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Flame Keepers: National Jazz Museum in Harlem

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By Karl Ackermann
June 28, 2017
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Curiosity is one of the defining characteristics of jazz fans.
—Loren Schoenberg

On 129th Street, in the heart of Harlem,

Loren Schoenberg

saxophone
b.1958

" data-original-title="" title="">Loren Schoenberg emerges from a crowded back room with an unusual looking recording. Aluminum discs like the one he holds, were the first instant, electrical means of recording. Invented in 1929 they were a means of allowing radio stations to record and archive live programs that could be played on a delayed basis or used for promotional purposes. The discs made for more convenient recording, compared to the standard wax discs of that era but required a wooden or fiber stylus for playback. Their history was a brief one as the new technology of lacquer discs emerged in 1934. Schoenberg hands me the disc and points out the initials etched into the surface near the center hole. Because the aluminum discs were not made for commercial sales, they did not have the customary paper labels, but rather, crude etchings for identification purposes. This one appears to be marked with the letters "BG." It's possible, Schoenberg tells me, that this disc may be from a

Benny Goodman

clarinet
1909 - 1986

" data-original-title="" title="">Benny Goodman broadcast but that has yet to be determined. This investigative process is one of the research projects taking place at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem where Schoenberg serves as Founding Director and Senior Scholar. In a very real way, this was a road that Schoenberg started down decades before he could have realized his destination.

The Brief and Troubled Life of the New York Jazz Museum

It was over-sensationalized in media but there is no question that New York City in the 1970s was a dangerous place. The metaphors of a lawless frontier played out in designations like "Fort Apache" and "Fear City." The October 29, 1975 New York Daily News painted an ominous picture with its infamous headline, FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD, a reference to then President Gerald Ford's refusal to bail out New York City. On the brink of economic collapse, corporations fled to the suburbs and beyond, taking white-collar workers with them, shrinking the city's dwindling tax base and creating a domino effect. Neighborhoods like Hell's Kitchen—now unaffordable to many—were then occupied by drug dealers, street people and transients; unemployment was high and crime was higher. It was in this realm that a newly minted lawyer, Howard E. Fischer, was making some serious career decisions as he struggled to build up a clientele. He answered an unrelated advertisement in the Village Voice placed by a man named Frank Bristol -a jazz fan looking to build a like-minded network to organize jazz related events. Fischer had grown up with jazz, his family listening to

Coleman Hawkins

saxophone, tenor
1904 - 1969

" data-original-title="" title="">Coleman Hawkins,

Chick Webb

drums
1905 - 1939

" data-original-title="" title="">Chick Webb and others, but Fischer's own interest was casual prior to the Bristol connection. With Bristol, he began laying the groundwork for an organization called the New York Hot Jazz Society but within months of their meeting, Bristol died. Through another connection, Fischer connected with Jack Bradley, a photographer who had worked with some musicians. Fischer and Bradley built up the capacity of the society and later became co-directors of the New York Jazz Museum. In 2004, Fischer self-published a chronicle of the museum's history with the sensationalized title, Jazz Expos��: The N.Y. Jazz Museum and the Power Struggle That Destroyed It. The book is less an expos�� than a list of accomplishments and grievances; the one-hundred and twenty-six page book relies heavily on reprints of press releases, newspaper coverage and minutia such as the verbatim notes from Board of Directors meetings. Amongst the leaden coverage however, is the story of a substantial public appetite for such an institution, and the museum's relative success in delivering on its goals.

