famous Library of Congress Recordings. The series of interviews and recordings, totalling about eight hours, began on 23rd May 1938 and concluded with the final session on 14th December 1938.

Alan Lomax was born in Austin, Texas on 31st January 1915. In 1933 he assisted his father, John Avery Lomax, on their first recording field trip which was commissioned by the Library of Congress. From 1933 to 1942 he either worked alone, or accompanied his father, as well as his sister Bess, Zora Neale Hurston, Mary Elizabeth Barnicle, John Work, and others. He died on 19th July 2002.

He went on to record folk and traditional music on behalf of the Library of Congress throughout the Southern United States, as well as in New England, Michigan, Wisconsin, New York, Ohio, Haiti, and the Bahamas. Artists such as Leadbelly, Woody Guthrie, Aunt Mollie Jackson, and Muddy Waters made their first recordings during these field trips.

In 1934 he published, with John A. Lomax — “American Ballads and Folksongs.” Later publications with his father include, “Negro Folk Songs as Sung by Leadbelly” (1936), “Cowboy Songs” (1937), “Our Singing Country” (1938), and “Folk Song: USA” (1946). He was appointed assistant in charge to the Archive in 1937. Due to a small congressional appropriation for the support of the Archive, Alan became the first Archive worker to be paid from Library funds.

In 1938 he recorded more than eight hours of Jelly Roll Morton’s singing, playing and spoken recollections for the Library of Congress, documenting the birth of jazz by one of its founders. These recordings became the basis for his book, Mister Jelly Roll (1950).

Alan Lomax used a small portable Presto disk recorder, which had been adapted to operate on batteries for field recordings. The recorder did not always operate at the correct speed and the original Circle records, which were first issued beginning in the fall of 1947, in limited edition albums of 45 twelve-inch records, need to be played back at around 85 r.p.m to enable them to be pitch corrected.

This anomaly with the Circle records may not be entirely due to the fault with Alan Lomax’s recorder. In Storyville magazine issue No. 128, page 69, Michael Bowen writes that Bob Hilbert of Pumpkin Records, had spoken with the Library of Congress staff and gained the impression that when the original copies were run off for Circle Records, Rudi Blesh had messed the Library staff and technicians about to such an extent, that they had run off the dubs without any technical line-ups or checks, just to get rid of him. [C 69]

Kenneth Lloyd Bright, a Circle official, made a trip to San Francisco to contact the executor of the Morton estate, a lawyer named Hugh MacBeth (Macbeth). MacBeth (Macbeth), probably a bit fed up with everybody’s attempts to get their hands on the gold mine left by his late friend Jelly Roll, reportedly told Bright, “If you’re here to talk about the Morton records, the answer is “No.” But after listening to an explanation of Circle’s motives in the matter, MacBeth (Macbeth) finally granted the permission in July 1946, and Circle went about the business of preparing the material for public release. [D]

Previous to the public release there was one set of dubbings made from the originals for a group of collectors, including Bill Russell and the late Hoyte Kline, in 1939, and fifth and sixth re-dubbings from these, bristling with surface noises, were all that were available to be heard. [D]

Well-heeled jazz enthusiasts applied to Circle Sound Inc., 38 East 4th Street, New York, for the “The Saga of Mr. Jelly Lord” and received 45 dark Vinylite twelve-inch records arranged in 12 albums. Beginning August—September 1947 two albums were issued every three months until the set was complete. The albums, which housed the Vinylite records, were designed by artist Jimmy Ernst. [CR]

According to contemporary sources only 250 sets were sold, although Roger Richard, whose set is #224, has reported to me that the highest numbered set known to him is #309. [E] Ate van Delden also reports that his colleague, Alfred Ticoalu, has a partial set with one of the albums numbered #326. [H]  Given the original subscription fee of $120.00 and the small number of sets sold, makes them a priceless rarity today.

Rudi Blesh, who owned Circle Records, was disappointed with poor sales of the 78 r.p.m record sets. So, in 1950, he took the decision to enter the twelve-inch micro-groove market. He hoped for better sales with the new format, but this did not materialize as the content of the 12 Circle LPs (L 14001—L 14012) turned out to be a mere copy of the Circle 78 r.p.m. records — including the speed faults.

