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The Louisiana State Museum Jazz Collection
SUMMARY OF COLLECTIONS
History
of the Collection
Instruments
Photographs
Recordings
Film
Pictorial
Sheet
Music
Miscellaneous
JAZZ AUDIO ONLINE
New Orleans
Jazz Club Vintage Radio Broadcasts in the LOUISiana Digital Library
HISTORY
OF THE COLLECTION
The New Orleans Jazz Club was founded in 1948
on Mardi Gras by a group of local jazz enthusiasts and musicians,
and has been going strong to this day. Almost immediately after
it was founded the members began dreaming of opening a Jazz
Museum, as many of them were collectors of jazz memorabilia and
felt these should be made available to the public. The New
Orleans Jazz Museum finally opened its doors in 1961 at 1017
Dumaine Street, and was a success from the start, so much so that
it almost immediately began to outgrow the premises. Generous
donations began to flood in, and within a few years it became
apparent that the cottage on Dumaine Street would not have
sufficient space to keep up with the growth of the collection.
At about this time, the Royal Sonesta Hotel
opened on Bourbon Street, managed by a jazz enthusiast who
offered display space on the balcony surrounding Economy Hall,
the Hotel's nightclub that featured performances of jazz nightly.
The Jazz Museum relocated there in 1969. When the manager, James
Nassikas, was transferred to another Sonesta Hotel, the new
Management had different plans for that space, and in 1973 the
Museum was forced to move to its third location at 833 Conti
Street. Despite heroic efforts by the board and membership of the
New Orleans Jazz Club, it eventually became financially
impossible to keep the Museum open, and the collection was put in
storage. The collection with its exhibit potential was as strong
as ever, but lacked a building to house it. At about this time,
the Louisiana State Museum (LSM) was completing renovation of the
Old U.S. Mint at the foot of Esplanade Avenue, which it had
acquired from the federal government in a rather decrepit state.
When repairs were complete, LSM had a grand old building, but
lacked a star attraction exhibit to put in it. So on September
15, 1977, the two organizations solved each others’ problems
when the entire collection of the New Orleans Jazz Museum was
donated to the people of Louisiana, and became The New Orleans
Jazz Club Collections of the Louisiana State Museum.
INSTRUMENTS
The Louisiana State Museum has the largest
collection in the world of instruments owned and played by
important figures in jazz, possessing multiple examples of all
the commonly used instruments: trumpet, cornet, trombone,
clarinet, saxophone. Some late 19th-century instruments date from
the early days of jazz, others were used by local musicians who
either never left New Orleans or came back. Notable examples of
instruments in the collection are:
Armstrong. Cornet and bugle. Louis
Armstrong was taught to play these when he was a resident
of the Municipal Waif’s Home for boys, 1913-14, sent
there for shooting off a pistol on New Year’s Eve.
Without the encouragement of the staff, and the
self-discipline and musical education he acquired there,
the most important individual career in the history of
jazz probably never would have happened. The objects are
not only historically important, but visually
distinctive. The cornet has notches in the non-detachable
mouthpiece cut by the young Armstrong, in an attempt to
aid his embouchure, and who later described them in print
long before the instrument had come to light.
Bix Beiderbecke. Cornet that he
used, probably briefly and as a student, and a piano that
he used while living in Room 605, 44th Street hotel, New
York City, in 1930-31.
Edward "Kid" Ory.
Trombone. Great New Orleans pioneer of
"tailgate" trombone, and a member of Louis
Armstrong’s Hot Five.
Tom Brown. Trombone. Brown is
generally credited with taking the first white New
Orleans-style band up to Chicago.
Larry Shields. Clarinet. Shields
played in the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, the first
jazz band to record commercially in 1917. This instrument
is the only one he used throughout his career.
George McCullum. Cornet. McCullum
was a popular player and bandleader until his death in
1920. He straddled the barrier between "hot"
and "sweet", between jazzy players who
improvised in honky-tonks and more polite society
orchestras who read from arrangements. McCullum’s
own bands read from arrangements, his own in fact, but he
was a sufficiently "hot" player himself that
"sweet" orchestras would hire him to add some
spice to their sound. The cornet is visually interesting,
with a very old-fashioned 19th-century look to it.
