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University of Idaho’s International Jazz Collections Receives GRAMMY Foundation® Grant
April 11, 2006
MOSCOW, Idaho – The University of Idaho's International Jazz Collections is the recipient of a $36,000 grant from the GRAMMY Foundation® to preserve and digitize some unique and historically significant audio tapes and recordings in its Leonard Feather collection. Feather was a renowned jazz critic, composer, pianist, journalist and producer.
“We are thrilled that the Grammy Foundation is helping us preserve this important material,” said Lewis Ricci, director of the International Jazz Collections. “Collectively, these recordings are one of the most significant historic jazz resources housed in a public institution in the country. They contain interviews with many jazz icons and rarely or never-before publicly heard performances by the pioneers of jazz.”
The recordings date from 1948 to 1988, and include reel-to-reel tapes, audio cassettes, and shellac and vinyl test pressings of commercial recordings. They document a wide range of Feather’s musical activity.
The test pressings feature Feather’s work as a composer, lyricist and producer. Performers on the test pressings include Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Woody Herman, Billie Holiday, Maxine Sullivan and Sarah Vaughn, among others.
The audio tapes include air checks of Feather’s radio show on KCRW in Santa Monica, Calif., and feature interviews with noted jazz artists and live performances. The collection also contains recordings of jam sessions at parties hosted by Feather, air checks of his jazz quiz show, “Platterbrains,” and jazz club recordings.
Approximately 50 reel-to-reel tapes are associated with DownBeat and Metronome magazines’ “Blindfold Tests,” and contain interviews with jazz notables Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Art Farmer, Quincy Jones, Stan Kenton and George Shearing, among others. Feather wrote his “Blindfold Test” articles for the magazines to challenge swing and traditional jazz and help gain recognition and acceptance for bebop and other progressive forms of jazz.
“The tapes and recordings are of such rarity, and produced on such a variety of recording equipment and present such a range of conservation and preservation problems that we cannot transfer them here,” said Ricci. IJC has contracted with a vendor, Safe Sound Archive at Philadelphia, Pa., to copy the tapes and recordings.
“The GRAMMY Foundation grant will allow us to preserve these tapes to computer hard drives and high quality compact discs for storage,” said Ricci. “We also will be able to make the recordings available to researchers and students on campus, through interlibrary loan and at a distance over the Internet, as rights permit.”
The GRAMMY Foundation Grants Program is funded by the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, Inc., also known as The Recording Academy®. The organization is internationally known for the music industry’s annual GRAMMY Awards.
“The Grants Program is a mainstay of the GRAMMY Foundation’s mission,” said President of the Recording Academy and GRAMMY Foundation Neil Portnow. “It encourages dialogue about the critical importance of music’s history and future, and its impact on individuals, communities, science and culture.”
Over the last 18 years, the foundation has awarded more than $2 million in grants to individuals and organizations. The grants assist in the preservation and archiving of the music and recorded sound heritage of the Americas for future generations, as well as research projects related to the impact of music on the human condition.
CONTACT: Jeff Olson, University Communications, (208) 885-8934, jolson@uidaho.edu
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