RESOUND A QUARTERLY OF THE Archives of Traditional Music Volume IV, Number 2 April 1985 From the Director reviewed and expanded, summaries of material be more available). At the end each collection have been written, and of two years we hope the field collec­ we are working on producing a catalog tions of the Archives will be better pre­ Spring is a time when the dead ma­ of the entire collection. We are finish­ served, easily discovered through terials of summers past provide the hu­ ing the preparation of listening copies computer access, and at least parts of mus for the delicate spring blooms, the of the cylinders, and are clearing up a them more quickly available to inter­ rushing of sweet sap, and the massive backlog of orders for research copies ested patrons. We all will have our work greenery of a summer to come. There which accumulated during the project. cut out for us. are cycles in our lives, and within in­ It is appropriate to thank those who The George Herzog recordings and stitutions. Recent events at the Ar­ devoted so much time and energy to estate. There have been some other chives have reinforced my awareness the project, and whose efforts will live satisfying events as well. In February of these. Here are some of them. on in the work they have done: Nancy the Archives purchased the record­ The return of a fonner assistant. Last Cassell, Sally Childs-Helton, Bruce ings, correspondence, manuscripts, year we cataloged more musical items Harrah-Conforth, Wally Hooper, Carol and library of the renowned ethno­ than in any previous year, for which Inman, and Will Wheeler, who have musicologist, and the Archives' foun­ we owe Mary Russell, our visiting li­ been assisted by Carmen Calnan, Mar­ der, the late Dr. George Herzog. This brarian, a debt of gratitude. We also gie Weiler, Brenda Wilson, and Lisa purchase ends more than a year of un­ owe a tremendous debt to a volunteer Woble. certainty over the destination of these worker, Mr. James Smart, who has A new project. The end of the cyl­ materials. The effects include over one dedicated a great deal of his time and inder project is also a beginning. The hundred boxes of printed materials and expertise to cataloging commercially Archives of Traditional Music has re­ correspondence and 525 recordings. A issued records during the past year. ceived a two-year grant from the Na­ number of scholars from around the Mr. Smart worked in the Archives in tional Endowment for the Humanities, world have been waiting to use the ma­ 1952 when he was a student at Indiana Division of Research Resources, which terials which we have now purchased University. He went on to the Library will allow us to continue our efforts at with funds generously provided by the of Congress, where he was a reference improving the preservation of the col­ College of Arts and Sciences and the librarian until his retirement in 1983. lections and increasing their accessi­ Office of Research and Graduate De­ He returned last year as a volunteer to bility to patrons. The grant will enable velopment. renew his contributions to our efforts the Archives to catalog all 1,300 field The completion of the cylinder proj­ to make the world's music available to collections on the OCLC library data ect and our embarkation on a new proj­ the world. To all of us his competence, base, beginning with the cylinder col­ ect, the return of papers and recordings his hard work, and his delightful com­ lections which have just been rere­ of our first director, along with the re­ pany have served as an example of col­ corded. It provides, funds for newed contributions of one of our first leagueship, dedication, generosity, and rerecording onto magnetic tape all the assistants, are strong competitors with professionalism. field collections that were made on alu­ the coming of the spring flowers for all The cylinder project. There are some minum and acetate discs (the field re­ of us here at the Archives this year. distinct satisfactions in seeing projects cording media used after cylinders and Now we wonder: what will summer come to a conclusion, especially when before the invention of wire and mag­ bring? they open the way to new endeavors. netic tape recorders), and will assure This is the case of the project to rere­ the preservation of a number of out­ cord the nearly seven thousand wax standing early collections. The grant cylinders here at the Archives of Tra­ also involves contacting all living de­ ditional Music. After nearly two years, positors and requesting them to re-ex­ the cylinders have been rerecorded amine their contracts with the Archives onto high quality magnetic tape, stored to attend both to questions of ethics in new boxes, and returned to the (should some