In 1957, Riverside issued 12 LPs (RLP 9001—RLP 9012) in the twelve-inch micro-groove format. These too, were copies of the Circle 78 r.p.m. records. Reeves Sound Studios undertook the re-mastering work and erased a few ‘plops’ and ‘klonks’ but generally, there was not much of a sound improvement. There was however, a successful attempt to correct the speed faults. [E]

JOHN R.T. DAVIES

The late John R.T. Davies is probably the most respected and successful sound engineer in the business of re-mastering vintage 78 r.p.m. disc recordings. He has produced some of the best CD reissues — and LPs before that. We all owe him a tremendous debt of gratitude, especially for his pioneering work with re-mastering the Library of Congress recordings, which appeared on the Classic Jazz Masters and Swaggie LPs in the early 1970s. Below is John’s account of his work on this project:

“Actually, the CJM and Swaggie LPs were not my first attempt at re-mastering the Library of Congress recordings. Earlier, Philips had asked me to put together a set which I worked out as six twelve-inch LPs. This meant some pretty heavy loading, including as I recall, one side, which ran for about 36 minutes. Philips said that such a duration was not feasible and although I actually cut a master for this particular side, to show that it was possible, they decided to abandon the idea.

“The CJM and Swaggie LPs contain the same content of the Circle 78 r.p.m. records. There is not a great deal more to tell about the make-up of the CJM and Swaggie sets. I figured out the original recording order using the descriptions in Tom Cusack’s little book. There were, I recall, several instances of Circle editing which had to be “unedited” in order to present the available material in the original order of recording. In some instances, bridging pieces had to be created to restore what seemed to be the original continuity.

“It was important to me that the narratives be restored, as far as possible, since these were the real treasures of the recordings. Editing and cleaning up were, of necessity, a matter of trim, cut, chop, slice and the laborious process of scraping the clicks and pops off the tape (without cutting — as far as possible). Would that I had “Cedar” or “Mousetrap” then! Methods were fairly primitive — but, looking back, it was a pretty neat job for the time!

“I don’t actually remember how long it took me to do — or when I did it. I do remember however, an object lesson in marketing. Carl Hällström, of Classic Jazz Masters, offered the first couple of discs for sale and was exceedingly disappointed in the reception. Having persuaded him to make the whole lot available, I believe he had no difficulty in finding his customers.” [F]

© March 2001 John R.T. Davies

Note: Circle (L 14001—L 14012), Riverside (RLP 9001—RLP 9012), Classic Jazz Masters (CJM 2—CJM 9) and Swaggie (S 1311—S 1318) LPs have long been out of print, which means that a whole new generation of Morton devotees have missed out on the narrative treasures of the Library of Congress recordings. This has now been resolved, as indicated by the comprehensive article below.

BILL NOWLIN Ph.D.

Bill Nowlin Ph.D. is co-founder of Rounder Records and is responsible for supervision of the North American Traditions series. He earned his Ph.D. at Tufts and was a college teacher until the duties of working at Rounder overwhelmed him. He has co-ordinated many of Rounder’s most important reissues of traditional music, including the massive Alan Lomax Collection. Bill is also a well-known expert on baseball, particularly the Boston Red Sox. I invited Bill to give an account of his involvement with Jelly Roll Morton’s Library of Congress recordings.

“In 1994 Rounder Records released 4 CDs (CD 1091 — CD 1094) of Morton’s recordings. The CDs contain essentially all the music recorded at the Library of Congress by Alan Lomax. The original recordings contain an extensive amount of conversation as well — mostly Morton talking, with Lomax prompting. It’s my understanding that this interview was one of the earliest and most successful attempts at oral history. Lomax published Morton’s account in the book Mister Jelly Roll.

“We first talked to staff at the Library of Congress many years earlier, at least a decade (and maybe two), before this actual release. There was a lot of concern at the Library — and appropriately so — that Morton’s heirs be contacted, their permission secured and any royalties paid them. Because Alan Lomax was a Library employee, his permission was not actually required. I had the impression that others had tried to contact the heirs and not gotten anywhere, so I didn’t really pursue it.

