The
Lou Curtiss Sound Library
It was in 1969 that the Lou Curtiss Sound Library started to
grow. I had a few reel-to-reel tapes before that, Folk Festivals from 1967 and
1968, and a few live tapes
of groups I had played in, and so forth. However, it was in
the fall of 1969 when I ran into the Aretha Wong Sound Library of vintage old
time radio shows and found out that there were a pile of old recordings to be
had out there in that format. I started getting involved in groups like the
Renfro Valley Tape Club, the Ralph Stanley Tape Club, the Nostalgia Tape Club,
and others. As my collection grew, I was soon in a position to trade with other
collectors. I was also starting to compile tapes of my own from the vintage 78
rpm records that came through my shop and that gave me more material to trade
with. It was only a few years until I was in touch with most of the major
collectors of a pretty wide variety of stuff. More vintage radio, jazz, blues,
all kinds of country and folk material, and odds and ends came my way. In the
early 1970s I ran into collector Richard Schurch who had been busy compiling a
similar kind of tape library and we started to trade material extensively
(probably widening both our collective tastes). I know I got some material from
Dick that I still treasure today and I hope he still listens to stuff he got
from me (although Dick is pretty heavy into video formats these days). Some
time in the early 1970s I got my first transcription turntable that would play
the big 16-inch transcription discs and started looking for that material to transfer
to reel. Some of the San Diego Tijuana border stations became my best sources,
particularly XERB in Rosarito Beach, which had been a sister station of the
Texas border blaster station XERA in the 1930s. At XERB I found original ETs by
the Carter Family, Mainers Mountainers, Cowboy Slim Reinhardt, the Delmore
Brothers and Wayne Raney, the Maddox Brothers and Rose, Stuart Hamblen, Tex
Williams and Smokey Rogers, and lots more. From other radio stations I got
Pappy Cheshire's Hillbillies, the Hollywood Barndance, Patsy Montana's WLS
shows, Spade Cooley at the Riverside Rancho (got that from Smokey Rogers old
sidekick Tommy Turman), Tex Ivy and the Texas Ranch Boys, lots of Merle Travis,
Hank Penny, Wesley Tuttle, Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys, and others.
Each year
I'd add a bunch of live concerts from my own Folk Festivals and make contacts
with people who had related material. I also got material from other festivals
that I'd either go to and record or somehow find someone who had the material.
I did a lot of recording at the Sweets Mill Festivals in Central California
east of Fresno; I got recordings from the Philadelphia Folk Festival, the
University of Chicago Festival, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, Brandywine,
Winnipeg, Vancouver, and a whole lot more. The reel-to-reel library kind of
leveled out at about 6,000 reels in about 2004-2005. By that time I'd also
amassed about 2,000 VHS tapes with much of that being musical in nature (mostly
from the Adams Avenue Roots Festivals, for instance). Today I'm moving onto
setting up a collection of what I have on line and making the original reels
available to the UCLA Folk Archives and the Library of Congress through this
grant we have from the Grammy people. I'm not transferring anything to reel
these days although I have about 5,000 long play records and about 3,000 78s
& 45s, many of which need to at least be part of the digitization project
I'm involved with, and I still pick up those 16-inch discs when I see them,
always hoping to find something that I didn't know existed (and, moreover, that
other much more in the know individuals didn't know existed either). That's
always a real kick.
I'm still
always looking for those items that fit into the various projects I'm into,
especially live material from festivals, coffee houses, and concerts over the
past 50 or 60 years or so: folk music, jazz, country music, blues, and
bluegrass. What ever you might think needs preserving. You can call me at Folk
Arts Rare Records : 619-282-7833 any day from 9am to 5pm. Don't throw it away.
Check with me first.
Passing
Through
This week I
heard about the passing of two fine Southern California musicians who spent
many years bringing good sounds to folks around our area. I met Jay Waelder at
a party sometime in the early 1970s, picking a mandolin and playing good time
music. He played at some of the old San Diego Folk Festivals and did a concert
or two for me as part of a group called the Rhythm Rascals (along with W.B.
Reid and Agi Ban), playing vintage string swing jazz. Jay introduced me to
Robert Crumb who came down to one of his concerts at Folk Arts, and his music
helped define an era in San Diego's musical growth. I met the other musician,
Clabe Hangan, at San Bernardino's Penny University sometime in the mid 1960s.
Clabe was a sociologist, a folklorist, and a musician. Born in Arkansas in
1934, Clabe got his degree at the University of Redlands and settled in Pomona
where he became involved with the Riverside Folksong Society. Clabe did regular
programs in San Diego, playing for Sam Hinton at UCSD and at the Heritage
Coffeehouse in Mission Beach. He also played at Folk Arts Rare Records in the
1970s and at the San Diego Folk Festival. More recently Clabe appeared at the
Adams Avenue Roots Festival and the Adams Avenue Street Fair with his group the
Hangan Brothers, a couple of guys who made a lot of good music and brought a
lot of sunshine to San Diego folks. We'll miss them.
Recordially,
Lou Curtiss