Category: Music Rescue

Recently Added Music in September

By , September 28, 2015 3:33 pm

recentlyaddedmusicDid you know the Recorded Sound Archives at FAU Libraries has over 49,000 albums along with over 150,000 songs in its databases, which is growing everyday with the help of volunteers? With so many recordings to choose from, we have given Research Station users the ability to request items be digitized.

See a recording that hasn’t been digitized?

As a research station user you can request it using the Music on Demand forms on the website.

Please note, due to copyright some of these recordings may only play for 45 second snippet to give the user a taste of what this music sounded like back in the day, if you are interested in full access considering applying for Research Station Access.

Below you’ll find a list of recordings that were recently added in September by Collection from requests made by Research Station Users.

Judaic Collection

Prayers from Jerusalem by Naftali Herstik

Zemirot – Turkish-Sephardic Synagogue Hymns  by Los Pasharos Sefaradis

Oriental Song Festival 1973 by Various Artists

A Song of the Heights by Andrew Edison & Norman Summers

Tanchumim by Various Artists

A World of Jewish Music by Allan Michelson

Blue Star Camp – 1984 by Ted Grey

30 Golden Moments of Music by The Epstein Brothers

Lamenatseach Shir Mizmor – Oriental Song Festival 1974 – Volume 2 by Various Artists

Tsur Mi’Shelo Achalnu – Famous Traditional Sephardic Hymns by Renanim Choir

Achva by Various Artists

Ismach Moshe by Sawel Kwartin

Al Taschlicheinu by Sawel Kwartin

Erev Shel Shoshanim by Various Artists

Gems of the Synagogue by Josef Rosenblatt

My Mother’s Sabbath Candles (Sung in Yiddish) by The Malavsky Family

 

Vintage Collection

The Bells of St. Mary’s by Charlie Spivak and his Orchestra

 

Featured Collection

Hit of the Week Collection

High Holy Days Collection

 

 

 

Israel’s history is playing. Are you listening?

By , April 28, 2014 1:40 pm

Israel is 66 years old! Celebrate by revisiting the early years.

Listen to the authentic recordings from the Vistas of Israel radio series.

Historic radio braodcast of the Israel Broadcasting Company clelbrating the millionth immigrant to Israel (8/29/61). Click on label to play.

Historic radio broadcast of the Israel Broadcasting Company celebrating the millionth immigrant to Israel (8/29/61). Click on label to play.

From the  late 1950s, through the 1960s, and into the early 1970s the State of Israel sought to inform Americans and others about their young country’s culture and accomplishments through a series of radio broadcasts in English.

These programs featured popular Israeli performers, topical discussions, and interviews with prominent Israelis and others. These original radio broadcasts were aired on local stations throughout the USA.

The Judaica Sound Archives has an extensive collection of these  historic “Vistas of Israel” radio programs. There are over 400 recorded broadcasts in the collection and about 250 of them have been digitized so far.

Click here for more about Vistas of Israel radio broadcasts.

You may also be interested in:

JSA celebrates Israel’s Statehood (5/5/2011)

JoAmar: A pioneer of Israeli Music

Israeli Performer: Shosaha Damari

Selected Israeli Songs

Exploring the world of Jewish recordings

By , January 15, 2014 3:35 pm

Indiana Jones: “We do not follow maps to buried treasure and X never, ever marks the spot.” (Last Crusade)

Dr. Randall Goldberg, Asst. Prof of Music History at the Dana School of Music at Youngstown State University in Ohio has been digging for “treasure” at the Judaica Sound Archives at the Wimberly Library on FAU’s Boca Raton campus.

He has no map and so far has not discovered a spot marked with an “X.” But he has spent weeks tirelessly searching at FAU’s Judaica Sound Archives through thousands of 78 rpm recordings for information about how Jewish identity was expressed in 20th-century music. Like Indiana Jones, Randy Goldberg feels like he is on a quest. Allowing his intellectual curiosity to lead him on a fantastic journey back in time, he relishes finding little known tid-bits of information.