George Lewis. Clarinet. Lewis was
the preeminent clarinetist of the New Orleans Revival,
from the early 40's through his death in 1969. (The
so-called Revival was not really a revival of the music
itself, it was a revival of interest in New Orleans jazz
by outsiders, who finally took notice of what had been
going on in New Orleans all along.) Lewis’s most
famous piece is "Burgundy Street Blues," and he
first recorded it in 1944 on this instrument, which is
unusual in that it’s made of metal.
Sidney Bechet. Soprano saxophone.
Ranks with Armstrong in musical genius. The first and
greatest master of the soprano sax, he played this one in
the 40s.
Dizzy Gillespie. Trumpet. Gillespie
donated it to the old Jazz Museum after visiting it and
being favorably impressed. Has the famous
"bent" bell.
PHOTOGRAPHS
The photo collection consists of around 10,000
photographs, and reflects the fact that the original Jazz Museum
drew heavily on the personal collections and donations of the
members of the New Orleans Jazz Club, and was therefore shaped by
their interests. The bulk of the photos thus feature the local
music scene from about 1950 onward, focussing on traditional and
Dixieland performers. Outside these categories musicians will be
well represented if they came from New Orleans before gaining
fame elsewhere, such as Jelly Roll Morton or Sidney Bechet, or if
they came through New Orleans when the Jazz Club members were
actively taking pictures, as with Duke Ellington’s visit to
Jazzfest 1970. Plus, of course, Louis Armstrong.
Some of the most interesting photos are from
the earliest eras of jazz, with examples of most of the
best-known early photos, in many cases the originals. The
collection is particularly strong on photos of early white
musicians, especially bands that were popular locally. Popular
jazz histories tend to make the mistake of overlooking white
musicians.
Beyond musicians, the Louisiana State Museum
has numerous photos of locations that were important to jazz,
nightclubs and bars and the like. These sometimes were taken
decades after the buildings had played their part in jazz
history, often when they were about to be torn down in the 50's
and 60s. Also included are numerous photos of street parades and
funerals, especially funerals of notable musicians, dating from
the 1950s to the 1990s.
Some notable specifics:
Louis Armstrong. A major section of
several hundred photographs. One notable original is of
Armstrong returning in triumph to the Waif’s Home in
the early thirties, posing with Mr. and Mrs. Jones, who
ran it, and Peter Davis, his teacher. Armstrong is
grinning and holding the cornet that is now on exhibit.
Also included is a large original print of Louis
Armstrong’s Hot Five, a recording group during the
20s whose importance cannot be overemphasized,
autographed by four of the five members, as well as
numerous publicity photos from the thirties. The
collection has several photos of Armstrong as King Zulu
at Mardi Gras in 1949, including some recently discovered
snapshots previously unknown, and a large number of
photos from his visit to New Orleans and the Jazz Museum
on Oct. 31, 1965.
Original Dixieland Jazz Band. This
band made the first jazz record in 1917, and it sold over
a million copies, helping to launch the craze for jazz.
The collection has several good period photos of them,
both in their original form in the teens and when they
regrouped in the 1930s.
Superior Orchestra. Several members
of this band went on to become legends, such as Bunk
Johnson and George Bacquet. The photo, from about 1910,
has been widely copied, and this is the original, a
period print that is much clearer than most
reproductions.
RECORDINGS
The Jazz Collection has close to 10,000
recordings in virtually every format ever used, from
piano rolls to digital tape. Recordings
were vitally important to the development of jazz, as they
enabled it to find a widespread audience, without which it would
have died out. The collection has about 4,000 78 rpm
records ranging in condition from superb to broken and
in date from about 1905 to the mid-1950s, when
they stopped being made, several thousand 12-inch 33-1/3
rpm LP records, and hundreds of 10-inch LPs and
45 rpm records. Like the photos they tend to run toward
New Orleans traditional and Dixieland jazz. Reel-to-reel
tapes, about 1,400 of them, fall into three groups, New
Orleans Jazz Club radio programs, taped interviews, and music.
