Jazz Scrapbook: Bill Russell and Some Highly Musical Friends - Softcover

Carol O. Bartels, documentation coordinator at the Historic New Orleans Collection, received a B.A. in social science education and an M.A. in history with a concentration in archives and records administration from the University of New Orleans. Mark Cave holds a B.A. in history from Ohio University and an M.L.I.S. degree from the University of Kentucky. He serves as reference archivist at the Collection's Williams Research Center, where the WIlliam Russell Jazz Collection is made available to researchers. Richard Jackson served for twenty-five years as head of the Americana Collection in the New York Public LIbrary's music division at Lincoln Center until his retirement. He is a volunteer at the Williams Research Center. Jon Kukla is director of the Historic New Orleans Collection, an authority on early southern political and intellectual history, and a lapsed saxaphone player. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Toronto and enjoys writing about a wide range of subjects. M. Theresa LeFevre studied archives and records management after a teaching career in the Orleans Parish schools. She is registrar of manuscripts at the Collection. Alfred Lemmon, curator of manuscripts at the Williams Research Center, received his Ph.D. in Latin American Studies from Tulane University. An authority on the music of the Americas, he has overseen the processing of the Williams Russell Jazz Collection since its acquisition in 1992. John Magill is curator in charge of the reading room at the Williams Research Center. He holds an M.A. in history from the University of New ORleans and has written and lectured extensively about the urban development of New Orleans. Dan B. Ross spent many years in the Southwest before returning to New Orleans to pursue an interest in New Orleans music. He is currently helping to process the William Russell Jazz Collection. Nancy Ruck, a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, has worked at the Museum of Broadcasting in New York City and at Rockefeller University. She is manuscripts cataloger at the Historic New Orleans Collection where she is cataloguing the William Russell Jazz Collection.

..."Jazz Scrapbook: Bill Russell and Some Highly Musical Friends" is an engaging, informal look at Russell's life and work, beautifully designed (by New Orleans graphic designer and artist Michael Ledet) and illustrated with many previously unpublished photographs. We get lovely glimpses of a man who devoted his life to music and to such musicians as Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, Bunk Johnson, Mahalia Jackson, Baby Dodds, Natty Dominique and Fess Manetta, written by The Historic New Orleans Collection scholars. As former Collection director Jon Kukla writes in his introduction, Russell, born in Missouri in 1905, was encouraged by his mother to play the violin, even though he had longstanding attraction to drums and perscussion music. He made his first trip to New Orleans in 1937 and such visits became an annual ritual until 1956, when he settled here, recording, collecting, writing, selling records and tapes at Preservation Hall, and always working with and for musicians. The music of Jelly Roll Morton was one of the first to inspire Russell's love for jazz, and he completed a biography of Morton in January 1992; it is, alas, still unpublished. This scrapbook includes what is believed to be the earliest photograph of Morton. One of the most fascinating chapters in the book deals with trumpeter Bunk Johnson. Russell befriended him, arranged to raise money for much-needed dental work, and got him a new trumpet, setting the impoverished musician on the road to a revitalized career. He also befriended Mahalia Jackson when they lived in Chicago, and saw her frequently in New Orleans; the scrapbook includes a telegram Jackson sent Russell when she returned here for her brother's funeral. Russell often made cue cards of her songs before Jackson performed, and some of those are included in the collection; Russell was also known to fetch the gospel diva the occasional hamburger, and said she introduced him as someone who "followed her around everyplace and was helpful, that I was from the other race but you wouldn't know it." The scrapbook also includes wonderful photographs of and chapters on drummer Baby Dodds, trumpeter Natty Dominique, and piano man "Fess" Manetta. Finally, Alfred Lemmon provides a note on the contents of the archive, useful for scholars and music lovers, describing its contents more specifically. He writes of Russell's relentless passion for jazz and its artifacts, as well as its remarkable organization. "Other items, such as the keys from Storyville etnrepreneur Tom Anderson's piano and part of the railing in Economy Hall, defy the imagination." Russell was one of New Orleans' living treasures -- a gentleman, a scholar and a musician. This charming little scrapbook, with its wonderful photographs, gives us glimpses of the life he lived, of his passion for jazz and its makers. As he wrote in 1951, "If a person really has the right kind of music in their mind, heart & body, they are likely to think and act right...be happy, love everyone and hate no one...If all this sounds like a religion I'm sorry, but until these ideas can be proven wrong, I'll go on believing." This little book, such a fitting tribute to Russell and his work can make believers of us all. --The Times-Picayune

A dedication to the late Bill Russell, whose 60-year quest to preserve American jazz history ended in 1992, this book is a shoebox full of Russell's artifacts oozing with interviews, letters and photographs of such New Orleans jazz legends as Jelly Roll Morton, Baby Dodds and Louis Armstrong. --Carolina Alumni Review