Fischer claims that he originally wanted the museum to be located in Harlem but rejected that location because he felt that the ..."perception and reality...of too much crime..." would deter tourists. Having secured a location in mid-town Manhattan, the museum opened in June, 1972 with an exhibition honoring

Louis Armstrong

trumpet and vocals
1901 - 1971

" data-original-title="" title="">Louis Armstrong who had passed away less than one year before. Armstrong's wife, Lucille, attended and musicians who had played with Armstrong, performed. Among the jazz-world attendees were writer Nat Hentoff, Newport Jazz Festival founder George Wein,

Artie Shaw

clarinet
1910 - 2004

" data-original-title="" title="">Artie Shaw,

Clark Terry

trumpet
1920 - 2015

" data-original-title="" title="">Clark Terry and John Hammond. Armstrong's wife donated memorabilia including recordings and letters. The museum sponsored a Jazz Touring Program—an outreach platform to bring jazz to younger audiences through a number of events including live performances. It co-sponsored Sunday concerts with a major liquor distributor and it featured revolving exhibitions included ones honoring

Duke Ellington

piano
1899 - 1974

" data-original-title="" title="">Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman,

Lester Young

saxophone
1909 - 1959

" data-original-title="" title="">Lester Young and

John Coltrane

saxophone
1926 - 1967

" data-original-title="" title="">John Coltrane. By Fischer's own account, the museum drew well, sometimes with waiting lines at the door. The museum was recognized with awards, donations and positive national press. Behind the scenes, all was not well.

In the course of the museum's five-year existence, it changed locations four times due to space limitations, rent increases and real estate transactions. Fischer's partner, Bradley began drawing a salary as a Managing Director and Fischer charged him with a breach of their contract. There were additional lawsuits involving contractors and a dispute with New York City over the museum's tax status. In 1977, the Board of Directors for the museum fired Fischer for poor management practices, and Fischer's own lawyers rubbed salt in the wounds by suing him for additional legal fees. The museum closed that same year with its collections moving to the New York Public Library's Schoenberg Center and the Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies.

When the New York Jazz Museum opened in 1972, it was one of only two dedicated jazz museums in the U.S., the other being the New Orleans Jazz Museum which opened in 1961. Despite Fischer's personal misadventures, the museum was a success by many measures bringing regular concerts to the city at a time when jazz clubs were in decline, and exposing the art (and artifacts) to new audiences. The museum brought in a number of well-known musicians who would often convene there and share stories with each other and the volunteers who ran the facility on a day-to-day basis. In the early days of the museum, one of those volunteers was the seventeen year old Loren Schoenberg.

The National Jazz Museum in Harlem

An affiliate of the Smithsonian, The National Jazz Museum in Harlem was founded in 1997 by Leonard Garment and Abraham D. Sofaer. Garment was the White House Counsel to Richard Nixon following Nixon's firing of John Dean during the Watergate debacle. He was also a talented saxophonist with strong ties to jazz. Soafer was a federal judge for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Schoenberg serves as the Executive Director and resident jazz scholar for the museum. The museum has two Artistic Directors -pianist, composer and bandleader

Jon Batiste

piano
b.1986

" data-original-title="" title="">Jon Batiste and GRAMMY winning bassist

Christian McBride

bass
b.1972

" data-original-title="" title="">Christian McBride. Batiste has a focus on keeping the museum relevant to modern jazz fans while McBride acts as an ambassador and advisor on program development. The bassist also hosts the NPR radio program "Jazz Night in America." The Board of Directors includes very notable names such as Ken Burns and

Wynton Marsalis

trumpet
b.1961

" data-original-title="" title="">Wynton Marsalis.

Schoenberg's extensive reach in the industry makes him uniquely well-suited to his role in the museum. Originally schooled in piano, Schoenberg took up the tenor saxophone in 1974 and he has a resume that touches every corner of the jazz business. He attended the Manhattan School of Music as a Music Theory major in 1976 while minoring in piano. In the same approximate time frame, he played in the

Eddie Durham

guitar
1906 - 1987

" data-original-title="" title="">Eddie Durham quartet and formed his own big band shortly afterwards. The band performed at the Village Vanguard, the Blue Note, Michael's Pub and other New York venues. In 1979, Schoenberg produced a Carnegie Hall tribute to

Charlie Parker

saxophone, alto
1920 - 1955

" data-original-title="" title="">Charlie Parker and Lester Young at that featured

