Ray Anthony
A trumpet made by Yamaha Japan and "used for many recordings and appearances by Ray Anthony in his Big Band in the 1960s and later" was offered through a Beverly Hills auction house on eBay in February 2005. The trumpet, which came with an "original certificate of authenticity by Ray Anthony" sold for $470.00. (At the same time, an alto saxophone used by his brother, Leroy, in Anthony's bands of the '60s and later was also auctioned on eBay, and sold for $2,247.)
Bunny Berigan
One of Berigan's daughters, Joyce, and her husband, Ken Hansen, have established a Bunny Berigan Archive at the University of Wisconsin School of Music.
"All of our stuff . . . will go there," Hansen told me in 2004.
Besides an impressive collection of hundreds of Bunny's recordings, there are some other primary source materials.
"We've got letters and pictures and clippings from, oh, Bunny's sister-in-law, Loretta, who died and left her memorabilia with us," he said.
The letters are about Bunny, not written by him.
"We'd love to have something written personally by Bunny, but we don't," he commented.
"I know someone stole his horn and mouthpiece, never got it back," Joe Aguanno, who played trumpet in the Berigan band during 1939-40, said. "I did all the research I could through the American Federation of Musicians and we couldn't get it, but we have an idea who copped it - a drummer by the name of Johnny ____. I think he stole his library and his horn, too."
The thief evidently took advantage of his situation.
"Yeah, because later on in the years, he started to play some dates with Bunny Berigan at one of the ballrooms on 42nd Street when I wasn't with him," he recalled. "I think they had a quartet: it was Buddy Koss and Morty Stuhlmaker on bass, and Bunny, and Johnny ___. We couldn't stand him, no one liked him."
"That's one of my long-time goals: I'd like to track that trumpet down," Hansen stated. "I don't know if it's even possible."
The thief is now deceased, according to Aguanno.
What of the manuscript music for I Can't Get Started?
"I have one of [arranger] Joe Lippman's copies, myself, here," he said. "Kenny [Hansen] has the original, I guess."
Frankie Carle
After Frankie Carle passed away in 2001, Mrs. Janet Loughlin-Rubin of Phoenix, AZ, an acquaintance of Carle's daughter, Marjorie, purchased his walnut baby grand piano, a Mason & Hamlin 5'3" model B (serial no.67937, manufactured in 1963). She later sold it to Harmony House, a local musical instrument dealer, which in turn attempted to sell the piano and other estate items on Ebay in January 2005.
According to Jon of Harmony House, "Having been a piano tuner/technician for over forty years, I can appreciate Mr. Carle's selection of this particular piano for his personal piano in his later years. Everything about the structure of the piano is excellent, including hammer action, bridges, sounding board, etc. It is apparent that it received very good care. The tone is excellent. Mason & Hamlin grands of this period were considered a rival to the Steinway. Evidently, Mr. Carle thought so too, because I am certain he could have purchased any piano he wanted."
The piano (along with LPs from Carle's personal record collection, a couple pieces of sheet music, and a glossy photograph taken in the 1940s of him playing while his daughter was singing), offered with a starting bid of $9,999.00 or a
"buy-it-now" price of $14,500.00, went unsold.
Ziggy Elman
A King Super 20 trumpet that once belonged to Ziggy Elman, with his name engraved on the bell, was advertised for sale on eBay in March 2005, with a reserve of over $3,000.
"If I am correct the horn was made in 1946 with a serial number 275,xxx," the seller noted. "I have a notorized statement from the woman I bought the horn from stating that she won this horn in a 1954 radio show contest . . . Ziggy had donated the horn for a fund raiser."
The person. located in Kentucky, was trying to sell it on eBay, hoping to raise money to help pay his daughter's college expenses.
"My reserve is less than what I just paid for my daughters new Brannon flute. If Ziggy Elman's gold plated trumpet is not worth more than a new flute then something is wrong with today's market," he commented.
Elman's only son, Martin, does have in his possession his father's actual horn.
"Oh yeah, I have the original," he confirmed to me in April 2005.
But he was not aware of that other trumpet being offered on eBay.
"No, I knew nothing about it . . . in fact, I don't even have a computer," he said. "That's interesting. 'Cause they just auctioned off the stuff of Benny Goodman's in New York about two months ago. And I had called [ Elman historian ] Dave French, and I asked him, 'Geez, maybe I should sell the trumpet.' And he said I shouldn't do it, he felt I should keep it."
Martin also has some original printed materials which belonged to his father.
"Uh, I have something downstairs, it's been packed away for 30 years," he reported. "It was basically sheet music. I don't even know what it is."
But at least some of Elman's music library might have been sold following his death, to his former partner in a music shop he ran in California.
"I think a lot of it went to the music store," Martin said. "I had sold it to him, and I can't remember his name. That was in '68."
Martin also had other things, but they vanished not long after Elman died.
"See, what happened was, I had loaned all this stuff to this woman, a friend of my dad's, when he passed away," Martin explained. "Everything he had, I had loaned to that woman. 'Cause I had to clean the house out . . . And then she just disappeared with everything. All the records . . . all that disappeared."
