[ARSCLIST] Snoozer Quinn

[Kathryn Hobgood <khobgood@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Members of ARSC:

I hope that I may ask your members a few questions in hopes
that someone could give me a lead to follow.

Under the guidance of Tulane music professor John Baron, I am researching
Snoozer Quinn, a jazz guitar player who had a very obscure career and short
life, but who was considered one of the greatest by musicians like Eddie
Lang, Bix Biederbecke and others. Snoozer was from Bogalusa, La., and in
fact is my grandfather's first cousin. He played with Paul Whiteman  for a
short time before becoming homesick and moving back to Louisiana.
Supposedly, he recorded sides for both Columbia and RCA, which were never
issued. I do have some sides recorded by his friend Johhny Wiggs, which were
done on home recording equipment while Snoozer was in the TB Ward in a New
Orleans' hospital, near death. Despite his frailty, his guitar work is
phenomenal.

I am writing to ask if anyone has additional information on  Snoozer Quinn
that they would be willing to share with me. Do you know what ever became
of those record companies' unreleased recordings? I read in a 1970s
NYTimes article that they were being stored in a New Jersey warehouse...
but I wonder if anything proper has been done about them. How could one go
about accessing those recordings and searching for a needle in a haystack?

Any advice you have for a new researcher in this field would be much
appreciated.

Most Sincerely,

Kathryn Hobgood
Tulane University
Dept. of Music
504-650-1238
khobgood@xxxxxxxxxx