[Dixielandjazz] Benny Carter, Benny Goodman archives at Rutgers University

[Robert Ringwald]

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Rare Benny Carter, Benny Goodman Archives Now Available to Researchers at Rutgers
IJS
Rutgers University press release, November 2, 2011
The Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies (IJS) has completed a two-year, $296,000 project,
funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, to digitize two of its most important
collections of sound recordings: the Benny Carter and Benny Goodman Collections.
The project has enabled IJS, a unit of Rutgers University's John Cotton Dana Library,
and the world's largest jazz archive, to make these rare collections available to
researchers. Carter's and Goodman's careers intersected many other important figures,
and traversed many varied areas of American culture, including race relations, the
film industry, the recording studios, radio and television, the academy, and international
diplomacy, so the collections will serve as primary source material for a wide range
of specialists in many fields.
Benny Carter was one of jazz's most important and multifaceted talents. As a soloist,
he was a model for swing era alto saxophonists and was nearly unique in his ability
to double on trumpet, which he played in an equally distinctive style. As an arranger,
he helped chart the course of big band jazz, and his compositions, such as "When
Lights Are Low" and "Blues in My Heart," are jazz standards. Among his many awards
and honors were three Grammys, the National Medal of Arts, an NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship,
and the Kennedy Center Honors. Beyond jazz, Carter also made major musical contributions
to the world of film and television as one of the first African American arrangers/composers
to penetrate the Hollywood studios, and served as a guiding force in the integration
of the separate black and white musicians' unions in Los Angeles.
The Carter Collection comprises Carter's personal archive and contains recordings
of many unique performances, interviews, and other events in Carter's professional
life. Carter himself donated many of these materials to the Institute; his wife,
Hilma, gave the remainder shortly after Carter's death in 2003 at age 95.
Carter was a strong supporter of IJS, and in 1987, he created an endowment to support
jazz researchers, funding projects by more than 70 Rutgers graduate students and
other scholars.
Benny Goodman (1909-1986) was the symbol of the Swing Era, when jazz for a time occupied
a unique position as both high art and as America's popular music. Goodman was a
clarinet virtuoso, proficient in classical music as well as jazz, and a bandleader
whose orchestras helped spread big band jazz around the world. He also made a major
contribution to civil rights by hiring black musicians Teddy Wilson and Lionel Hampton
to perform with him in the mid-1930s. A musical perfectionist, he set the highest
standards for himself and for the musicians who played with him in a career spanning
seven decades. Goodman received honorary doctorates from Columbia, Yale, and Harvard,
the Kennedy Center Honors, and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
IJS owns the most complete collection of Goodman recordings anywhere. It consists
entirely of reel-to-reel tapes compiled by Goodman biographer/discographer D. Russell
Connor over four decades; Connor donated the collection to IJS in 2006. As a close
friend and confidant to Goodman, Connor had access to the clarinetist's personal
archive, as well as to collections of many Goodman researchers and specialists worldwide.
The unissued or rare recordings selected for digitization as part of the project
total approximately 400 hours.
Both collections contain many rare and some newly discovered performances. The Carter
collection includes many interviews, as well as unissued collaborations with the
likes of Sarah Vaughan, Nat King Cole, and Oscar Peterson. Among the earliest items
are broadcasts from Harlem's legendary Savoy Ballroom where Carter led his big band
in 1939. There are also many examples of Carter's soundtracks for feature films,
beginning with the 1943 classic Stormy Weather and for such television series as
Chrysler Theater, Ironside, and the Alfred Hitchcock Hour. Among the Goodman rarities
are hundreds of airchecks from the famed Let's Dance and Camel Caravan broadcasts
from the 1930s, unissued concert recordings spanning several decades and emanating
from Europe, the Far East, and many locations throughout the U.S., and his final
studio recordings made only months before his death in 1986. The newly digitized
recordings from both collections total nearly 20,000 individual tracks.
Further information about the project, as well as content listings and audio samples
from each collection may be found on the IJS website:
http://www.newark.rutgers.edu/~danadml/IJS/MellonProject/


--Bob Ringwald
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