The latter, typically tapes of concerts or private jam sessions,
are again New Orleans traditional and Dixieland.
FILM
The bulk of the film holdings is several
hundred rolls of various sizes donated in 1978 by local
TV news cameraman Don Perry. While some film is
out-takes from assignments for his station, WDSU, much of it he
shot pursuing his own interests, and as he was a co-founder of
the New Orleans Jazz Club, much of it relates to jazz. The time
covered is about 1970-76. The jazz-related films
feature concert and nightclub footage, funerals and parades,
footage concerning the Jazz Museum, and the first two Jazz &
Heritage Festivals. Unfortunately, very little of this material
has sound.
The Jazz Collection also has film from other
sources, notably Mel Leavett at WWL. He was a
jazz fan, and during the 60s he would occasionally get used
footage from the evening news shows routed to the Jazz Museum,
film that otherwise would have been thrown away. Most of
the film dates no earlier than about 1960, including footage of
the opening of the original Jazz Museum in November of `61, with
one notable exception:
Jean Goldkette Orchestra. Goldkette
was a bandleader and entrepreneur, who did not play jazz
but hired those who did and put them together into bands
under his name. The star of the top Goldkette band in
1926-27 was Bix Beiderbecke. We have one 3-½"
reel of silent, black & white film of this group
taken on tour in New England, and donated to the
Jazz Museum in the 1960s. As far as can be seen, it has
shots of the band standing around before boarding the
bus, several bandmembers engaging in horseplay for the
camera, and the band doing a publicity stunt, playing
jazz for the animals at the Bronx Zoo. It is often dark,
grainy, and hard to see, but unique and totally unknown
footage of a legendary ensemble.
PICTORIAL
The pictorial collection consists primarily of posters,
plus paintings and other artworks. Many posters are from
the New Orleans Jazz Club, and pertain to the concerts they have
been staging since 1950. Many posters are from other countries,
mostly from the many jazz festivals that have been held around
the world since the early 60s. And of course the collection has
many posters relating to the annual New Orleans Jazz and Heritage
Festival, both the "collectibles," high quality
silk-screened prints signed and numbered by the artist, and
ordinary street posters for advertising.
SHEET MUSIC
The Jazz Collection has hundreds of
examples of sheet music, from late 19th-century ragtime to
popular songs of the 40s and 50s. Included are examples
of 19th century music not directly related to jazz or ragtime,
but composed and published locally, giving documentary evidence
to aspects of the local New Orleans musical culture out of which
jazz grew. This collection contains first edition
examples of many pieces that became jazz
standards, such as Chinatown, Tin
Roof Blues, and Alexander’s Ragtime
Band.
MISCELLANEOUS
Finally, the Jazz Collection has over time
picked up many odds-and-ends pertaining to jazz, some of it
clearly of value, some close to worthless. Much of this is not
considered part of the collection proper, but is kept for
reference, as study material, even possibly for future exhibit
props. Much of it is ephemera, never intended to last. A jazz
concert ticket, for example, has a useful lifespan of a few
minutes, from the moment you buy it at the box office to the
moment you hand it to the ticket taker. But fifty years later,
when the performers have become legends, the stub of that ticket
with the particulars printed on it can have remarkable evocative
power.
The types of object include: letters (including
some on very colorful ODJB stationery), telegrams, ticket stubs,
contracts, matchbooks, buttons, advertising table cards, concert
programs, scrapbooks, newspaper clippings, and so forth. Items
worth mentioning:
San Jacinto Hall Sign. San Jacinto
Hall was a dance hall on Dumaine Street, highly popular
in the black community and the site of several recording
sessions highly important to the New Orleans Revival in
the 40s. It burned down in 1967, but the elaborate
tin-metal sign above the entrance was saved.Tom Brown’s Typewriter. Brown took
the first Dixieland group out of New Orleans to Chicago
in 1915, for a well documented engagement at Lamb’s
Cafe. But as the ODJB was the first to record, in
1917, it generally took credit for being the
"first" jazz band. Brown angrily defended his
claim to primacy for the rest of his life, with many
letters pounded out on this typewriter.
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