The calm before Record's tax records

Interesting few days at the archive. I've finished with most of the neat stuff, though. I'm about to move on to the 5 boxes full of receipts, inventories, and ledgers from the Record Music Shop. Not being an accountant or economist, I'm not sure that I will be spending a whole lot of time blogging about the fascinating aspects of who bought a metronome in 1952.

Therefore, this may be the final lengthy post until I finish processing this collection unless I do, in fact, come across something absolutely intriguing, in which case I will post about it. Until that happens, however, here's the last bit of cool stuff I've found.

First is a bunch of issues of the American Legion magazine from the 60s and 70s. One of them had an article about "The violent habits of the Soviet Union" describing the Stalinist and post-Stalin Soviet oppression of Czechoslovakia and Hungary written with an unsurprising air of propaganda about it. Ironically, the pictures look eerily similar to how police handled the Occupy movement rallies.

I also came by a comic strip character from yesteryear. I only remember seeing Dick Tracy mentioned in books and magazines in my grandmother's house. Perhaps someone older than me might appreciate these a little more. Let the nostalgia begin.

Last but not least I found a couple of Black Diamond guitar strings. I'm an Ernie Ball/D'addario string user myself. Apparently these were the same brand of strings Buddy Holly and numerous other blues, country, and rock & roll artists used, though I'm not entirely sure of specific names. "Wow! These are classic!" was the reaction I got from my boss upon asking how I should store them, so I'm guessing there are a lot of good stories surrounding this brand. 

That's all for now. A friend of mine who works in the TTU Library and I are going to be starting a joint political discussion/debate blog pretty soon. If you are interested in politics or news feel free to check it out at http://jakenjake.blogspot.com/. 

Flutophones: Not new, but don't age well anyways

As it turns out, the "instrument" that I and so many of my classmates were trained on instead of the recorder in 4th and 5th grade music class before we could join band was not a new gimmick after all. Remember these?

It's called a "flutophone". Apparently they've been around for quite a while. I found a couple of instruction books from the 70s and 80s on the "innovation" of this sad, funny looking excuse for an instrument.

Maybe I'm being too harsh on the little wind instrument. I was actually looking forward to learning the recorder when I was in 5th grade and was disappointed when our Jr. High band director decided to do away with the recorder after the class above ours went on to High School. At least you can use the recorder in some circles like, say, medieval ensembles. Outside pre-band/orchestra music classes, the flutophone is totally useless. It doesn't sound good, it's easy to break, it looks funny, and NOBODY plays it after middle school. 

On another note, I did find a receipt that I found amusing:

I pity the fool who takes his dry cleaning somewhere else. 

Just when I thought this collection was only mildly interesting....

Very sobering day of processing on Friday. I spent most of the morning finishing organizing the box of recital and concert programs and moved on to the not-quite-so-massive box of student enrollment forms.

To my surprise, I found a couple of enrollment forms and school absence-excuse notes for a couple of guys I used to work with on staff at the South Plains Council Boy Scout summer camps a few years ago.

That afternoon, though, I came across several letters from some of her former students who had been drafted and sent overseas during the Vietnam War. One letter to PFC. George McGhee was still closed and stamped "Returned to Sender - Verified Deceased". 

I was not sure if I was actually allowed to open sealed mail, so I asked my boss if it was ok. We decided to open it for the first time in 45 years. We also looked him up in his regiment's database. 

It wasn't long going through the rest of the considerable amount of correspondences Mrs. Record had stashed away before I cam upon the letter that the first was supposed to be a reply to.

PFC. George William McGhee was a member of the Lockney High School Band (but never specified what he played) before he was sent off to Vietnam. According to his last letter, he had 30 days until he would go on furlough. He had no idea why he was fighting, but had accepted that he had to do it for his country. The fact that he wasn't that much older than me really hit home. Though I won't get bogged down in my personal views on the Vietnam War in this post, I will say that the numerous letters from Mrs. Record's students that served just go show how much of an impact she had and how close she was to her students. I can only imagine the heartbreak she must've felt getting back a reply she had sent 9 days before PFC McGhee died. 

Vietnam seemed to be a recurring theme Friday. Along with these letters I found, my Vietnam Archive friend, Bobby, and I think he may have found an original run of a pretty well known picture from that time period:

We suspect that whoever donated the group of newspaper clippings was not intending for later readers to see that picture, since it was on the back of a much cleaner-cut map of the status of the Vietnam conflict at the time:

All in all, it was a very interesting day at work and I almost forgot that it was time to leave when 5pm rolled around, though I'm sure I'll encounter plenty of more interesting stories in the 4-5 years I'll likely be working here.

