[Dixielandjazz] Boris Rose archive

[Robert Ringwald]

Recording Jazz History as It Was Made
Amassed over decades, a treasure trove of rare performances by modern legends awaits
its fate in a Bronx basement
by Will Friedwald
Wall Street Journal, December 4, 2010
In a dark basement in a quiet residential neighborhood in the Bronx, a well-known
archive of privately recorded live tapes and acetates is gathering dust and waiting
for some institution to acquire it. The Boris Rose archive, named for the New Yorker
who amassed it, is so capacious, in fact, that no one has even cataloged all of it
and Elaine Rose, who has owned it since her father died 10 years ago, can't even
begin to guess how much it's worth.
"This collection certainly deserves to be in a major institution, such as the Smithsonian,
Library of Congress, or Institute of Jazz Studies -- intact," said John Hasse, the
curator of American music at the Smithsonian Institution.
The collection contains everything from rare performances by modern jazz legends
like Charlie Parker and John Coltrane to swing stars like Benny Goodman, Count Basie
and Mr. Rose's own favorites, like Sidney Bechet and Eddie Condon. Ms. Rose is well
aware of the need for finding a permanent repository; the acetates and the tapes
are, she said, in delicate condition.
"It needs a home. I just can't keep it in storage. I'm giving myself a time frame
of six months to a year to do something with it," she said.
Boris Rose (1918-2000) was one of those legendary characters who seem to proliferate
in the world of jazz. He was tall, articulate, always very well groomed -- and by
all accounts an outrageous character. An inveterate prankster, he dreamed up a dizzying
array of fake label names (including "Titania," "Ambrosia," "Caliban," "Session Disc,"
"Ozone" and "Chazzer Records"), many of which he tried to pass off as European imports.
Most of his albums bore an address on the front, such as "A Product of Stockholm,
Sweden." But if you looked closely on the back, it would say something like "Manufactured
in Madison, Wisconsin" in much smaller type.
The truth was that Mr. Rose produced them all from his brownstone on East 10th Street.
He told me once that he took great delight in confounding collectors and discographers,
whom he regarded as the bean counters of jazz.
"I always felt something about jazz," Mr. Rose said in an undated interview with
historian Dan Morgenstern that was taped for German television. "As far back as 1930,
I listened to broadcasts from the Cotton Club. I heard Duke, I heard Don Redman,
I heard Cab Calloway."
During his years at City College, Mr. Rose practiced the c-melody saxophone but began
to find his calling when he got a job at the MRM Music Shop on Nassau Street.
"As far back as 1940, I purchased a home [disc-cutter] recorder and I began to dub
records," he told Mr. Morgenstern. "For the next few years while I was in the Army,
I was able to dub records for collectors who couldn't find the originals."
>From there, he branched out to recording radio broadcasts and then live bands in
clubs. "Getting out of the Army in 1946, I had professional equipment, and began
to take down all of these jazz broadcasts," he explained. "First on 16-inch acetate
discs. Later on, when tape came into the picture, I was able to record on tape."
Mr. Morgenstern remembers Mr. Rose as "a man who never sat down -- he was always
monitoring three or four tape recorders or disc-cutters at any given time." For decades,
Mr. Rose ran a thriving business, recording jazz wherever he could, then making and
selling copies or trading them for rarer material.
He operated from 10th Street, but stored most of his original tapes and acetates
in the basement of his house in the Bronx, where he raised his three daughters.
It's still fairly well organized: Discs are mostly in one area; soundtracks are in
one set of cabinets; 10-inch reels are in one spot and 7-inch reels in another. 78
RPM discs and LPs are all over the place. A thick layer of dust rests on top of everything,
but considering the vastness of the collection, the few tapes I recently took out
and examined seemed to be in good shape -- though neither tape nor shellac will last
forever.
Mr. Rose kept detailed notebooks of most every recording he made. The trick, though,
is to find the tape to match the written entry.
"We won't know what's in there -- or what shape it's in -- until somebody wants it,"
Ms. Rose said.
The centerpiece of the Rose archive is the Birdland Collection: Mr. Rose recorded
virtually every band that played this most legendary of jazz joints, either directly
off the airwaves or by smuggling a concealed tape recorder into the club.
Over time he amassed a spectacular library of modern jazz from the glory years --
the 1950s. His friends found this amazing since he rarely listened to the stuff himself;
his own tastes ran to Louis Armstrong and Kid Ory. Still, he documented an entire
era of music, the great majority of which hasn't been heard in 60 years.
Around 1970, Mr. Rose's business entered a new phase when he began using some of
his material for mass-produced LPs that were distributed internationally, generally
bearing amateur-looking artwork and misleading information. According to friend and
researcher Arthur Zimmerman, Mr. Rose rarely if ever bothered to negotiate with the
actual musicians or pay mechanical royalties for the compositions (with the exception
of several country albums by Gene Autry, after the singing cowboy's lawyers got in
touch). He sold Charlie Parker and Billie Holiday material to ESP Records, and a
famous double-LP set of Parker at Birdland to Columbia Records.
In the end, Mr. Rose released hundreds of albums, under dozens of label names, up
through the mid-'80s. When compact discs took over, he gradually lost interest. In
the '90s, he made it known that the archive was for sale, but kept raising the price
whenever anybody expressed interest.
"He left it to me so I could have an income," said Elaine Rose. "His words to me
were, 'Make money with it.' But it's a whole different era now."


--Bob Ringwald
www.ringwald.com
Fulton Street Jazz Band
530/ 642-9551 Office
916/ 806-9551 Cell
Amateur (Ham) Radio K6YBV

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