History Commons^™

Guide To The Herbert Zane Knauss Collection, Columbia College Chicago

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Herbert Zane Knauss served as the University of South Carolina's Director of Information Services and was a jazz enthusiast who combined his musical passion with local history by creating a documentary about South Carolina native Dizzy Gillespie titled Cheraw for Dizzy. The collection holds radio broadcasts Zane Knauss produced about jazz artists and the original soundtrack for his documentary film about Dizzy Gillespie.

Guide To The Melba Liston Collection, Columbia College Chicago

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The Melba Liston Collection primarily documents her careers as arranger, composer, and educator rather than her accomplishments as a trombonist. It contains lead sheets to her own and other people’s compositions and manuscript scores of many of her arrangements for Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Clark Terry, and Mary Lou Williams, among others. One extensive series contains numerous arrangements for Randy Weston, and her late computer scores for him are also present.

Guide To The Evelyn Davidson White Collection, Columbia College Chicago

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Evelyn Davidson White, a professor of music at Howard University, was an educator, choral instructor, scholar, clinician, mezzo-soprano vocalist, and author who authored Choral Music by African-American Composers. The collection contains published and unpublished choral music by Black composers.

Guide To The Patsy Ford Simms Collection, Columbia College Chicago

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Patsy Ford Simms is an internationally recognized arranger, composer and clinician who began writing and arranging out of necessity due to the lack of choral octavos for the junior high/middle school voice during the first decade of her teaching career. The collection contains original sheet music, arrangements, concert programs, press clippings, catalogues, and recordings.

Guide To The Alton Augustus Adams, Sr. Collection, Columbia College Chicago

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The Alton Augustus Adams, Sr. Collection reflects his activities as a bandmaster, a press correspondent, activities in the Hotel Association of the Virgin Islands, and as educator, civic leader, composer, author, and local historian in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands.

Guide To The William C. Banfield Collection, Columbia College Chicago

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William “Bill” Cedric Banfield is a professor and director of the Africana Studies/Music and Society initiative at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. The collection contains his compositions, including songs and jazz works, but is especially strong in concert music, correspondence, writings, and flyers and programs documenting his career.

Guide To The Ed Bland Collection, Columbia College Chicago

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The Ed Bland Collection contains his scores and recordings of his compositions; his later works are primarily compositions for larger ensembles with each work listing the instrumentation required to perform the piece.

Guide To The William A. Brown Collection, Columbia College Chicago

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William A. Brown was a founding member of the Center for Black Music Repertory Ensemble and a Distinguished Professor of Voice at the University of North Florida. He was a tenor and a recitalist and his collection includes concert programs, promotional materials, photographs, correspondence, and media chronicling his career.

Guide To The Sue Cassidy Clark Collection, Columbia College Chicago

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Sue Cassidy Clark is a music journalist and photographer who specialized in soul, gospel, and rock music in the late 1960s and early 1970s and the collection contains her recorded interviews, interview transcripts, and other research materials for her interviews of the musical pioneers she interviewed.

Guide To The Cyril Felix William Creque Collection, Columbia College Chicago

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Cyril Creque was a poet, composer, and Health Department officer, born on St. Thomas and was one of the forerunners of the Virgin Islands poetic tradition. The collection contains a few of his music manuscripts, sheet music for one published song, and one book of poetry.

Guide To The Dominique-René De Lerma Collection, Columbia College Chicago

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Dominique-René de Lerma (1928–2015) was a prominent, pioneering scholar in black music research, an oboist, an author, and an educator. The collection contains his research materials, collected scores, and sound recordings.

Guide To The R. Nathaniel Dett Club Records, Columbia College Chicago

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The R. Nathaniel Dett Club Records contain the administrative records of this Chicago branch of the National Association of Negro Musicians (NANM) including bylaws, constitutions, minutes and agendas and also, programs from concerts and other events.

Guide To The Caleb Dube Collection, Columbia College Chicago

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Caleb Dube was an ethnomusicology scholar and teacher who studied blues music through an anthropological framework. The Caleb Dube Collection primarily contain general research in the fields of cultural anthropology and ethnomusicology, along with more narrow research linking these two fields of study to Chicago, and the blues.

Guide To The Collection Of Lillian Evans Tibbs Materials, Columbia College Chicago

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Lillian Evans Tibbs was professionally know as Madame Lillian Evanti and this collection of materials consists of photographs of her in costume for various opera productions and a six-page manuscript of her autobiography prologue given as a speech in Chicago at the Century of Negro Progress Exposition in 1963.

Guide To The James Furman Collection, Columbia College Chicago

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The James Furman Collection contains materials relating to several genres of music, writings, including his unpublished book on gospel music, personal papers, and original and copies of musical compositions; most was collected while he taught at Western Connecticut State University in Connecticut.

Guide To The Gospel Sheet Music Collection, Columbia College Chicago

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The gospel sheet music contains published music given to the CBMR from individual donors that has been gathered into one collection for access and use. the collection is arranged by alphabetically by composer's last name.

