Historical Sound Recordings Yale University The historical 78 rpm records project and other rare holdings at Yale Kendall Crilly, Diane Napert

Cataloging Project, The beginning  Andrew W. Mellon Foundation called a meeting to check status of large sound archives in U.S.  Established that bibliographic control was lacking, particularly for 78s  Needed bibliographic control before could embark on other projects such as digitization

Planning Grant  Planning grant was requested from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation by three institutions in 2004 and approved  These institutions were: Yale University, Historical Sound Recordings Collection Stanford University, Archive of Recorded Sound New York Public Library, Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound

Planning Grant  Planning activities took place from July 1, 2004 to January 31,2005

Planning included:  Better organization of sound recordings  More accurate counts of sound recordings  Analysis of availability and quality of copy  Time studies for various formats (78s, LPs, cassettes)

View of 78s housed in Mudd Library at Yale

Numbers of Recordings  853,162 commercial recordings at Yale, Stanford and Rodgers & Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound  Over 320, rpm recordings – mostly uncataloged

Cataloging Samples  Cataloging sample showed high rate of copy for multi-disc sets (92%)  Low rate for single 78 rpm recordings (7%)

The Grant was awarded!  Mellon awarded a grant of $789,000 starting in 2006 for cataloging of 78 rpm recordings

Catalogers Hired  Stanford University hires Frank Ferko June 2006  New York Public Library for the Performing Arts hires Heeseop Regent July 2006  Yale University hires Diane Napert September 2006

Structure of work  Yale was slated to catalog A-D labels  Stanford E-R  Rodgers & Hammerstein Archives S- Z  Syracuse approved by Mellon to join project in March 2008, focused on Decca

The numbers  The project contributed over 24,000 records to OCLC through November 2009 (figure includes only 2008 for Syracuse, approx. 3,500, and some upgraded copy)  Volume figures would be higher due to multi-disc sets and multiple copies  Yale able to extend project a few months with money from Yale Class of ’45W and add several hundred more records

Overlap in Collections  Stanford brought in 19,000 bib records to their system, many of which were contributed via the project  Yale had 63% hit rate against Stanford’s Edison bib records, less than 1% for Gramophone (Yale’s holdings are mostly Scandinavian)

The bibliographic records  Access points were added for composers, lyricists, arrangers, performing groups (but not each player within a named group), main performers, conductors, speakers  Attempts were made to connect arias to the correct opera and excerpted songs to the correct musicals (mostly successful)

The labels  Over 360 labels worked on  The largest included Brunswick, Capitol, Columbia, Decca, Edison, Gramophone and Victor

Yale Labels

More labels

And more

The presentation for ARSC (Stanford meeting) was called “Label Lust”

Other Labels o Société des Phonographes Bettini, Paris, ca o Verdi’s Trovatore. Balen del suo sorriso, arranged, in French o Fernand Baer, bass ; with piano acc.

Other Labels o Black Swan, New York, 1921 o Down home blues by Tom Delaney o Ethel Waters ; with Cordy Williams' Jazz Masters o Later recorded work for Columbia, 1925

Other Labels  Germany, Christschall, ca  Obrecht. Missa 'Malheur me bat‘. Dona nobis pacem  Mu ̈ nchener Domchor ; Ludwig Berberich, conductor

The web-site  Hired web designer, Nilou Moochhala,  /hsr/

Image of web-site

The recordings  Shape note singing  Musicals, operas, zarzuelas, operettas, incl. H.M.S. Pinafore translated into Yiddish “Der Shirtz”  Comedy skits  American Indian rituals  Political speeches, American and British  Campbell’s Pork and Beans Review (Andrews Sisters)  Art songs, sacred songs, popular music, jazz  Golf and dance instruction, parakeet lessons  Puzzle records

Languages  African languages  Arabic  Armenian  Catalan  Church Slavonic  Chinese  Czech  German  Danish  Dutch  Estonian  Finnish  French  Greek  Gaelic, Irish  Haitian French Creole  Hawaiian

Languages (cont.)  Hebrew  Hindi  Hungarian  Italian  Japanese  Latin  Latvian  Lithuanian  Maltese  Maori  Norwegian  Polish  Portuguese  Quechua  Romanian  Russian  Spanish  Swedish  Ukrainian  Yiddish

Languages (cont.)  Plus a few others  A few languages only occurred at some institutions (such as African languages, Stanford)

Lots of Resources Consulted  Discographies of labels, musical styles  For musicals: American song : the complete musical theatre companion by Ken Bloom, c1996-c2001 (though we also had a considerable number of British musical theatre excerpts)  For opera arias: Universal-Handbuch der Musikliteratur aller Zeiten und Vo ̈ lker : als Nachschlagewerk und Studienquelle der Welt-Musikliteratur by Franz Pazdírek, [ ?]

Eccentric names  Started a list of eccentric names Hot Lips Page ( ) Red (Nichols and Norvo) Pee Wee (Hunt, Russell and Tinney) Scrappy Lefty

Arias  Most translated aria

Most popular arias  Pagliacci. Vesti la giubba in Czech, German Russian, English, French  Carmen, several of the arias in several languages each

Best Sleuthing Story  Labels says: Arja Jako od wichru z op. Halka [by] Moniuszki  Actually is: Nie swatała mi cie ̨ swatka by Niewiadomski  Curator of collection sent copy of recording to associate in Poland  Others mainly typos for composer’s or work’s name

Inquiries from around the world  India  England (We Belong Together, Grey Gardens 2009 TV)  Spain  U.S. California, New York, other

Questions  Diane Napert,  Kendall Crilly,