“Some years passed before I thought I should make the effort anyhow, however unlikely the result. I finally decided to take the bull by the horns and therefore asked the Library for the names they had on file as the proper heirs of Mr. Morton. They provided the information and I contacted them. Much to my surprise, it was actually quite easy to reach agreement.

“So we were all set to go. Naturally, we reached out to Alan Lomax and requested his participation, but he was preoccupied with other efforts at the time. I began to ask around and was soon given the name of Prof. James Dapogny, who fortunately agreed to take on the task. The story is fairly well told in the notes to our albums. As Jim worked with the masters, it was clear to him that some of the masters were originally recorded at the wrong speed and that all of the earlier releases of the material presented these Morton recordings at the wrong speed! Jim worked with Library engineers to restore the recordings to the way they sounded as Morton played the music, not the way the faulty equipment had recorded it.

“What we wound up with was 9 hours of sound and music. We had originally planned to release the full body of work. Hence, this would have been 9 compact discs, not the 4 we actually did release. There are two reasons we went with just four instead of the full nine. One was practical, and the other was political.

“From the beginning of this round of conversations with the Library, talking with Alan Jabbour of the American Folklife Center, Alan had the idea of presenting a symposium at the Library and having various scholars present papers on Morton, which would then be gathered into a booklet and issued along with the complete set of recordings. For one reason or another, the symposium never eventuated — though it’s an idea which is still quite a good one.

“The Center at this time was also going through a tortuous process of self-preservation, where every two years, if I recall correctly, funding for the Center had to be re-appropriated by Congress. There was always this sword of Damocles hanging over the Center that it could lose its funding. Some connected with the Center worried that the release of the full set of Morton recordings could jeopardize Congressional funding. If too big a splash was made, and Congresspeople actually listened to the language Morton used and some of the things he said, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to envision someone grandstanding: ‘Why is the Library of Congress releasing these dirty, vile, filthy lyrics?’ The repercussions could be significant.

“At the same time that this concern was on my mind, I considered the way the albums would look to the public. Seeing this as a series of 9 individual CDs — instead of one big 9-CD set — I realized that because more than half the actual time was Morton monologue, some of the albums would really have relatively small amount of music on them. To release the CDs faithfully recreating the sequence of Morton’s talk and performance — the only way which really would make sense in treating the full body of work — would, I realized with a careful look — result in one album only having two musical performances on it, and another having, as I recall, just three. I worried that a customer in a store picking up a CD and seeing it had just two tracks on it would simply not buy it.

“These two concerns came together — the political one and the concern about saleability of CDs with just 2 or 3 tracks on them — and I decided that perhaps the best way to go was to take the digital masters we already had and simply extract the music from them, leaving the spoken word material for later release. This idea was well-received at the Library, seen as more or less testing the waters for Congressional reaction. (As it happens, there never was any reaction from Members of Congress, either positive or negative). This also had the advantage of providing more time to organize the symposium, and ultimately release the full-recorded work.

“About five years ago, we began working on the Alan Lomax Collection. We’ve released over 55 albums at this point, and plan to continue with at least another 100 albums, releasing the full life’s work of Alan Lomax, and some of his colleagues. Naturally, the Morton recordings are a jewel in the Lomax crown. We plan to release a boxed set of the entire sessions — as originally planned — but now as part of the Collection. The process is underway.” [G]

© March 2001 Bill Nowlin Ph.D.

Note: The project was completed in September 2005 when Rounder Records issued a boxed set of Jelly Roll Morton’s Complete Library of Congress Recordings.

OUT OF PRINT RECORDINGS

•  CIRCLE (USA) — (jm-1—jm-90) 78 r.p.m. set of 45 records

•  CIRCLE (USA) — (L 14001—L 14012) 12 LPs

•  RIVERSIDE (USA) — (RLP 9001—RLP 9012) 12 LPs

•  CLASSIC JAZZ MASTERS (Sweden) — (CJM 2—CJM 9) 8 LPs

•  SWAGGIE (Australia) — (S 1311—S 1318) 8 LPs

Special thanks to Roger Richard for providing details and images of “The Saga of Mr. Jelly Lord” Circle Limited Edition Set of 45 twelve-inch Records (Set #224) from his collection, and to Michael Hill for providing additional rare material from his library of Jelly Roll Morton documents.