Kennesaw State recently acquired over 9,000 vintage jazz records, giving home to a deep vault of musical history from donors Jack and Lorraine Simpson.
Director of Jazz Studies and Senior Lecturer of Saxophone at KSU Sam Skelton is the man behind the records coming to KSU. He was contacted by friend Jeff Simpson, whose father was 93 at the time and was looking for a home for this rare and expansive collection.
Skelton and his wife took a trip to Cocoa, Florida, to be interviewed to see if they felt KSU was the right fit for the records.
“We instantly became fast friends and the collection was promised to KSU,” Skelton said. “A year later, we took an empty cargo van and spent an entire day boxing up the 9,000 LPs in alphabetical order, loaded them and brought them to their new home in my office in the Wilson Annex.”
This is a significant event for KSU, as many of these records contain historical information about the recording session and oftentimes look into how the music was conceived. Vinyl recordings contain music preserved on the record and liner notes written its sleeve. In many cases, this can be as valuable as the record itself.
Additionally, the value of jazz’s influence on various literary forms is displayed on this collection of timeless albums.
“Jazz had a huge impact on social consciousness, particularly in the 50s and 60s,” Skelton said. “Just one example is the Beat Poetry Movement. Jazz and beat poetry went hand in hand. Consider the cadence of Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’ or ‘On The Road’ by Kerouac. This was a direct and deliberate imitation of the Be-Bop jazz musicians.”
As well as its influence, this collection of records proves to be beneficial for music majors as they will get to exercise their preservation skills and make copies that are more accessible to a modern audience.
“As a service project for the School of Music’s four instrumental music fraternities and sororities, students will be able to participate in digitizing and creating a database of the collection, as well as general maintenance,” Skelton said.
This collection of records is 100 percent jazz through a variety of sub-genres including small group, big band, vocal, complications, anthologies and box sets.
“Jazz is great American art form,” Skelton said. “Much of the music was born out of what was happening in society and as society impacted music, the reverse is also true. Jazz had a huge impact on social consciousness, particularly in the [1950s and 1960s]. Just one example is the Beat Poetry Movement.”
Skelton hopes that as the music program at KSU grows, the need for a new building will arise. If that occurs, Jack and Lorraine Simpson’s LP collection can be stored in a listening room.
As the records are currently housed in Skelton’s office where he teaches, he is limiting visits by appointment only.