[ARSCLIST] Disposition of those bluegrass tapes

[Mike Richter <mrichter@xxxxxxx>]

This exercise has been interesting, but let me begin with the 
conclusion. The tapes are en route (in plain manila envelope) to Michael 
Taft at the LoC.

There was no reason not to send them to the International Bluegrass 
Music Museum, except that they could only go to one place and I have a 
prejudice - not against the Kentucky museum but in favor of LoC. That's 
because a friend of mine was a librarian emeritus at LoC and helped me 
with a similar if more substantive situation a few years ago.

Back then, I had a set of tapes recording Maria Callas's master classes 
at Juilliard. They were supplied by John Ardoin, the author of the book 
on those classes, who had been given the dubs from Juilliard's masters 
to facilitiate the book and to use further as he chose. Another dub had 
gone to EMI who issued a four-LP set (later on four CDs) of fragments of 
the classes combined with some of Callas's commercial recordings of the 
music being discussed.

The EMI copies were to go to Callas's estate but vanished en route. The 
masters were safe at Juilliard, of course - until a musicologist friend 
sought access for academic reasons. He was told that they might still 
exist somewhere but had probably been lost in a cleanup and, regardless, 
could not be located. So the tapes I had were the only copies known to 
exist. With Ardoin's permission, I gave them to my librarian friend and 
they now repose in the LoC. I had made one set of audio CDs for a friend 
of John's and the CD-ROM which was in its third pressing (of 1000 each) 
when last I checked.

So more in respect to my late friend than because the International 
Museum was unworthy, the tapes are en route to LoC. Interestingly, no 
one addressed the broader question: How does one who is not involved 
with ARSC find a repository for such material? I suppose that the answer 
is: find someone who's in this group and ask here. At least, it worked 
for me. Now all that remains is to find out whether those ancient 
cassettes are still playable and whether the result was worth the effort.

Mike
--
mrichter@xxxxxxx
http://www.mrichter.com/