Was she a writer?
"No, she was a groupie," Martin explained. "I didn't know it. I guess they had 'em back in those days. She had followed my dad around for years, and they had just met each other, again, after my mother had died. And she was hanging around with him, right before he died. And so I thought she had good intentions, but then she just disappeared with everything."
It was a terrible loss.
"It hurt me," Martin commented. "I wish I had it all."
Lionel Hampton
In January 1997, there was a fire in Lionel Hampton's apartment in Manhattan, caused by a halogen lamp which tipped over.
"Oh God, that was awful," his manager, Phil Leshin, sighed to me. "Everything went up in that: old contracts, photographs, gold records, a piano, his original set of drums, a set of vibes, clothes, everything. Everything that he owned in the world went up in that fire. And he almost went up in it, too . . . And his housekeeper was the one who said, 'Let's get out of here.' And Lionel said, 'Wait a minute. I want to go back into my bedroom.' And that's where the fire was! And she said, 'No, you're not, Mr. Hampton. Here.' and she threw a coat on him, and took him downstairs. And they got down in one of the last elevators in the building."
The lamp company tried to blame Hampton, but he eventually prevailed.
"Not for the amount of money we thought we'd get," Leshin pointed out. "I think Lionel wound up with about $100,000, for losing everything. I mean, that was the net. We had lawyers... we had Johnnie Cochran, we had two other lawyers, and we faced a whole battery of lawyers from the lamp company."
Despite this incredible calamity, it didn't change Hampton's famous enthusiasm for performing.
"Absolutely not, absolutely not," Leshin reported. "I had to hold him down, mostly."
Wayne King
Prior to his death, Wayne King had given some 5200 orchestrations and 127 kinescope recordings of his television show to Arizona State University in Tempe. The kinescopes were 16mm films of his TV shows originating from Chicago between 1949-52 and have now been transferred to videotape.
"The collection was acquired as [a] gift to the University in 1962," Bob Follet, head of the Music Library at Arizona State, explained to me. "Not all materials were released immediately."
The holdings are indexed by title, but not everyone can use them.
"At Mr. King's wishes, the use of the collection is restricted to faculty and students of Arizona State University," Follet noted. "No photocopying is permitted."
"Because of the restrictions placed by Mr. King, the collection is little used," he acknowledged.
Gene Krupa
Michael Berkowitz organized a new Gene Krupa Orchestra in 2003, but there was one major stumbling block right away.
"The book didn't exist," Berkowitz told me. "Gene's book and a lot of his mementos and things were burned in a fire in his house in, I think, 1971. Joe Vetrano, who lives in Chicago, he's about 55 years old, a fairly young guy . . . a Krupa sidekick, [ he ] kind of verified to me that he left the house at one point and said he smelled gas and Gene didn't think abything about it and the
next . . . night, there was a fire in his kind of den, and so the music and the mementos were gone."
So a new music library was assembled from several different sources.
"I have the music, Quincy Jones gave me the music to the 'Drummer Man' album. Billy Byers wrote some of those charts, Manny Albam, Nat Pierce, and Quincy, actually, wrote some of those charts. They're great, and they are newer versions of the older hits," Berkowitz said.
He also had a number of tunes transcribed from Krupa's original recordings.
"I just got That Drummer's Band done this week," he reported in August 2005. "Also, Jay Corre, who used to play with [ Buddy Rich's ] band, a tenor player, worked with the Jack Platt band in Florida. He had transcribed all the quartet pieces, so, even though I'd been playing those, they'd been, basically, 'head' arrangements. So we have those things written, as well."
Vincent Lopez
In 1979, when trombonist Vincent Lopez, Jr. put a big band back together several years after his father's death, he needed the proper vintage music to play.
"A lot of it was destroyed in a garage in Florida during a rainstorm or hurricane or whatever," Lopez Jr. revealed to me in 2004. "But I was fortunate to have in my band, in the early years, an arranger who... his name was Frank Mann . . . he had offices in the Brill Building in New York, as did the Dorseys and, I think, Lombardo, all the musicians had offices there. He got the job of cutting down the arrangements for the Dorsey band -- Tommy Dorsey -- from 18 to 12, and had to make it sound like 18 with 12 musicians. So Frank had played with me for a number of years, and he actually reconstructed a lot of the arrangements from the heyday of the Lopez band, from recordings. We have some of the stuff, that's available, some of the original arrangements, but I would say, out of the 'Lopez era,' probably 90% are transcriptions."
As far as memorabilia, one of the most-prized items the son has is a facsimile of the star Vincent received on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
According to Lopez Jr., "This was, maybe, six, eight years ago. I had come home and was getting ready to go into the door of the house and there was a package there; it was all wrapped up and, apparently, UPS had delivered it. I looked at it and it had a Hollywood, California address on it. So I got it inside, opened it up and here, in this package, somebody was kind enough to send me... and I knew of this before, obviously, but I had never seen anything like this . . . here was the plaque commemorating that. I have it hung up in my family room, which I feel is neat, very c-o-o-l, you know."
