Historical Sound Recordings Yale University

Historical Sound Recordings

Yale University

The historical 78 rpm records project and other rare holdings at YaleKendall Crilly, Diane Napert

Cataloging Project, The beginning

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation called a meeting to check status of large sound archives in U.S.

Established that bibliographic control was lacking, particularly for 78s

Needed bibliographic control before could embark on other projects such as digitization

Planning Grant

Planning grant was requested from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation by three institutions in 2004 and approved

These institutions were: Yale University, Historical Sound Recordings

Collection Stanford University, Archive of Recorded Sound New York Public Library, Rodgers and

Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound

Planning Grant

Planning activities took place from July 1, 2004 to January 31,2005

Planning included:

Better organization of sound recordings

More accurate counts of sound recordings

Analysis of availability and quality of copy

Time studies for various formats (78s, LPs, cassettes)

View of 78s housed in Mudd Library at Yale

Numbers of Recordings

853,162 commercial recordings at Yale, Stanford and Rodgers & Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound

Over 320,000 78 rpm recordings – mostly uncataloged

Cataloging Samples

Cataloging sample showed high rate of copy for multi-disc sets (92%)

Low rate for single 78 rpm recordings (7%)

The Grant was awarded!

Mellon awarded a grant of $789,000 starting in 2006 for cataloging of 78 rpm recordings

Catalogers Hired

Stanford University hires Frank Ferko June 2006

New York Public Library for the Performing Arts hires Heeseop Regent July 2006

Yale University hires Diane Napert September 2006

Structure of work

Yale was slated to catalog A-D labels

Stanford E-R Rodgers & Hammerstein Archives S-

Z Syracuse approved by Mellon to join

project in March 2008, focused on Decca

The numbers

The project contributed over 24,000 records to OCLC through November 2009 (figure includes only 2008 for Syracuse, approx. 3,500, and some upgraded copy)

Volume figures would be higher due to multi-disc sets and multiple copies

Yale able to extend project a few months with money from Yale Class of ’45W and add several hundred more records

Overlap in Collections

Stanford brought in 19,000 bib records to their system, many of which were contributed via the project

Yale had 63% hit rate against Stanford’s Edison bib records, less than 1% for Gramophone (Yale’s holdings are mostly Scandinavian)

The bibliographic records

Access points were added for composers, lyricists, arrangers, performing groups (but not each player within a named group), main performers, conductors, speakers

Attempts were made to connect arias to the correct opera and excerpted songs to the correct musicals (mostly successful)

The labels

Over 360 labels worked on The largest included Brunswick,

Capitol, Columbia, Decca, Edison, Gramophone and Victor

Yale Labels

More labels

And more

The presentation for ARSC (Stanford meeting) was called “Label Lust”

Other Labels

o Societe des Phonographes Bettini, Paris, ca. 1900

o Verdi’s Trovatore. Balen del suo sorriso, arranged, in French

o Fernand Baer, bass ; with piano acc.

Other Labels

o Black Swan, New York, 1921o Down home blues by Tom Delaney o Ethel Waters ; with Cordy

Williams' Jazz Masters o Later recorded work for

Columbia, 1925

Other Labels

Germany, Christschall, ca. 1931 Obrecht. Missa 'Malheur me bat‘.

Dona nobis pacem Munchener Domchor ; Ludwig

Berberich, conductor

The web-site

Hired web designer, Nilou Moochhala, http://www.nymdesign.com/

http://www.library.yale.edu/musiclib/hsr/

Image of web-site

The recordings

Shape note singing Musicals, operas, zarzuelas, operettas, incl. H.M.S.

Pinafore translated into Yiddish “Der Shirtz” Comedy skits American Indian rituals Political speeches, American and British Campbell’s Pork and Beans Review (Andrews

Sisters) Art songs, sacred songs, popular music, jazz Golf and dance instruction, parakeet lessons Puzzle records

Languages

African languages Arabic Armenian Catalan Church Slavonic Chinese Czech German Danish

Dutch Estonian Finnish French Greek Gaelic, Irish Haitian French

Creole Hawaiian

Languages (cont.)

Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Italian Japanese Latin Latvian Lithuanian Maltese Maori

Norwegian Polish Portuguese Quechua Romanian Russian Spanish Swedish Ukrainian Yiddish

Languages (cont.)

Plus a few others A few languages only

occurred at some institutions (such as African languages, Stanford)

Lots of Resources Consulted Discographies of labels, musical styles For musicals: American song : the

complete musical theatre companion by Ken Bloom, c1996-c2001 (though we also had a considerable number of British musical theatre excerpts)

For opera arias: Universal-Handbuch der Musikliteratur aller Zeiten und Volker : als Nachschlagewerk und Studienquelle der Welt-Musikliteratur by Franz Pazdirek, [1904-1910?]

Eccentric names

Started a list of eccentric names Hot Lips Page (1908-1954) Red (Nichols and Norvo) Pee Wee (Hunt, Russell and Tinney) Scrappy Lefty

Arias

Most translated aria

Most popular arias

Pagliacci. Vesti la giubba in Czech, German Russian, English, French

Carmen, several of the arias in several languages each

Best Sleuthing Story

Labels says: Arja Jako od wichru z op. Halka [by] Moniuszki

Actually is: Nie swatała mi cie swatka by Niewiadomski

Curator of collection sent copy of recording to associate in Poland

Others mainly typos for composer’s or work’s name

Inquiries from around the world

India England (We Belong Together, Grey

Gardens 2009 TV) Spain U.S. California, New York, other

Questions

Diane Napert, diane.napert@yale.edu

Kendall Crilly, kendall.crilly@yale.edu