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The Second World War waged around the globe from 1939 to 1945.
The impact of WWII on the daily lives of Americans and Europeans cannot be overstated. As the atrocities of the Nazis raged in Europe, American men were drafted and called to war. American music of the WWII era spoke to the soldiers far from home and also to those they left behind.
Several of the Vogue Picture records in the Recorded Sound Archives at FAU Libraries capitalize on America’s love affair with Latin rhythms during the 1930s , 40s and 50s.
During the Prohibition Era (1920-1933), Havana, Cuba was a popular tourist destination for Americans seeking fun and excitement. One of the pleasures they discovered there was the rhumba. Popularized by performers such as Spanish-Cuban bandleader Xavier Cugat and Desi Arnaz, Latin ballroom dances and rhythms became a common staple of American entertainment for decades.
The Recorded Sound Archives at FAU Libraries has been sorting, organizing, washing and digitizing tens of thousands of vintage 78 rpm recordings since we received a large donation of the discs from the estate of Cleveland collector, Jack Saul.
Hundreds of boxes containing vintage 78 rpm recordings remain stacked in the hallways while others are being opened by volunteers. The black shellac discs are piled high on work tables for volunteers to sort.
When Nat was informed by the Saul family that they discovered the family’s deserted furniture store was filled with recordings they previously knew nothing about, he was stunned. He had already gone to Cleveland to assess, pack and manage the delivery of the largest donation of recordings in the history of FAU Libraries. And now there were just as many recordings, if not more, that needed to be looked at.
Dr. William Miller, Dean of FAU Libraries, told Nat to go back to Cleveland to assess the situation. They needed to decide what to do next. Nat left for Cleveland on Friday, October 2, 2009. What he found was truly unbelievable.
“It’s like my birthday and Channukah all rolled into one,” says an excited Nathan Tinanoff as he begins upacking some of the 730 boxes of recordings that arrived at FAU Libraries from Cleveland on Sept. 11, 2009.
After one week, the JSA team had unpacked and fully processed over eight hundred 78rpm recordings. The information on each record label is carefully checked against the JSA database to ascertain if a copy of the recording is already in the JSA collection. Out of the 800 recordings, 69 are new to the collection and 47 are in better condition that what we previously had.