Prof. Goldberg crouches between the stacks to check the record numbers he is looking for.

“For me the passion is in the records.  There is a childish love that I have for it. I used to watch Indiana Jones films and that is the sense of adventure I have. I am always looking for some hidden treasure whether it is here at FAU’s Judaica Sound Archives or in an old record store in Pittsburgh.”

“Jewish musicians have a cool niche. I love to find weird mash-ups, like Chassidic disco albums or Jewish sacred music set to a Carribean beat.”

Prof. Goldberg  doesn’t find the enormity of the JSA collection to be overwhelming.  Quite the opposite.  “Just being being here and being immersed in the entirety of this whole thing. It fuels my enthusiasm and my passion for my research project.” he says.

Dr. Goldberg checks the information on the actual record label to ensure the correctness of his database.

Dr. Goldberg spends his time searching through the JSA’s database, locating the recordings that he is interested in and then entering information about those recordings into his laptop for use later in his research. It might seem like tedious work to some but Dr. Goldberg seems more like a “kid in a candy shop” than anything else.

JSA: “You seem to be having a good time visiting us and working here.”

GOLDBERG: “I love doing this. And the beautiful Florida weather isn’t bad either.  Back home in Ohio there are 12″ of snow on the ground!”

Dr. Goldberg achieved a BM in classical guitar performance at the University of Texas at Austin and a MM in musical performance at the New England Conservatory. He earned his doctorate at Indiana University. He is an Assistant Professor of Music History at Youngstown State University, College of Creative Arts and Communication, Dana School of Music. He  specializes in the music and music literature of early modern Europe.  In addition to teaching courses, Dr. Goldberg directs the Youngstown State University Early Music Ensemble and is the president of the Allegheny Chapter of the American Musicological Society.

SUN SENTINEL: FAU’s Vinyl Giveaway Starts Jan. 6

By , December 23, 2013 1:52 pm

By

Credit Matthias Rhomberg / Flickr CC

Florida Atlantic University’s Recorded Sound Archives at the Wimberly Library will be purged this January. Well, sort of.

The library’s sound archive is digitized, and duplicate records or those that don’t fit with the school’s collection will be given away Jan. 6-10, the Sun Sentinel reports. Possible finds include Glenn Miller, Barbra Streisand, Broadway, Christmas and Jewish albums.

The Nielsen Soundscan reported vinyl to be 2 percent of all albums sold. FAU archivist Ben Roth says the medium has a “warmer sound” than digitally reproduced music.

For more information on FAU’s vinyl giveaway, read the Sun Sentinel story.

Original Sourcehttp://wlrn.org/post/sun-sentinel-faus-vinyl-giveaway-starts-jan-6

Fiddler on the Roof

By , December 17, 2013 8:00 am

You may ask yourself… how did a Yiddish story by Sholem Aleichem, based on a surrealistic painting by Marc Chagal, become one of the world’s most popular shows?

You may ask yourself…. how could a 1964 Broadway musical touch audiences after 50 years?

But, of course…. if you know “Fiddler on the Roof” you wouldn’t have to ask!

“The Fiddler,” as depicted by Marc Chagal, symbolizes the struggle for survival and balance in a precarious world.  A precarious world?  That is something Jews know a little something about.

From Tevye’s confident reliance on “Tradition” to the sweet naiveté of “Matchmaker, Matchmaker;” from Tevye’s ultimate acceptance of his life in “If I Were a Rich Man”  to the bitter-sweet realization that life is an ever-changing landscape in “Sunrise, Sunset;” the collaboration of Jerry Bock (music) and Sheldon Harnick (lyrics) touches our hearts with one of life’s greatest lessons.

We yearn for stability and tradition while, at the same time, we are compelled to adapt to change.

The Judaica Sound Archives at FAU Libraries is proud of its role in preserving the traditions of Jewish culture despite our ever-changing world. Please consider making a financial contribution to help us fulfill our mission.

Click here to see albums and hear snippets.

Best events this week: Record Giveaway at FAU Libraries

By , December 10, 2013 1:47 pm

SouthFlorida.com
Monday – Record giveaway

( Patricia Koppisch/Courtesy / December 10, 2013 )

Further proof that vinyl records are reasserting themselves in the collections of audio junkies are figures from music sales-tracker Nielsen SoundScan, released last week, which revealed that retailers moved 6.1 million wax units in 2013. That’s a 33 percent upswing over 2012’s haul of 2.55 million, making vinyl the fastest growing music format of the year.So there may be abundant interest in the free records that Florida Atlantic University’s Recorded Sound Archives are slinging starting Monday at the Wimberly Library (777 Glades Road, Boca Raton). About 2,000 retro records are in FAU’s third annual giveaway, harvested through private donations and duplicates that don’t fit with the university’s own collection.Up for grabs are albums from Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand and Glenn Miller; Broadway recordings from “Fiddler on the Roof,” Gilbert and Sullivan and others; and genre music spanning jazz to polka. The giveaway runs 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Monday through Friday, Jan. 10, on the library’s fifth floor, and then resumes Jan. 27-Jan. 31.

Sophie Tucker: Last of the Red-Hot Mamas

By , September 16, 2013 10:00 am

 

Known as the Last of the Red Hot Mamas, Sophie Tucker had a career that began in vaudeville, embraced the new jazz age of the 1920’s and lasted well into the 1960s.

Widely known for her bawdy humor (which may seem tame by today’s standards) and her big personality, she never lost touch with her Jewish roots.

Sophie Tucker ‘s original Decca rendition of My Yiddishe Momme, recorded in 1928, featured an English version on Side A and a Yiddish version on Side B.  Among the recordings she made on the Mercury label beginning in the 1950s was this rendition of My Mother’s Sabbath Candles, also in both English and Yiddish versions.

Sophie Tucker quotes

I couldn’t make [Momme] understand that it wasn’t a career that I was after. It was just that I wanted a life that didn’t mean spending most of it at the cookstove and the kitchen sink. (Some of the Days, 1945)

Everyone knew the theater was to be closed down, and a landmark in show business would be gone. That feeling got into the acts. The whole place, even the performers, stank of decay. I seemed to smell it. It challenged me. I was determined to give the audience the idea: why brood over yesterday? We have tomorrow. As I sang I could feel the atmosphere change. The gloom began to lift, the spirit which formerly filled the Palace and which made it famous among vaudeville houses the world over came back. That’s what an entertainer can do. (Concerning the November 19, 1932 closing of the Palace theater in NYC, i.e. the end of vaudeville.)

Selected items from our collection of Sophie Tucker recordings.

Sophie Tucker’s performance on The Ed Sullivan Show.

Autographed inside flap from copy of Tucker’s autobiography

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Spin Doctors: FAU restoring children’s records damaged by Superstorm Sandy

By , July 1, 2013 5:41 pm
By Scott Travis, Sun Sentinel

June 30, 2013

A pile of stained, mildewed debris from Superstorm Sandy has turned into a nostalgic treasure trove for Florida Atlantic University.

A collection of 786 vintage children’s records including “The Little Engine That Could” and “Black Beauty” were inside a Long Island garage when the hurricane-like disaster struck last October. The recordings, mostly 78 rpms, appeared to be ruined due to dirt and mud on the records and stains on their jackets.

But FAU has found a way to bring the stories and music back to life. The Recorded Sound Archives at the Wimberly Library on the university’s Boca Raton campus has embarked on a project to clean and repair the damaged records and digitize and transfer their contents to an online collection. It’s an effort that requires both modern computer software and old-fashioned elbow grease.

“We are excited to be working with such rare and wonderful artifacts from the 20th Century,” said Maxine Schackman, director of the sound archives. “I can’t wait to see the reaction when we are able to share our work online.”

The website likely will be created in November, Schackman said. Researchers, students and others who are interested will be able to access the digital versions of the recordings via FAU computers or a special password, restrictions that are necessary due to copyright.

The collection is full of literary and pop culture classics, including “Bozo Sings,” “Peter Rabbit” and “Mary Poppins.” While most combine stories and songs, some are music only, like “American Folk Songs” and “Alphabet Songs.” There’s a full array of Christmas-themed records as well as plenty of educational ones. A 1947 record called “Little Songs on Big Subjects” includes a gentle call for racial equality.

“You can get good milk from a brown-skinned cow. The color of the skin doesn’t matter nohow,” the song goes.

The record collection was donated in April by Peter Muldavin, whom FAU officials call the world’s leading expert on vintage American children’s records. Muldavin, who was out of the country and couldn’t be reached by the Sun Sentinel for comment, says on his website he’s been a lifelong collector but started accumulating kiddie records only in 1991 after seeing one in a used record store and remembering it from his childhood.

He then took out “want to buy” ads in antique newspapers and flea market magazines and was swamped with responses.

“People had these records sitting in their attics and basements but didn’t know what to do with them,” Muldavin writes on his website. “There was no established hobby yet.”

Alethea Perez sorts through some of the nearly 800 vintage kiddie records that were donated to Florida Atlantic University’s Recorded Sound Archives.

Due to mold and mildew damage, the library is discarding many of the story books and paper doll cutouts that accompanied the records affected by Sandy, but photographs of the printed matter are being taken and will be digitally restored using Adobe Photoshop.

Almost all of the records are salvageable, Schackman said. Some are warped, and many are encrusted with mud and must be washed by hand.

To help with the restoration, the archives department has bought a vinyl record flattener, a device that slowly heats the recording between heavy metal plates. The department also has software that can reduce background noise from old vinyls.

The sound archive started in the 1980s as a Judaica Collection of vintage works by Jewish artists, but in 2009 expanded into other genres, including jazz and children’s recordings, after the donation of 60,000 records from the family of the late Jack Saul, a Cleveland collector. That collection included 556 children’s recordings, all in good condition.

Benjamin Roth, a Sound Archivist at Florida Atlantic University’s Recorded Sound Archives, cleans a batch of records from the nearly 800 vintage kiddie records that were donated to the Sound Archives.

Archives technician Ben Roth contacted Muldavin, author of the book “The Complete Guide to Vintage Children’s Records,” last year, months before Sandy formed, for advice on finding some specific titles for FAU’s collection.

When a tidal surge from the superstorm brought 20 inches of sea water into a family garage at Long Beach on Long Island, hundreds of recordings stored there lost practically all their value in the collector’s market. So Muldavin asked FAU if the archives department wanted them.

The Boca Raton-based archivists were thrilled. The collection represents a period in American culture, mostly the 1940s and 1950s, when vinyl replaced the hard shellac material that had been used for records, Schackman said. Vinyl was more kid-friendly since it was less prone to breakage.

The works also represent a period before many families had television sets, and when children’s records were a popular form of entertainment.

“It’s a certain time in history that won’t ever be repeated,” Schackman said. “This was the age of innocence. Times were simpler then, more naive.”

stravis@tribune.com or 561-243-6637

Restoration operation

The process that will be used at Florida Atlantic University’s Recorded Sound Archives on the damaged records:

• A technician cleans the 78 rpm using a special ultrasonic wave machine, similar to the unit used to clean jewelry. Distilled water and a small amount of Jet-Dry rinse agent are used.

• If the dirt is excessive, the record is hand-washed. A hair dryer is used to dry it.

• The record is then digitized, using a special turntable that plays the record and captures the audio onto a computer sound card. Sony Sound Forge software is then used to eliminate clicks, pops and other surface noise.

• The album jacket and any accompanying books or cutouts are photographed. Adobe Photoshop is used to remove any dirt or deformities.

• The audio clip and album art are cataloged.

Scott Travis

Listen and view these original children’s recordings on the Recorded Sound Archives website.

Boca Magazine highlights FAU Sound Archives Collection

By , June 28, 2013 2:49 pm

In a small room on the fifth floor of FAU’s Wimberly Library, zippered bags clutch dozens of record sleeves of vintage children’s music, relics from another time. There’s Bongo, a circus bear unicycling on a tightrope and voiced by Dinah Shore. There’s “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus,” whose record sleeve depicts just that. There’s the Three Billy Goats Gruff, Pinocchio, Little Toot and Humpty Dumpty. One album cover, featuring Sylvester the Cat and Tweety Bird, includes a pencil-written note in the margin: “To: Dick Hertz. Birthday, Jan. 20, 1951. From: Mommy.”

These forgotten treasures are currently the domain FAU’s Recorded Sound Archives (RSA), which began in 2009 as an extension of its popular Judaica Sound Archives; nowadays, the institution restores and digitizes lost and important music of all kinds. These recently obtained children’s record sleeves, their once-vibrant cover art damaged by flood and mold from Hurricane Sandy, are mostly second copies from the vast collection of Peter Muldavin, the world’s foremost expert on vintage children’s records. When his Long Island storage facility suffered storm damage, he donated its contents – 786 records – to the RSA, whose passionate archivist, Ben Roth, is a friend. Some of the 78 rpm records date back to the 1920s, bearing price tags of a quarter a piece.

The restoration business, on Roth and company’s end, is a long and painstaking one. They are still in the process of entering all the data, with plans to release some of their results through their website starting in January. Roth showed me a bit of the RSA’s fascinating restorative process, some of whose accoutrements look like something out the old Mousetrap game. First, the records are dipped, like strawberries in chocolate, in a motorized tank devised for cleaning jewelry, in which ultrasonic waves eliminate the ingrained dirt. Then they are positioned in front of an industrial hair dryer haphazardly duct-taped into position on a metal stand – an appropriately primitive way of cleaning these analog goodies.

As for the damaged, crackly sound of the records, that can be polished by more modern means – Sony’s Sound Forge computer software. The sleeves have been photographed and inventoried for digital restorations, but unfortunately the originals in the zipper bags will be discarded – their damage is too severe.

If you make an appointment, you may be able to listen to some of these recordings in the RSA’s headquarters, while admiring the collection’s vintage turntables, including an entirely hand-cranked 1911 Victrola and a 1924 credenza model that Roth says “cost more than a car” at the time of its manufacture.

Link to original blog post: http://www.bocamag.com/blog/2013/06/28/record-time/

Molly Picon

By , May 20, 2013 2:38 pm

Defying expectations, changing the rules, and making us laugh.

The Judaica Sound Archives at FAU Libraries honors the work and life of Molly Picon. Compiling 58 of her earliest songs produced on 78 rpm records and four of her LP albums produced later in her career, the JSA invites you to revisit the talents of a truly great Jewish female icon.

Who was Molly Picon?

She was an actress, singer, and comedian whose career spanned over 70 years. Debuting in the Yiddish Theater at the age of 6 she emerged as a respected American actress, performing in Come Blow Your Horn (1963) with Frank Sinatra, and having starring roles on Broadway in Milk & Honey (1961) and  film, Fiddler on the Roof (1971).

Molly Picon’s career followed Yiddish culture from the shtetl into mainstream America. Small and very youthful-looking she often had to fight to be taken seriously. She wore male clothing as a disguise through most of her breakout performance in Yidl Mit’n Fidl (1936) and many of her other early roles, including the well-known “Yankele.” In today’s world she might be considered to be a voice for women’s rights.

Click here for Molly’s 78rpm/LP albums.

Click here to see film clip of a very young Molly Picon singing the title song from Yid’l Mit’n Fidl.

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