Re: [ARSCLIST] 100K+ Jazz records going to Oberlin

["Steven C. Barr(x)" <stevenc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "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.
>
Except, IMHO, these artifacts aren't really RECORDS...since I define
"records" as objects generally made of a shellac compound, which are
played at a speed near 78rpm +/_...

Steven C. Barr