Guide To The Talib Rasul Hakim Collection, Columbia College Chicago

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Talib Rasul Hakim was born Stephen Alexander Chambers and was an educator, musician, and composer. This collection contains his early scores and notes on the performance of his compositions will prove invaluable to performers and scholars.

Guide To The Robert A. Harris Collection, Columbia College Chicago

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Robert Allen Harris is a composer, conductor of choral music, and choir clinician. The collection reflects his work as a choir director and professor as well as his published and unpublished compositions, primarily of choral music, recordings, and works from other composers are also present.

Guide To The Collection Of Gerhard Kubik And Moya Malamusi Papers, Columbia College Chicago

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This collection is simply a small sampling of the field research of both Dr. Kubik and Dr. Malamusi, including offprints of articles and photographs, sound recordings and publications documenting their work. Of particular interest are the videotaped recordings of African dance and music and the small collection of photographs taken primarily in the 1960s in Angola, Cameroon and Mozambique, among others, and the typescript for an essay entitled “African Elements in Jazz,” in addition to other writings.

Guide To The Alice Rosalee Marshall Collection Of Materials On The National Convention Of Gospel Choirs And Choruses (Ncgcc) And Other Gospel-Related Materials, Columbia College Chicago

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Alice Rosalee Marshall attended many of the NCGCC events, as well as churches in the Chicago area. She recorded services, revivals, and special events at local churches and at the NCGCC conventions. The collection consists of sound recordings on audiocassette of these events, church services, and choir rehearsals and programs and material from the conventions.

Guide To The Zenobia Powell Perry Collection, Columbia College Chicago

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Zenobia Powell Perry was a professor, pianist, and composer of classical music. The collection is comprised entirely of Perry’s unpublished scores and music manuscripts, and the collection was arranged by her biographer, Jeannie Gayle Pool.

Guide To The Daniel Bernard Roumain Collection, Columbia College Chicago

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Daniel Bernard Roumain is a classically trained violinist, composer, performer, educator, and bandleader whose work can weaves together funk, hip-hop, classical music, and rock. The collection holds scores of his compositions, programs, photographs, and other documents; some material held includes his work while a student at Vanderbilt University and the University of Michigan.

Guide To The Guido Sinclair Collection, Columbia College Chicago

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Guido Sinclair was born Sinclair Greenwell, Jr. A jazz saxophonist, he performed with many well-known jazz and rhythm and blues artists. In the late 1970s, he moved to Chicago, Illinois, and later moved downstate to Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. The collection contains original compositions, programs, and interviews, and recordings of performances of his original compositions.

Guide To The Hale Smith And Melba Liston Recordings, Columbia College Chicago

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This set of five recordings were taped in Hale Smith’s Black Studies class at University of Connecticut- Storrs and include class lectures by Melba Liston as well as tapes from a WKCR radio program, and a studio track of “The Marijuana Affair” by Melba Liston, conducted by Hale Smith. These recordings were received from Randy Weston, who worked closely with Melba Liston, and Juanita Smith, wife of Hale Smith.

Guide To The Society Of Black Composers Records, Columbia College Chicago

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The Society of Black Composers was founded by a group of composers in the New York City area in 1968 and ceased operation in 1973. The collection houses the organizational records of the Society.

Guide To The Eileen Southern Collection, Columbia College Chicago

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The Eileen Southern Collection contains documents and information that was drawn upon by Southern in her published books and articles and in the journal she and her husband, Joseph Southern, published from 1973 until 1990, The Black Perspective in Music. Also included are papers from when she served as Department Chair of the Afro-American Studies Department at Harvard, as well as correspondence between W. C. Handy and William Grant Still.

View an online exhibit from Harvard University about Eileen Southern.

Guide To The Theodore Charles Stone Collection, Columbia College Chicago

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Theodore Charles Stone was a Chicago-based opera singer and journalist who served as president of both the National Association of Negro Musicians and Chicago Music Association. The collection provides insight into the African American operatic music scene throughout the 20th century.

Guide To The Helen Walker Hill Collection, Columbia College Chicago

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The Helen Walker-Hill Collection is composed of musical compositions by black women composers throughout the United States and England. This collection was compiled by pianist and musicologist, Dr. Helen Walker-Hill. Duplicates and/or originals also held at University of Colorado at Boulder American Music Research Center.

Guide To The Martin Williams Collection, Columbia College Chicago

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Martin Williams was a music critic specializing in jazz and American popular culture and the collection includes published articles, unpublished manuscripts, files and correspondence, and music scores of jazz compositions. He wrote for major jazz periodicals, especially Down Beat, co-founded The Jazz Review and was the author of numerous books on jazz.

Guide To The Bo Diddley Track Program At American Society On Aging & The Gerontological Society Of America Annual Conferences Collection, Columbia College Chicago

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The Bo Diddley Track Program at American Society on Aging & the Gerontological Society of America Annual Conferences Collection consist of sound and video recordings, meeting materials, photographs and posters for a program track at the two major gerontological societies annual conferences in the United States, honoring elderly blues musicians: the American Society on Aging and the Gerontological Society of America. The event was conceived and created by Michael Marcus and John Migliaccio.