Tape Project Forum
General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: ironbut on November 15, 2009, 05:43:36 PM
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I've mentioned this series several times here and a search of Jazz Loft will bring those to light.
Well, Monday 11/16/2009 is the first broadcast from WNYC. You can subscribe to the RSS feed or whatever you find works best for you.
Here's the link;
http://beta.wnyc.org/shows/jazz-loft/
I think you'll find most everything I've mentioned including links to Duke University and the book written by Sam Stephenson.
Enjoy
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Just a little note to add to this old posting of mine (I can't hardly believe it's been nearly a year!).
I just got back from the 2010 Monterey Jazz Festival and got a chance to listen to a lecture by Sam Stephenson author of The Jazz Loft book and the head of that restoration team at Duke University. Very interesting stuff with a lot of background that may or may not be in his book (I bought it but have had a chance to read it yet).
Apparently there were a number of these 'jazz lofts' located in Manhattan and the popularity of this particular one has more to do with geography than anything else. The "Flower District" happens to lie on the crossroads of some of the subway and bus routes that lead to the downtown districts where the clubs reside. That made it easy for someone like Monk to hop off and pop in for a second to see what was going on without a lot of trouble.
During Stephenson's presentation, he showed several slides of the backs of the tape boxes. It was interesting to see that Gene Smith had labeled the location of the recordings by the machine that was discretely place in that location. From the boxes I saw, it looks like a mishmash of Uhers, Tandburgs etc.
I guess that Smith wasn't exactly rolling in dough at the time so the selection of tape stock he used is like a restoration archivists nightmare.
All kinds of different Scotch. Some RCA, but mostly;
Radio Shack favorites like;
Shamrock and Concertape
Along with ones I'd never heard of such as;
Royal Artist
Sunset
Brand Five
Audiotape by a company called Audio Devices Inc
Electronic World
Sam Goody "True Sound"
F&B
Grand Central Radio
Soni-Tape by Sony
Soundcraft
Lafayette
Arrow
Well, you get the idea. 1470 tapes and 4000 hours of recordings. According to Stephenson, only one man has heard it all. He was listening for clues on how to catalog each tape. Many of the boxes are not labeled with anything and the ones that are, may not have the correct tape in it anyway!
IIRC, he said that he'd interviewed over 400 people that had passed through the loft. One of them came up to the stage to say hello to Stephenson,.. Roy Haynes who had just torn up the place playing drums with Chick Corea on the main stage the night before.
Well, from the looks of it, the books fantastic. Maybe I'll revive this thread again once I'd read it all.