Ralph Marterie
The daughters of Ralph Marterie held onto his music library and personal memorabilia for many years, but in late 2001 placed an ad in International Musician, offering more than 100 scores written for his band, in lots of 10 at $700 each. Then, in January 2005, scores and other personal items were listed on Ebay with a buy-it-now price of $2,500, then re-listed in March, with a starting price of $2,200.
"We have some very special photos from our family albums of Ralph Marterie that we think you might enjoy," they explained. "As a leading big band leader for over 30 years, his melodic trumpet and great dance band thrilled thousands of fans over the years. There are hundreds of references to him and his music on the internet but nothing to compare with what we offer. Please browse other sites for general information on his records, posters, biography, etc. We own all of his original arrangements by such outstanding arrangers such as Don Costa, Manny Album, Bill Potts, and others. It was his request that following his death, they would not be sold to pick-up bands around the country. Therefore, hits like Caravan, Pretend, Crazy Man Crazy, Skokiaan and Carla, have never been played since 1978."
Clyde McCoy
Clyde McCoy's wife, Maxine, has, at this writing, survived him by more than 15 years. Among the mementos she has held onto is his gold record award.
"I have it right now in my possession, and I have his last trumpet that he played," she told me in November 2005. "He got a new trumpet every year, and when he had to stop playing, well then, he had one trumpet when he died and I have it."
Chick Webb
In 1973, a "Chick Webb Orchestra" was assembled to appear at the Newport Jazz Festival, backing Ella Fitzgerald and playing a group of songs in tribute to their former boss. Saxophonist Eddie Barefield conducted for the appearance, and disappointed some by using his own arrangements instead of the original Webb charts. (Ella sang A-Tisket, A-Tasket, but it wasn't Van Alexander's writing.) Perhaps no one knew whether those authentic manuscripts still existed.
When I spoke with Alexander in November 2004, I inquired about his own music library.
"Funny that you should ask that," he responded. "Billy May and myself and Neal Hefti and a lot of the other guys that recorded at Capitol, through the years, have been asking, 'What happened to all our arrangements?' And nobody knew where they are, or who's got them, and whether they threw them out, or burned them, they were just not available. Just a couple of months ago, I got a call from a fellow at Brigham Young University, in Utah. And he said, 'How'd you like to have a couple of your old Capitol scores?' I said, 'What are you talking about?' He says, 'Well . . . I'm working at the Library at Brigham Young, and I've come across so much music and a lot of it is yours and lot of it is Billy May's, and would you like to have the scores? I can photostat 'em for you.' I said, 'Sure, I certainly would.' So that's where they were. But I never had any, uh... I don't have any music parts... I don't have a place to put 'em, if I did have them. But he sent me about ten of the scores that I had, and I was happy to have those. And if anybody wants 'em, they can have 'em, but they'd have to be copied... the individual parts."
sources:
Ash, Lee and William G. Miller. Subject Collections: A Guide to
Special Book Collections and Subject Emphases As Reported
By University, College, Public, and Special Libraries and Museums
in the United States and Canada, 7th Ed. (New Providence, NJ:
R.R. Bowker, 1993), p.1495.
Ebay advertisement. "Mason & Hamlin Baby Grand Owned By
Frankie Carle," Jan. 25, 2005.
---. "Ralph Marterie Private Family Collection," Jan. 30, 2005.
---. "Ziggy Elman's Own Gold Plated King Super 20 trumpet," Mar. 5, 2005.
Follet, Bob. E-mail to the author, Dec. 20, 1995.
Popa, Christopher. Interview with Van Alexander, Nov. 8, 2004.
---. Interview with Joe Aguanno, Nov. 13, 2004.
---. Interview with Michael Berkowitz, Aug. 1, 2005.
---. Interview with Martin Elman, Apr. 16, 2005.
---. Interview with Ken Hansen, Nov. 14, 2004.
---. Interview with Phil Leshin, Jan. 26, 2005.
---. Interview with Vincent Lopez Jr., Dec. 2, 2004.
---. Interview with Maxine McCoy, Nov. 1, 2005.
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Of significant interest to researchers are descriptions of unique special collections and archives of big band memorabilia in various institutions across the country. Based on an arduous search for holdings and then consultation with the professionals in charge, an exclusive compilation of those riches has been prepared. Among the bandleaders represented are Benny Goodman, Wayne King, Lawrence Welk, Duke Ellington, Kay Kyser, Bunny Berigan, Glen Gray, Freddy Martin, Paul Whiteman, Sy Oliver, and Muggsy Spanier. Items include original big band scores and arrangements, personal papers and correspondence, oral history tapes, business files, itineraries, press clippings, posters, handbills, concert programs, photographs, and sound recordings. Despite the importance of these primary source materials to music scholars and other historians (not to mention tomorrow's musicians), the majority have thus far been given little attention. Since the big band sound was first and foremost an American phenomenon, discussion is limited primarily to the United States.
"SPECIAL COLLECTIONS AND ARCHIVES"
an investigation by Christopher Popa updated November 2005
