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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