Howard McGhee

trumpet
1918 - 1987

" data-original-title="" title="">Howard McGhee,

Herb Ellis

guitar
1921 - 2010

" data-original-title="" title="">Herb Ellis,

Dicky Wells

trombone
1907 - 1985

" data-original-title="" title="">Dicky Wells,

Mel Lewis

drums
1929 - 1990

" data-original-title="" title="">Mel Lewis and others. In 1985, Benny Goodman hired Schoenberg's band to appear on a Public Broadcasting Service program and he later became Goodman's archivist and his personal manager. In 1997, Schoenberg became

Bobby Short

piano
1926 - 2005

" data-original-title="" title="">Bobby Short's musical director, playing with Short at the Cafe Carlyle. He later joined the faculty of The New School and the Manhattan School of Music, and is an artistic consultant to Jazz at Lincoln Center. Schoenberg shared honors with Dan Morgenstern in winning the 1995 Grammy Award for Best Album Notes.

If New Orleans birthed jazz, then no setting cultivated the genre more than Harlem, and the National Jazz Museum makes the local community a significant part of its focus. Jazz was the cornerstone of the Harlem Renaissance, a movement that had far-reaching implications in the broader culture of the United States. Home to poet Langston Hughes and novelists Claude McKay and Zora Neale Hurston, the area between 110th Street and the lower 150s was a cultural mecca.

Jelly Roll Morton

piano
1890 - 1941

" data-original-title="" title="">Jelly Roll Morton,

Bessie Smith

vocals
1894 - 1937

" data-original-title="" title="">Bessie Smith,

Billie Holiday

vocals
1915 - 1959

" data-original-title="" title="">Billie Holiday and

Duke Ellington

piano
1899 - 1974

" data-original-title="" title="">Duke Ellington drew throngs of fans to the north of Manhattan and destinations such as the Savoy Ballroom, Small's Paradise, Club Hot-Cha, The Radium Club, and, most famously, the Cotton Club. It is in upholding this legacy and promoting a forward thinking approach toward the future of jazz, that the The National Jazz Museum in Harlem is on a one of a kind mission to bring art to life.

Ryan Maloney, Director of Education and Programming at the museum, articulates much of what goes on beyond the exhibit space. By way of a formal statement, the museum's mission is to ..."preserve, promote and present jazz by inspiring knowledge, appreciation and the celebration of jazz locally, nationally and internationally." The long view is to ..."secure a permanent home in Harlem with space large enough to showcase Harlem's vast contributions to jazz, American music and world history." Maloney explains that the museum's programs reach out to a broad spectrum of ages from kindergarten through adult, with tours, presentations, live performances and interactive involvement. They also offer ongoing education curriculums for every age group. For all its prestigious trappings, the museum is as much a Harlem neighborhood hang-out as it is an institution. The exhibitions are surrounded by untethered instruments, there for visitors to pick up, examine and be inspired by. In a prominent space near the entrance to the museum, sits a period piece, player piano. Schoenberg explains that "In Harlem, in the early days of jazz, the piano was at the center of most homes regardless of the financial stability of the household." It was a pivotal part of the cultural and social structure of the area.

Maloney and Schoenberg share the vision of an institution that behaves more like a community center; one that moves away from the insularity of jazz and provides insight through exposure, even in something as non-threatening as a visiting group attempting to scat sing, can an understanding of jazz develop, based on their finding of common denominators. By providing an environment that contains the best elements of a jazz club, a museum and a classroom, they hope to share the experience of the music. The museum roughly breaks out their events as one-third live performances and two-thirds presentations and series. The larger space at 58 West 129th Street helps provide the physical platform for this ambitious reach. The museum had been located nearby on 126th Street for its first fifteen years, moving in 2015 to an area that is becoming the cultural center of Harlem. The museum, however, doesn't limit its outreach to the confines of their own location, producing close to one-hundred free programs in New York City and drawing in hundreds of jazz artists.

