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In today’s blog the JSA thanks and honors two great friends: Louis and Rouhama Danto. If you are one of the people who have been impressed and amazed by the incredible collection of recordings that the Judaica Sound Archives has received from the estate of the late Jack Saul, you might be wondering, “How did Jack Saul know about the JSA?”
Good question. And the answer is: Cantor and Mrs. Danto.
“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.
The excitement we were all feeling when the truck from Cleveland, filled with recordings from Jack Saul’s collection, pulled up to the Library’s loading dock was quickly replaced by focused activity. Everyone had a job to do and immediately jumped into action. Unloaders moved the boxes from the truck to pallets which were then moved with a handtruck through the Wimberly Library lobby into the elevator to the fifth floor where they were stacked for later unpacking. Other boxes were placed on carts and deposited in other areas of the library.
Of the 730 boxes in this shipment 255 are filled with recordings headed for the Judaica Sound Archives and the FAU Music Department’s Jazz Sound Collection. The remaining 475 boxes contain vintage 78 rpm recordings which will form a new FAU Library collection.
I cannot express to you the excitement on the morning of Friday, September 11, 2009 as the entire staff of the Judaica Sound Archives and volunteers from other FAU Library departments waited for the arrival of the truck which had been loaded with recordings from the Jack Saul collection in Cleveland.
Nat had been preparing for a week, finding areas of the Wimberly Library where the boxes could be stored until they are unpacked, rounding up volunteers, assigning work tasks at the loading dock, measuring entrance ways to make sure that the pallets loaded with boxes could fit through, arranging for carts to be available where the pallets couldn’t fit, etc. With his incredible organizational skills and attention to detail the operation felt like a well-designed military operation. Everything went perfectly! Within 4 hours all the boxes had been unloaded and stacked in their designated areas.
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.