material be more re­ vaults. The documentation has been stricted) and access (can some of the Russel Robinson, the Imperial, United States Music, and QRS companies are J. all but forgotten today. Robinson worked in Chicago in the "The White Man with Colored Fingers" late 191Os, then moved to New York. There he joined the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, an early successful group, and was their pianist from 1919 to 1921. Robinson also worked with W. C. Handy's music firm and wrote lyrics J. Russel Robinson has been undeservedly neglected by for some of Handy's blues songs. He recorded accompan­ historians of American music. He was one of the most multi­ iments for blues singers such as Lucille Hegamin and Lizzie talented figures in popular music, having made a mark as Miles, and made numerous recordings with Al Bernard as a songwriter, as a composer of ragtime, jazz, and blues, the duo, The Dixie Stars. and as a vaudeville, piano roll, and phonorecord artist. As a popular songwriter, Robinson is best-remembered Moreover, he so mastered Afro-American musical idioms for"Margie,"with Con Conrad, an enduring hit from 1920. that black songwriter Spencer Williams called him "the white His "Singin' the Blues (Til My Daddy Comes Home)" (1920) man with colored fingers." was immortalized in a 1927 recording by cornetist Bix Bei­ Robinson was born in Indianapolis on 8 July 1892, and derbecke, and was recently revived in the motion picture must be considered one of the major popular songwriters The Cotton Club. His "Aggravatin' Papa (Don't You Try To from Indiana, ranking with Hoagy Carmichael, Cole Porter, Two-Time Me)" (1923) was recorded by Bessie Smith, and Paul Dresser, and more recently, Michael Jackson. He es­ Robinson also wrote the popular" A Portrait of Jennie" sentially taught himself piano, and when still a teenager, (1948). To the jazz repertory he contributed "Eccentric," a teamed with brother John, a drummer, to play in the silent 1923 reworking of his "That Eccentric Rag." "Eccentric" has movie theaters of Indianapolis. Dropping out of high school, become a standard of the traditional jazz repertory. "The Famous Robinson Brothers" headed South for a grand During the 1930s he was pianist for the "Horn & Hardart tour of movie theaters. In Macon, Georgia, he wrote his Childrens' Hour," a New York City radio program, and in first rag, "Sapho Rag," at the age of fifteen and sold it by the 1940s he moved to southern California. He found an mail to John Stark, the major publisher of Scott Joplin. Ro­ increasingly smaller market for his songs, but kept com­ binson wrote more than a dozen other ragtime pieces, songs, mitting new material to paper in hopes that it would some­ and instrumentals including "The Minstrel Man" (1910) and day be published. With renewed interest in ragtime in the "That Eccentric Rag" (1912). During the 1910s, he per­ late 1940s, Robinson's name appeared occasionally in the formed in Anderson and Indianapolis, Indiana, and played jazz and ragtime press, but he died in 1963, never having in vaudeville with his wife, singer Marguerite Kendall. found a market for dozens of his songs, As a child Robinson had been afflicted with polio in his Robinson's memory and legacy live on today in countless left arm, and so he compensated by devising "gymnastic renditions throughout the world of "Margie" and his other and1lI1orthodOX'passage~foMhe-teft-,hand. This-unusual ·...-...-songs,-a-nd-in the-small but growing-in terest--in-his-ragtim style appealed to player piano roll executives, who hired works. Six recordings of his rags have been reissued in the Robinson to record dozens of rolls. His excellent rolls for double-record set, Indiana Ragtime (Indiana Historical So­ ciety 1001, 1981), which was co-produced by Frank J. Gillis, Director Emeritus of the Archives of Traditional Music, and the present author. The research supporting the album was Resound conducted from 1979 to 1981 under a grant to the Archives A Quarterly of the from the Lilly Endowment. Tape-recorded interviews with Archives of Traditional Robinson's widow, Gertrude Robinson, and other materials relating to his life and music were deposited in the Archives Music at that time (accession number 80-12S-F). It is a fitting ad­ Marilyn B. Graf, Editor dition to the collections to now have the recordings de­ scribed in the accompanying article, and this gift expands Resound is issued in January, .April, the Archives's already significant holdings of music from July, and October. Comments, letters, Indiana. The Archives of Traditional Music now possesses and items of interest are welcome and the largest public collection of materials relating to this gifted may be addressed to the editor.