The exhibits featured at The National Jazz Museum in Harlem are not simply accolades to jazz legends, but also a broad program of related topics. One example was in hosting a reception for The Ghosts of Harlem: Sessions with Jazz Legends (Vanderbilt University Press, 2009), a book by photographer, and author Hank O'Neal. The outstanding collection of oral histories and photographs of Harlem jazz legends covered some themes similar to the museum's Vibrations, an exhibit that incorporated more than one-hundred years of Harlem history. Lester Young at 102 and Ralph Ellison: A Man and his Records have been among the museum's artist-specific exhibits. The museum houses a large donated Ellison collection. It is also home to the celebrated Savory Collection, one-hundred-plus hours of live jazz recordings from radio programs aired between 1935 and 1941.

William Savory played piano and saxophone before taking a serious interest in sound engineering. In the 1930s, he conceived his own recording devices and was later involved with electronically reproducing Edison wax cylinders. His work with Columbia Records engineer William Bachman resulted in the first 33.3 RPM, LP record which was commercialized in 1948. One of Savory's most valuable skills was his expertise in transcribing live radio performances of jazz musicians (and other artists), capturing those events on aluminum, or lacquer coated aluminum discs. Because of the slower revolutions per minute, Savory was able to capture longer performances than previously recorded on smaller, 78 RPM shellac discs. The recordings predated tape and were largely forgotten prior to the National Jazz Museum's 2010 acquisition of the discs. The museum is in the process of digitizing one of a kind performances from Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Bunny Berigan, Harry James,

Django Reinhardt

guitar
1910 - 1953

" data-original-title="" title="">Django Reinhardt,

Lennie Tristano

piano
1919 - 1978

" data-original-title="" title="">Lennie Tristano and others. The one-hundred-plus hours of music were amassed by Savory in his off-hours following similar work in transcribing radio commercials for rebroadcast. In the looser environment of these long-form radio performances, the artists had the opportunity improvise in ways that a three-minute 78 RPM tracks did not allow.

The museum also hosts audio and video archive presentations that have included

Toshiko Akiyoshi

piano
b.1929

" data-original-title="" title="">Toshiko Akiyoshi,

Geri Allen

piano
1957 - 2017

" data-original-title="" title="">Geri Allen,

Andrew Cyrille

drums
b.1939

" data-original-title="" title="">Andrew Cyrille,

Lee Konitz

saxophone, alto
1927 - 2020

" data-original-title="" title="">Lee Konitz,

George Lewis

trombone
b.1952

" data-original-title="" title="">George Lewis,

Adam Nussbaum

drums
b.1955

" data-original-title="" title="">Adam Nussbaum and

Cedar Walton

piano
1934 - 2013

" data-original-title="" title="">Cedar Walton, on the audio side, and

Pat Martino

guitar
1944 - 2021

" data-original-title="" title="">Pat Martino,

Clark Terry

trumpet
1920 - 2015

" data-original-title="" title="">Clark Terry and

Reggie Workman

bass
b.1937

" data-original-title="" title="">Reggie Workman in video collections. The National Jazz Museum in Harlem is less a shrine to the past than a place dedicated to the nurturing of jazz into the future, building awareness and inclusiveness and introducing the music to new generations that may be inquisitive about the genre and its history. Of the many qualities that could be used to describe a "jazz fan," Schoenberg hits on what may be the logical common denominator, offering that ..."curiosity is one of the defining characteristics of jazz fans." This museum is a perfect destination for satisfying that curiosity.

The Savory Collection, Vol. 1 -Body and Soul: Coleman Hawkins & Friends

Extended versions of familiar compositions and live settings are part of the overall value of The Savory Collection, Vol. 1 -Body and Soul: Coleman Hawkins & Friends (The National Jazz Museum in Harlem, 2016). At approximately double the length of the original studio recording, "Body and Soul" is a bit faster paced but with the originally intended atmosphere intact. Equally important is that the broadcasts captured by Savory allow new audiences to hear these early icons in a setting that has been previously unavailable.

