Vintage vinyl
Of the many labels attached to Syracuse University, being an artistic epicenter might not be too high on the list. But the addition of more creative hallmarks is pushing SU toward becoming synonymous with arts and culture studies.
In early July, SU received the generous gift of 200,000 78 rpm records from the collection of Morton ‘Morty’ J. Savada, owner of the renowned Records Revisited store in New York City, as announced by local and national media outlets.
The monetary worth of the collection totals about $1 million, but the value it brings to SU is immeasurable, said Dean of Libraries Suzanne Thorin.
‘These aren’t just for music people,’ Thorin said. ‘You can see in political science or history or in arts and science where you would want to look at music and poetry. It really resonates with a lot of the departments in the university.’
The records, currently stored downtown at The Warehouse Gallery, will be part of the Belfer Audio Laboratory and Archive, a division of SU devoted to the study of recorded sound. Belfer is now home to the second largest collection of 78s, surpassed only by the Library of Congress.
The Savada collection catalogs a wide variety of early 20th century music – mostly jazz and big band. A variety of blues, broadcast, comedy, country, folk, gospel, Hawaiian, Latin, musical theater, polka and spoken word recordings make up the entire collection. Popular artists included in the collection include legends like Tommy Dorsey, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald and Benny Goodman.
But Savada’s specialty was finding rarities, making the collection a field of hidden treasures for those studying music and society during the early 20th century.
Recording dates range from 1895 to the 1950s.
Melinda Dermody, head of the arts and humanities department in the library, said Savada’s collection is an asset because of not only its size but also the unique variety of material.
‘He had a very good time collecting in the heart of New York City,’ she said. ‘The opportunities that came to him with his reputation, with the location of the store, allowed him to get a lot of wonderful recordings.’
Savada founded Records Revisited in 1977. He set up the store on the previous site of his family’s clothing manufacturing company, just across from the Empire State Building in Manhattan.
The store was his life, said his youngest son Alan, who helped build the shelves in the store the summer before it opened.
Running the store made Savada an expert on jazz and popular 20th century music.
Throughout his time running Records Revisited, Savada often worked with filmmakers who were looking for a particular piece, including multiple times with director Woody Allen.
One year, when he took his son Alan to a Yankees game as part of a birthday ritual, he stopped and chatted with a friend of his – a friend he introduced to his son as Count Basie, legendary jazz pianist and bandleader.
After decades running the store, Savada became unable to spend long days working the way he used to.
‘He slowed down the last couple of years,’ Alan said. ‘He used to go in there at 9, then he would go in at 10.’
In January 2006, Savada underwent surgery that left him unable to work the same long hours.
‘He tried to go back afterward, but he never could,’ Alan said.
Savada passed away in his home in Harrison, N.Y., on Feb. 11 at age 85.
Savada’s eldest son, Eli, said SU was chosen as the sole benefactor of the collection because his father was familiar with Belfer through the Association for Recorded Sound Collection. Eli’s daughter, Shira, graduated from SU in 2005.
‘He didn’t want to sell it,’ Eli said of his father’s wishes. ‘And he didn’t want it split up.’
When the records arrived in July, the first box opened by Thorin held recordings of poet Carl Sandburg. The second box held a record from Julliard-trained pianist Hazel Scott, who became the first African-American woman to have her own television show in 1950.
‘The third record box I opened had Duke Ellington and his band,’ she said. ‘On the record jackets there were little pencil markings by, I assume, Morty Savada, saying who the individual musicians in the band were. He used to use Records Revisited as a place for people to come and talk about the recordings, so he knew who was in Duke Ellington’s band at the time.’
Theo Cateforis, a music history professor at SU, said the collection amplifies what has long been the strength of the library. Belfer already had an extensive collection of pre-World War II and early Americana recordings.
‘One of the attractions with a collection like this is you will find a lot of recordings that have not been released,’ he said. ‘You can’t get them on CD, can’t get them on MP3. They’re recordings which really are historic.’
The records themselves are pieces of history; 78s are thick, heavy records that are larger than the 33 rpms more often seen in music stores or on public display. Together, the records in the Savada collection weigh approximately 60 tons. It took six Fed Ex trucks to deliver them from the store in New York.
Studying the records is multidisciplinary: there’s the music, the way it was recorded, and the historical context, Cateforis said.
‘This is an institution where you can think of a number of different programs and people who can benefit from something like this,’ he said.
SU has been receiving its share of gifts this year, with the one-year anniversary of the Billion Dollar Campaign kickoff approaching. Coincidentally, Belfer was granted $250,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in March, meant specifically for cataloguing 78s.
The collection adds to the campaign dollars, Thorin said, and helps Belfer gain national visibility.
‘Paths are not straight in getting gifts,’ she said. ‘It takes awhile. One thing leads to another, and if you’re lucky and have good relationships with people you will bring something as wonderful as this.’
Published on August 27, 2008 at 12:00 pm
