[Dixielandjazz] Benny Goodman collection at Yale University - New Haven Register, July 15, 2015

[Robert Ringwald]

Yale Project Preserving Benny Goodman Film and Audio


by Joe Amarante

New Haven Register, July 15, 2015


NEW HAVEN -- Benny Goodman fans three centuries from now will be able to watch the “King of Swing” do his thing on classics such as “Sing, Sing, Sing,” at least if Yale has anything to do with it.


The great clarinetist and bandleader died in 1986 but his collection of family-owned films lives on here, and Yale preservationists have been working to save the images on his 16-mm and 35-mm film, as well as audio tracks on magnetic reels.


Video from Goodman’s collection at Yale, transferred to new polyester film reels, should last about 500 years under the right storage conditions, said Remi Castonguay, outgoing public services project librarian at Yale’s Gilmore Music Library and the man who spearheaded the recent preservation project.


Montreal-born Castonguay said that after arriving at Yale in 2008, he quickly realized the audio-video cache was special.


Goodman donated the collection to Yale in the 1980s, including letters, musical arrangements, programs, photos (a few at Yale) financial papers and films.


“Media preservation is a little bit more work than paper-based archives,” said Castonguay. “The films were sitting in our vault... and I guess we weren’t sure what to do with it for awhile.”


Castonguay noticed that the films — largely from the 1950s — were beginning to smell like vinegar, a sign of acetate deterioration that will eventually cause distortion of the film.


“At some point it smells like an old salad,” Castonguay said. “We were all aware we needed to do something... it’s a very expensive proposition also, to do something about it.”


Suzanne Lovejoy, assistant music librarian for public services, said Castonguay asked to work on the films, applied for a grant and received $260,000 to preserve the films and create a detailed guide to the collection.


“I didn’t know what I was chewing on though because it was a very complicated process to figure out,” said Castonguay. “We have a lot of expertise here at Yale; the library has a preservation department,” and there was help from Brian Meacham, a former Hollywood tech guy and film preservationist who is archive and special collections manager at the Yale Film Study Center.


The library team — including arts-section digital librarian Francesca Livermore, now at Wesleyan University — brought in Goodman scholar David Jessup to review films, assess their historical value and prioritize them. But first Castonguay and Livermore had to run each piece of film in the Goodman archive through a hand-cranked machine, noting its physical condition and manufacturer.


The overall collection includes prorgrams, correspondence, 5,000 photos, 1,500 musical arrangements, 500 reel-to-reel audiotapes and recordings and 150 film reels. You might expect a lot of digitization to save them, but no.


“Very few have been digitized,” said Lovejoy, who noted that photos are kept in folders and boxes, roughly in chronological order, and in a Hamden cold-storage warehouse. “We retrive them if somebody wants to see them.”


“It’s not so strange actually,” said Castonguay, “to have most of our archives in print form only because Yale has so much stuff. It’s going to take a long time to digitize everything.”


Yale University owns the physical arrangements to the Goodman music but not the copyright, so it can’t just put everything online, said Lovejoy.


“But for many of our collections... we have online lists available, so if somebody could just Google ‘Benny Goodman papers Yale,’ they would find a list of all the arrangements.”


Yale has brief descriptions of the material available, and interested researchers worldwide (including Ken Burns for the “Jazz” documentary) call Yale for access.


One of the archived moments often referenced is the 1938 concert at Carnegie Hall, considered a great moment in jazz history.


Since 1988, Yale has produced a dozen CDs from the material in the archives, with support from the Goodman estate, on the Music Masters label originally and still available at Amazon.com.


Lovejoy has worked in the music library since 1995, helping researchers with the Goodman papers and filling in gaps for folks about Goodman.


Castonguay started working on the films (including rare footage of rehearsals and home movies) in 2012, converting them from reel to reel.


“In the film area, the analog-to-analog model is still the gold standard, and there’s many reasons for that,” he said. “A film buff will tell you there’s always going to be a difference between projecting a physical reel (of film) as opposed to a digital project.”


And there’s the rapidly changing nature of the digital realm.


“I always give that example that if I ask you to read a floppy disc on your computer these days, you might be in a little bit of trouble, right? So the idea of digital preservation is actually quite complicated. And the Yale library is working toward a model of digital preservation, but when I started that project, this kind of structure really wasn’t in place.”


Making it more laborious for some of the raw footage, the image reels and sound reels aren’t synchronized, so work has to be done to match them up.


Others are synchronized, but there are intellectual rights issues to work around, so for now there’s no on-site access of those films.


“The model I could see happening is... we could make small clips available at a resolution that’s not super interesting to copy, you know,” Castonguay said, pending more talks with the Goodman estate.


Some of the material even belonged to TV studios, including the TV special “Swing Into Spring” in 1958 (with Ella Fitzgerald) that marked the 25th annivesary of Goodman’s band. The Gilmore Library held a “Swing into Spring” event this year to spotlight the Goodman archives.


As for other Connecticut connections, the silent home movies show Goodman’s house close to Stamford (the city where he is buried). Goodman moved to Stamford in the 1940s and regularly visited and even performed at Yale.


“There’s some home movie footage that we have that shows a party... at his house with famous musicians and other artists, as well,” said Castonguay. “He was also a big fishing enthusiast, so we see him fishing in Long Island Sound. It looked like that anyway.”


Castonguay, interviewed via phone several weeks ago, left Yale to live in Vancouver last week after his wife accepted a job there.


“I wish I could stay, actually, and continue working on this because it’s like the most exciting part of it is... now.”


The end of the first phase of the Goodman preservation will give way to a new hire to replace Castonguay. In the meantime, researchers and the curious can contact the Gilmore Library by phone (203-432-0497) or email ( 
MusicLibrary at yale.edu 
) to access video of the man who created “Let’s Dance,” “Stompin at the Savoy,” “Moonglow,” “Bugle Call Rag” and “I Got It Bad and That Ain’t Good.”


Big band music gave way to other forms of jazz after the 1940s, but Goodman’s popularity saw revivals in the 1950s and 1960s and beyond. Far beyond, as it turns out.  -30-


Bob Ringwald Solo, Duo, Trio, Quartet
Fulton Street Jazz Band
916/ 806-9551
www.ringwald.com
Amateur (ham) Radio K6YBV

Seven wheelchair athletes have been banned from the Paralympics after they tested positive for WD40.