The first volume contains brilliantly refurbished pieces by Hawkins,

Ella Fitzgerald

vocals
1917 - 1996

" data-original-title="" title="">Ella Fitzgerald (barely into her twenties at the time),

Fats Waller

piano
1904 - 1943

" data-original-title="" title="">Fats Waller, and

Lionel Hampton

vibraphone
1908 - 2002

" data-original-title="" title="">Lionel Hampton. Also appearing on the recording, but less well-known is guitarist Carl Kress and Emilio C��ceres, a Paraguayan, who was primarily a composer but also played guitar and violin, the latter of which he plays on a single track of the album.

If the Coleman Hawkins & Friends subtitle suggests a unified, star-studded jam session, that isn't the case. The collection is culled from six radio broadcasts recorded in four different years from 1936 to 1940 and the paths of the big name artists here, did not cross. It's also worth noting that—again, despite the title—Hawkins' large ensemble accounts for only three of the eighteen tracks while Waller's sextet dominates the album with six tracks. Some of the sidemen, in the cases of Hawkins and Fitzgerald, are best-guesses or unidentifiable.

The Savory Collection, Vol. 2 -Jumpin' at the Woodside: The Count Basie Orchestra (feat. Lester Young) is taken from eleven different broadcasts but all feature Basie, Young and a number of other players. The Savory Collection, Vol. 3 -Honeysuckle Rose: Fats Waller & Friends, similar to Vol. 1, is a collection of seven different acts with The John Kirby Sextet featured on ten of the twenty-one tracks. Though Kirby is not well-remembered today, his bands attracted top artists such as Dizzy Gillespie,

Benny Carter

saxophone, alto
1907 - 2003

" data-original-title="" title="">Benny Carter and

Ben Webster

saxophone, tenor
1909 - 1973

" data-original-title="" title="">Ben Webster. Carter has his own piece on Vol. 3 along with

Albert Ammons

piano
1907 - 1949

" data-original-title="" title="">Albert Ammons and

Roy Eldridge

trumpet
1911 - 1989

" data-original-title="" title="">Roy Eldridge.

The significance of the entire Savory series cannot be under-estimated. These are rare glimpses of jazz history, preserved and mastered to present an optimum listening experience. The level of clarity achieved in many of these eighty-year old recordings is remarkable.

Personnel: (Tracks 1-3) Coleman Hawkins: tenor saxophone; Thelma Carpenter: vocals; (probable personnel): Tommy Stevenson, Joe Guy, Tommy Lindsay, Nelson Bryant: trumpets; William Cato, Claude Jones, Sandy Williams: trombones; Eustis Moore, Jackie Fields: alto saxophone; Ernie Powell, Kermit Scott: tenor saxophone; Gene Rodgers: piano; Gene Fields: guitar; Billy Taylor: bass; C. Heard: drums. (Tracks 4-5) Ella Fitzgerald: vocals; Chick Webb: drums; unknown personnel from CBS Studio Orchestra. (Tracks 6-11) Herman Autrey: trumpet; Gene Sedric: clarinet, tenor saxophone; Fats Waller: piano, vocals; Al Casey: guitar; Cedric Wallace: bass; Slick Jones: drums. (Tracks 12-16) Charlie Shavers: trumpet; Vernon Brown: trombone; Dave Matthews: alto saxophone; Herschel Evans: tenor saxophone; Howard Smith: piano; Milt Hinton: bass; Cozy Cole: drums; Lionel Hampton: vibes, piano, vocals. (Tracks 17) Carl Kress, Dick McDonough: guitars. (Track 18) Ernie Caceres: clarinet, baritone saxophone; Johnny Gomez: guitar; Emilio Caceres: violin.

Tracks: Body and Soul; Basin Street Blues; Lazy Butterfly (Theme); A-Tisket, A-Tasket; I've Been Saving Myself for You; Yacht Club Swing/ Hold My Hand (Medley); I Haven't Changed A Thing; Summer Souvenirs / Who Blew Out The Flame (Medley); You Must Have Been A Beautiful Baby/ Sixty Seconds Got Together/ I've Got A Pocketful of Dreams (Medley); Alligator Crawl; Spider and The Fly; Dinah; Blues; Chinatown, My Chinatown; Stardust; Rosetta; Heat Wave, China Boy.

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