Day 2 and cool things

Second day on the job I finally start to introduce myself to my coworkers. I'm not sure why I didn't do it yesterday or the day of my interview, but I'm pretty sure it has something to do with me occupying the hallway with a massive table and papers, boxes, and a rather large trash can scattered all over the table I have set up. Apparently there is no space left in the Audio/Visual room, but honestly I don't mind. I think the amount of stuff I'm sorting through would probably swamp whatever cranny they would give me and I like getting visits from the folks across the hallway at the Vietnam Archive. A really good friend of mine who works there actually showed me some of the artifacts he's processed, like field maps and some really intriguing photographs.

Check it out at http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/

I finished the general sorting step of processing today and started to move on to the next step in the process. Over the next several days, I'm going to be going through all the stuff I've sorted and categorize everything as well as organize it chronologically. Today I started with the box 60+ years of recital and concert programs, the oldest being from 1948. The vast majority of them were split between her pupils' piano, accordion, and guitar recitals. There are also a sizable amount of programs from concert series that the Community Concert Association, of which I have been lead to believe that she was a regional organizer for this area, and various other programs for University, Lubbock Symphony, and Lockney public school concerts all from the 1960s-90s. 

Before I began the second stage of the process, though, I did come across a couple of interesting artifacts. First was of particular interest to me as a music major.

Here's the first audition notice for piano majors at the Texas Technological College Department of Music in 1954:

I definitely felt like holding a piece of my school's history, even if it was just a piece of paper.

Another find was a set of musical rewards cards. These were similar to baseball cards one would find in bubblegum packs, only instead of star athletes, they had portraits of famous composers with a short biography on the back of each one. They were designed to maintain musical pupil's interest by giving an award for progress in their studies.

I've wondered several times over the past couple of days why Mrs. Record kept a lot of this stuff that I've been sifting through. What makes it so important? Why didn't she just throw this stuff out? 

I've come to realize, however, that this is all part of the musical history of the small towns across West Texas, where the music teachers actually had an immense amount of influence over the lives and education of children. Especially early on, when there might not have been that much money for schools to purchase instruments or keep a band program, the town music teacher may well have been the only access many children had to the arts. In fact, I found many excuse notes that showed that children could be pulled out of school to have a piano or accordion lesson. The town music teacher often also doubled as church musician and, knowing the incredibly close-knit nature of the West Texas church congregation, would have known virtually everybody. Consequently, they may quite possibly have come to be knowledgable of much of their area's history as well. 

I guess this collection goes to show that music educators have always been a vital part of West Texas and hopefully the work I'm doing on this project might someday be useful to someone who is researching this particular aspect of it. 

New Job and a New Blog

Hey, folks!

My name is Jakob Reynolds. I'm a junior undergraduate student at Texas Tech University with a dual major in Music and History. You may know me from more politically-natured blog "Blowin' in the Wind". Today was my first day of work at the Crossroads Music Archive at the Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library at TTU. This inspired me to start a blog with thoughts about the artifacts I'll be working with.

http://www.crossroadsofmusic.ttu.edu/

I don't think I've ever been this excited about a job before. I was expecting to be digitizing recordings of musicians or oral histories since that's what my boss showed me during the interview. I was surprised, therefore, to find out that I'll be processing a 17-box collection of artifacts donated to the archive by a woman named Lucy Dean Record, who owns a piano studio in Lockney, TX.

L. D. Record photo courtesy of KCBD

To be honest, the first thing I was reminded of was going through my grandmother's house when she moved out. Both of these women saved EVERYTHING. I think that growing up during the Great Depression has something to do with instilling everyone into being a hardcore pack-rat. Newspaper clippings, road maps, music catalogues, recital and concert programs, tax receipts, ledgers for her husband's music shop, daily planners for every year since the late 50's, and I'm only on the eleventh box!

As tedious as some of this stuff seems, some of it is quite fascinating and I am learning a lof from what I've found just today. I have come to a new appreciation of the ease of access my generation has to sheet music and instruments. There were dozens of catalogues for sheet music that had miniature copies of the first page of the pieces so that readers could play a preview of the piece. This was before the days of mp3s and iTunes and torrents over the Internet, where you apparently had to wait weeks or months to acquire what you can get now in days or even seconds.

Of particular interest to me was an entire folder of clippings of, among many other religious publications,  weekly Christian column in the Amarillo Globe News titled "Perspectives", though I can't recall the name of the author. It was slightly shocking to read some of the articles at first because I forgot that they were from a time when racism and sexism were, at least publicly, still widely tolerated. One clipping discussed a nefarious plot by feminists to destroy the Bible. I wasn't sure whether to be offended or amused by the utterly ludicrous rhetoric, but then again it was published in a local newspaper in West Texas during the 60s, 70s, and 80s.

I am certainly looking forward to working at this archive for (hopefully) another 3-4 years. I have been thinking about doing my Masters Degree here at Tech in musicology before I go off somewhere else to get my Ph. D and I'm thinking that my time working at this archive will be incredibly complimentary to my education and fun for me as well.