Once The Stuff Of Jazz Legend

Once The Stuff Of Jazz Legend, 1930s Recordings Are Finally Out

December 8, 20163:29 AM
TOM VITALE

In 1938, Ella Fitzgerald sang her first big hit, "A-Tisket, A-Tasket," for a national audience on CBS Radio. Now, a global audience has access to this performance again — thanks to the discovery and restoration of the Savory Collection, a legendary private trove of nearly 1,000 recordings that haven't been heard by the general public since the 1930s. The National Jazz Museum in Harlem acquired them in 2010, and today they're beginning to make their way to a new generation of jazz fans.


It's the quintessential buried treasure story: Sound engineer William Savory had amassed a collection of radio broadcasts he'd professionally recorded off direct feeds from clubs and ballrooms across New York City. Since Savory kept them to himself, the recordings became the stuff of legend — and, for saxophonist and historian Loren Schoenberg, an obsession. Schoenberg says he pestered Savory for a quarter-century to let him hear his Benny Goodman recordings because Schoenberg had worked for the clarinetist, but Savory never did. Savory died in 2004.

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