First and Foremost

The first task in trying to catch up in reporting the progress on the jazz digitization project is to recap the Jazz Appreciation Month outreach results. 15-17 April, a Wednesday-Friday, we hosted three days of activities at St. Edwards as a component of my Capstone project, intended both to publicize the presence of the LP collection which I am finding a digitization process to preserve as well as to raise the general community level of awareness about jazz in general.

First and foremost, I must thank those participants who came and contributed their services.Brenda Ladd, a professional and skilled photographer of musicians, took a series of photos on the 15th, which was the lecture and selected performance portion of the program. She generously made her photos available to us through a link to her website. Brenda captured the mood and range of activities wonderfully.

Charlotte Adams presented a talk on her experiences teaching jazz guitar and other forms of music instruction in general; Clay Shorkey described the various aspects of his work as the director of the Texas Music Museum, and described some of the materials he maintains in that collection. Clay is also a professor of social work at the University of Texas at Austin, and participated in Archives City Limits, the SAA-hosted series of archival activities during October 2008 in observance of Archives Week.

Ben Conroy, Jr., who has recently augmented the collection donated by Edward Meyer with his own donation of approximate 850 78s consisting primarily of jazz, blues, and boogie woogie music, talked at some length about his recollections growing up in Brooklyn during the 1940s and visiting live music in Greenwich Village, such as a historic show performed at Cafe Society, a well-known blues music club where he saw Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson, a famed piano duo. His talk included showing some video of the two playing. Ben also contributed with a superb series of live piano numbers, and a short explanation of each tune's significance. Conroy also intends to donate a variety of correspondence with selected members of the jazz community, including the wives of Pete Johnson and Meade Lux Lewis, and his own letters with Whistlin' Alex Moore. Ben's range of knowledge and association with a number of prominent Texas jazz musicians, such as Teddy Wilson, make him a necessary resource to conduct an oral history interview, which will be integrated with the collection of recordings he has donated. Additionally, I will introduce him to John Wheat, who as the music archivist at the Center for American History will serve as an ideal recipient for other materials Ben has acquired during a lifetime of music appreciation, ones which are not specifically suitable either for St. Edwards University or the Texas Music Musuem.

Michael Mordecai also performed during the Wednesday talk, playing his trombone for the assembled crowd. Michael's exquisite knowledge of the Austin jazz music scene's evolution over several decades provided the perfect counterpoint to his playing. He is the Monday evening jazz jam overseer at the Elephant Room, and a participating key member of Beto y los Fairlanes.

Edward Meyer, whose collection of 2300 jazz LPs serves as the originating impetus for my project, concluded the afternoon with some comments about the value of collecting, the need for preservation, and at least a tenative and benignly biased answer to the question, "Why jazz?" Unfortunately, Dr. James Polk, one of the scheduled speakers, was unable to attend.

On Thursday April 16th, the Silver Creek Jazz Band, under the guidance of towering trombonist Dave Stoddard, provided two hours of live Dixieland jazz to a fluid audience of approximately two hundred outside the entrance to the Scarborough-Phillips Library. I will provide a photogallery of some images from their performance here once processed. The ensemble consisted of five band members, including Larmon Maddox, JD Pendley, Dan Augustine, Jim Ivy, and Dave himself. Altogether, a delightful afternoon of traditional New Orleans style jazz was provided to the public to the accompaniment of Amy's ice cream, to jointly celebrate Jazz Appreciation Month and National Library Week.

Lastly, on Friday, Jim Cullum, renowned band leader and owner of The Landing on the River Walk, a San Antonio haven for jazz lovers, visited St. Edwards and provided discussion and some music with accompaniment in the Jones Auditorium of the Ragsdale Center. Jim's extraordinary experience and familiarity with seemingly the entire jazz world made him the keynote presenter. Although the audience was pinchingly modest, Jim graciously explained his perspective on the role and evolution of jazz in the United States, concluding with an explanation accented by live demonstration of the close relationship between jazz and the blues. He left around 5 p.m. heading back to the Alamo City for his regularly scheduled performance.

Overall, completing the series of outreach activities concludes the publicity portion of this project. Now, the final days will consist of crucial refinements to the Content Pro online collection. Over the past few months, a variety of actions have led me to successively eliminate possible alternative methods of digitially cataloguing and preserving the music collection, and enabled me to identify the way ahead and begin the laborious process of music consolidation and metadata entry. My next posting will present the details of this process, and the road ahead to building the library of digital holdings to preserve the university's LP collection for access.