[Dixielandjazz] The Savory Collection - PART 1.

[Stephen G Barbone]

What a great find.

Cheers.
Steve Barbone

NY TIMES - By LARRY ROHTER - 8-17-10
Museum Acquires Storied Trove of Performances by Jazz Greats

For decades jazz cognoscenti have talked reverently of “the Savory  
Collection.” Recorded from radio broadcasts in the late 1930s by an  
audio engineer named William Savory, it was known to include extended  
live performances by some of the most honored names in jazz — but only  
a handful of people had ever heard even the smallest fraction of that  
music, adding to its mystique.

After 70 years that wait has now ended. This year the National Jazz  
Museum in Harlem acquired the entire set of nearly 1,000 discs, made  
at the height of the swing era, and has begun digitizing recordings of  
inspired performances by Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Billie  
Holiday, Count Basie, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Bunny Berigan,  
Harry James and others that had been thought to be lost forever. Some  
of these remarkable long-form performances simply could not fit on the  
standard discs of the time, forcing Mr. Savory to find alternatives.  
The Savory Collection also contains examples of underappreciated  
musicians playing at peak creative levels not heard anywhere else,  
putting them in a new light for music fans and scholars.

“Some of us were aware Savory had recorded all this stuff, and we were  
really waiting with bated breath to see what would be there,” said Dan  
Morgenstern, theGrammy-winning jazz historian and critic who is also  
director of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University. “Even  
though I’ve heard only a small sampling, it’s turning out to be the  
treasure trove we had hoped it would be, with some truly wonderful,  
remarkable sessions. None of what I’ve heard has been heard before.  
It’s all new.”

After making the recordings, Mr. Savory, who had an eccentric,  
secretive streak, zealously guarded access to his collection, allowing  
only a few select tracks by his friend Benny Goodman to be released  
commercially. When he died in 2004, Eugene Desavouret, a son who lives  
in Illinois, salvaged the discs, which were moldering in crates; this  
year he sold the collection to the museum, whose executive director,  
Loren Schoenberg, transported the boxes to New York City in a rental  
truck.

Part of what makes the Savory collection so alluring and historically  
important is its unusual format. At the time Savory was recording  
radio broadcasts for his own pleasure, which was before the  
introduction of tape, most studio performances were issued on 10-inch  
78-r.p.m. shellac discs, which, with their limited capacity, could  
capture only about three minutes of music.

But Mr. Savory had access to 12- or even 16-inch discs, made of  
aluminum or acetate, and sometimes recorded at speeds of 33 1/3 r.p.m.  
That combination of bigger discs, slower speeds and more durable  
material allowed Mr. Savory to record longer performances in their  
entirety, including jam sessions at which musicians could stretch out  
and play extended solos that tested their creative mettle.

“Most of what exists from this era was done at home by young musicians  
or fans, and so you get really bad-sounding recordings,” Mr.  
Schoenberg said. “The difference with Bill Savory is that he was both  
a musician and a technical genius. You hear some of this stuff and you  
say, ‘This can’t be 70 years old.’ ”

As a result, many of the broadcasts from nightclubs and ballrooms that  
Mr. Savory recorded contain more relaxed and free-flowing versions of  
hit songs originally recorded in the studio. One notable example is a  
stunning six-minute Coleman Hawkins performance of “Body and Soul”  
from the spring of 1940; in it this saxophonist plays a five-chorus  
solo even more adventurous than the renowned two-chorus foray on his  
original version of the song, recorded in the fall of 1939. By the  
last chorus, he has drifted into uncharted territory, playing in a  
modal style that would become popular only when Miles Davis recorded  
“Kind of Blue” in 1959.