Activities in Richmond are under the auspices of the Starr-Gennett Foundation. They are trying to catch up on the work of preservation that wasn't carefully attended to for some period of time. They are working with IU-East and the Indiana Historical Society.
Rich Remsberg <rich@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: I don't know if they have cards, but the Richmond Historical Society was taking an active interest in Gennett around the time I moved away from Indiana. They had been working with the family and may have some of this sort of thing. The Historical Society had been talking with the Digital Library Project at Indiana University about digitizing Gennett materials, but I don't know where that project standds, if it got on its feet at all.
Even more of a longshot, you may want to check with the Folklore Institute and the Archives of Traditional Music, also at Indiana University. Patrick, have you ever looked into what Gennett materials they have in their holdings?
Rich
On Oct 14, 2007, at 4:55 PM, Malcolm Rockwell wrote:
Hello folks -
A couple of things:
1) I've now been through all the Gennett recording cards I've been able to locate. They physically exist at Rutgers and at the Indiana Historical Society. I now have jpg and bmp files of all the cards at Rutgers, thanks to the aid of Dan Morgenstern and the patience and camera of my co-compiler Charlie Dahan, as well as my own hand written notes of all the cards archived in Indianapolis.
These are the covered dates:
NYC: May, 1921 - June 1928
Richmond: August 1921 - January 1922 January 1923 - December 1923 January 1927 - April 1929
If anyone knows of any more cards in public collections or private hands I would surely like to know about them. I also still seek any information on recordings made in Richmond for the US Starr label pre-1919. I have quite a bit, but there are some major gaps yet to fill.
My favorite find? It was the discovery of microphone/musician placement diagrams on the backs of some of the cards from Richmond, 1926, when Gennett was first engineering recordings electrically. I was stunned and pleased, to say the least!
2) One of the cards at Rutgers is a puzzler (just one?).It's mx 8289, recorded in NYC at 9 E. 37th Street on June 15, 1920. But, you say, mx 8289 would be for a recording date on March 21, 1923 - and so it is. But it's not the same title or artist and the card gives the 1920 recording date, backed up by a copper master shipping date (to Richmond) of June 19, 1920. The title on the card is is "Underneath The Moon (Waltz)" and the artist shows only as "Orchestra." I have found no release of this title anywhere in the Gennett catalog. Can anyone explain the anomaly?
Mal Rockwell
Rich Remsberg Image Research 243 Union Street, #105 North Adams, MA 01247 413-664-4516 rich@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx