Jack Saul’s Cleveland home
After Jack Saul died in May 2009, Nathan Tinanoff of the Judaica Sound Archives was called to the Sauls’ home in Cleveland. The Saul family wanted to donate the Judaica portion of Jack’s huge collection of sound recordings to the JSA. Although Nat had spoken with Jack Saul several times over the years and had been told by many people of his incredible collection of recordings, he was still unprepared for what he found. The small suburban bungalow was unremarkable. But what was inside was remarkable indeed!
What Nat saw were stacks of records! Stacks of records in the living room. Stacks of records in the basement. Stacks of records on the stairs. Stacks of records on the dining room table. The house was literally jam-packed with phonograph recordings, tapes, and CDs.
Jack Saul’s staircase
The first task that Nat faced was to locate the Judaica recordings. He was able to identify over 12,000 recordings that could be added to the archives. But there were other treasures that he discovered. For example, he found tens of thousands of 78 rpm phonograph recordings that were in mint condition. Even though they weren’t Judaica, he knew they were important.
When Nat returned to Florida he and Dr. William Miller (Dean of FAU Libraries) had a talk. Dr. Miller agreed that the collection of 78 rpm recordings were just too rare and valuable to be left behind. Dr. Miller decided to bring those records to FAU Libraries to start a new collection of vintage phonograph recordings at the Wimberly Library.
LP albums headed for JSA in Boca Raton, FL
About the RSA, General Interest, Judaic Collection, Media Coverage, Music Rescue, Restoration & Preservation, Vintage Collection, Vintage Recordings Pre-1950
| 
FAU Libraries, Jack Saul, Jack Saul Collection, Jewish Music, Judaica, Nathan Tinanoff, phonograph records
We were delighted when Jack Saul visited the Judaica Sound Archives in February 2009. He was accompanied by his wife, Hinda, his son Ken and daughter-in-law Julie. Jack was well-known to us because he had amassed what we believed to be the largest private collection of sound recordings in the USA, maybe in the world.
Jack Saul and Nathan Tinanoff examine an old Victrola at the JSA in February 2009
Jack Saul and his family were impressed by what they saw at the JSA. As he walked down the aisles of shelves holding tapes, CDs and LP phonograph albums Saul would stop from time to time to comment about a recording. He was very knowledgeable and seemed to know every one of his tens of thousands of recordings personally.
Jack Saul visits JSA 2-6-09
According to Arlene Fine of the Cleveland Jewish News Jack Saul filled his modest home with over 150,000 phonograph records. Over 36,000 of these have been donated by his family to FAU Libraries. About 12,000 of the recordings will be added to the JSA’s collection.
After his untimely death on May 1, 2009 we learned that the Saul family wanted to donate all of the Judaic recordings in the collection to the JSA. So it was with a mixture of heavy heart and anxious anticipation that Nathan Tinanoff, Ben Roth and Bill King went off to Cleveland to supervise the selection and packing of the recordings that were headed to FAU Libraries.
(Bottom) Ben Roth; standing from left: Bill King, Hinda Saul, Nathan Tinanoff
About the RSA, General Interest, Judaic Collection, Music Rescue, Restoration & Preservation, Vintage Collection
| FAU Libraries, Jack Saul, Jack Saul Collection, Judaica, Nathan Tinanoff, phonograph records
Where has all the Jewish music gone? Ever wondered what happened to all the Jewish music of days gone by? Voices of the great cantors of the past. Music from Yiddish theater. The Judaica Sound Archives may not have all the old Jewish music, but with tens of thousands of audio recordings it is well on its way.
The Judaica Sound Archives – Research Station (JSA-RS) was developed at FAU Libraries to provide a digital resource of recorded sound, containing tens of thousands of audio tracks from the archival collection of the JSA. The original source materials available through the JSA Research Station are 78 rpm recordings produced as early as 1901, LPs, 45 rpm recordings, cassette and 8-track tapes, and CDs.
Along with this wealth of audio recordings, JSA Research Stations allow access to discography and other pertinent information such as label and jacket scans which will greatly enhance a researcher’s ability to study this material. This includes the ability to search for and see listings of all recordings in the JSA archives, whether or not they have been digitized. Therefore, faculty and other researchers can conduct real-time, online research using the JSA-Research Station. Currently the JSA-Research Station accesses 19,000 songs from 2,000 different audio albums and 2,322 songs originally recorded on 78rpm. This library will be expanded throughout the coming year.
There are now 13 official JSA-Research Station sites in the USA, Canada, Israel and England. They are:
- American Jewish University Library, Bel Air, CA
- Florida Atlantic Univesrity, Wimberly Library, Boca Raton FL
- Gratz College Library, Melrose Park, PA (near Philadelphia)
- Hebrew Union College Library, New York City, NY
- Jewish Music Institute Library and School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, London, England
- Jewish Public Library of Montreal, Quebec, Canada
- National Library of Israel at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel
- National Yiddish Book Center, Amherst, MA
- Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies, Chicago, IL
- University of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
- University of Pennsylvania Library, Philadelphia, PA
- University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
- Washington University of St. Louis, St. Louis, MO
About the RSA, General Interest, Judaic Collection, Music Rescue, Scholarly Research
| FAU Libraries, Florida Atlantic University, Jewish culture, Jewish education, Jewish Music, phonograph records, Yiddish theater
Comments (0) 
Themocracy