[ARSCLIST] 100K+ Jazz records going to Oberlin

[Matt Sohn <mahatma57@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jim Neumann is the stepfather of one of my best friends from childhood. He 
ran the Beehive record label. They had to rent a warehouse for the records 
because the foundation of the house was cracking under the weight of all the 
records..
-Matt Sohn

From: 
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/music/chi-collection_p_dec04,1,3415188.story
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We had it coming, but jazz is going
By Howard Reich
December 4, 2007
It's billed as the largest privately held jazz record collection in America, 
and it's heading out of Chicago.

More than 100,000 jazz recordings tracing the history of the art form --  
from swing to the avant-garde -- will be donated to Oberlin Conservatory of 
Music, in Oberlin, Ohio, by Chicagoans James and Susan Neumann.

James Neumann, who graduated from Oberlin College in 1958 as a liberal arts 
major, began acquiring inexpensive jazz albums as a teenager, long before 
the LPs became collectors' items. He eventually amassed a collection of the 
complete recordings of Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, 
Charlie Parker and more, he says.


Why didn't the Neumanns donate the treasures to a Chicago institution?

"I tried to," says James Neumann, "but I was rejected. ... A lot of 
organizations didn't have room for it."

Because Oberlin Conservatory plans to open the $22 million Phyllis Litoff 
Building for jazz studies in 2009, the school could accommodate the 
Neumanns' trove (which also includes posters, autographs and other jazz 
memorabilia).

James Neumann places the value of the collection "in the neighborhood of 
$500,000"; its complete recorded contents will be transferred to digital 
files.