The Thrower Music Collection Update - Year 41

 In all honesty, I had not planned on updating this year because it has been a slow year for my collection.  With a lack of funds, as well as not really having a lot of items I am seeking after now, there was minimal activity.  But, I want to still report on what I did get, as it is significant.  

To begin, here are the numbers.  As of today, the total number of my items in my library is 3187, which breaks down to 1840 CDs, 1142 LP records, and 207 DVDs.   That means we are about 15 items from 3200 in the collection total.  The net gains for this year include 1 LP record, 1 2-disc CD set, and three DVD movies, which is a grand total of 6 new items.  Now, we can go into detail as to what those are. 

The LP record is of significance, as it is one of the last albums Harry James recorded before he passed away.  The LP is titled Ciribiribin after his theme song and was released in 1983.  I originally had this on a cassette tape when I was a teenager, and the major reason I got it was because of one song, Harry's stellar rendition of the 1970s pop song "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You."   This recording is very hard to find reissued on CD, and as far as I am aware, I don't think it has been.  Therefore, getting it on LP assures it a place in the collection.  The CD set is of the 1920s saxophone legend Loren McMurray, who was featured on several early records of bands such as those of Sam Lanin and Ben Selvin, but he also had a group of his own.  Unfortunately, he was one of the earliest casualties of the era, as he passed away very young in 1922, just over 100 years ago.  McMurray, therefore, is one of the rare and unsung talents of the era, and thanks to Archeophone Records, his legacy has been given some attention and thus is preserved. As to movies, my good friends at Zeus DVDs have a treasure trove of vintage big band films, and one of those I obtained was A Song is Born, which was released originally in theatres in 1948 and featured the talents of Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong, Lionel Hampton, Charlie Barnet, and Benny Carter.  A similar lineup could be found in a 1944 film I also got called Jam Session, and the third movie I was able to get was from 1943, Around the World, which was one of the many pictures Kay Kyser's orchestra was featured in.  With those added to my collection now, it pretty much gives us everything we wanted as far as vintage big band movies go, and those movies in my collection begin with 1929's The Vagabond Lover, featuring Rudy Vallee, and end with 1994's Swing Kids, which entailed the persecution that young big band and jazz fans faced in Nazi Germany during the 1940s.  Thanks to modern technology, I now have a library of all these vintage films, and that is amazing in itself.  Those six items are essentially what I have gotten this past year, and although few, they are still significant and are integral to preserving this great music. 

I was also able to get my second CD shelf assembled last December, and also able to integrate all of the new CDs I had gotten over the past 6 years into the main collection.  I have a small collection of classic jazz recordings I have been getting since I was younger, and I decided to integrate those into the collection as well, which also swelled the numbers a bit from where they were.  In this context, "classic jazz" refers essentially to any post-Swing Era small-group jazz acts - the bebop legends such as Charlie Parker and Theolonius Monk, late 1950s and early 1960s jazz groups such as those of Dave Brubeck, Vince Guaraldi, and Ray Bryant, and later fusion jazz such as Freddy Hubbard as well as classic original jazz from later years such as Wynton Marsalis.  Integrating those into my main music collection essentially broadens the scope of my interests a bit, in that now it is still predominantly big band recordings but also there is a substantial amount of early popular music vocalists and vocal groups, post-WWII modern jazz, and some instrumental items (early Ray Conniff, Henry Mancini, etc.) that I actually like.  However, unlike my early collection efforts in my teens, I am not being indiscriminate in my collection, but rather am focusing on some things I like and am incorporating those into the collection as a whole.  It shows a level of evolution in my efforts too, as in the early days of just buying quarter LPs at the Rio Mall, when I got practically any artist that Henry Boggen played on WBT on his Sunday night show I listened to then, to for many years just focusing on vintage big bands and trying to limit what else I got, to finally accepting that some of the other stuff was actually good and I had favorites that I liked (for instance, I still appreciate Pat Boone's "Love Letters in the Sand," as well as non-big band instrumentals like Ray Conniff's "S'wonderful" and Henry Mancini's "Theme from Mr. Lucky.").  So, I am at that point of just incorporating those into the collection and broadening my musical interests while at the same time remaining true to my vintage big band core collection.  And, after 41 years of my love of this music, I have a collection I like and can be proud of.  This is where we are as we embark on Year 42.  

I am also considering now taking my collection and turning it into something more constructive, and I feel like my soon-to-be-earned Ph.D. will be a vehicle for doing that.  Although my dissertation I am working on is something completely different from music, I have been toying with the idea of actually doing my own book later on vintage big bands, and it would be a different sort of book than the earlier histories of legendary writers and commentators such as George T. Simon and Leo Walker.  Rather, I am thinking more on the lines of what the big band genre actually is (and if it is even fair to call it "big band," as it also entailed a lot of smaller groups), as well as when and where this musical tradition evolved from.  My theories, as I have been listening to this stuff for a good 43 years now, are going to probably be something totally different from what many music historians have said.  For one, I don't tie big bands exclusively to the evolution of jazz - while they are somewhat entwined, the big band tradition I believe predates jazz by decades, in that I see its roots in the parlor orchestras - such as those of Edward Issler - of the 1880s, as well as the minstrel show music of individuals such as Will Marion Cook from around the same period of time.  The collection I have now actually reflects that, and what I want to do is create a new and unique history of this great music that would entail my theories on this.  I can see it now though - there will be jazz purists, as well as even other big band enthusiasts, who will more than likely give me guff about what I will say, but that is OK.  After all, I am not the first to stir up controversy in that area, as the late jazz historian Richard Sudhalter sort of did the same thing in his book Lost Chords when he correctly noted that jazz was not exclusively an African-American art form, but rather an American art form that reflected the melting-pot influence of its earliest performers.  I plan on also incorporating Sudhalter's view into my own thesis, and basically taking it and expanding it but not focusing as much on jazz, as the music genre called big band actually encompasses even more complexity in its origins.  I aim to do essentially the first academic study of the big band movement as a whole. and in doing so, it will be my ultimate expression of my own passion for collecting this wonderful music. And, a project like that would be the ultimate legacy of my own interest in the music itself. 

As for this coming year, I am not sure where we are going. I don't have a set goal as to how many CDs or anything else I will acquire, but I do have my eyes on a couple of things.  For one, there has recently been a reissued collection of several volumes on the Classics label of Hal Kemp's whole catalogue, and at this time there are seven volumes.  That will be an objective this year.  The other item I have on the scope that is of interest is a classic LP that was released in 1958 that was very innovative.  It features two orchestras - Les Brown's Band of Renown and the orchestra of Vic Schoen (who was better known for being the conductor of the band that backed the Andrews Sisters and others in the 1930s and 1940s) - who combine their talents to create a serious work for two bands playing together.  I have heard some of this actually, and it is phenomenal.  The album has never been reissued on CD, so I will settle for the LP original for now.  There may be some other things that come up between now and next year at this time, so we will play that by ear.  But, the goal has been set, and we will get the Hal Kemp collection as well as the Les Brown/Vic Schoen LP classic.  If we are successful at obtaining those, it will boost my collection to 3195, just short of 3200.  That is OK though, as I am at a point in my collection where numbers are no longer a factor, but rather focusing on those items we really want to get.  

Thank you for allowing me to share my journey of 41 years of a phenomenal music collection, and I look forward to sharing Year 42.