The Collegiate Jazz Festival Historical Tapes Collections (in the University of Notre Dame Theodore Hesburgh Memorial Libary Music Listening Center & Archives)

On December 3, 1990, I donated my collection of tapes of finalist groups from the 1959-1966 University of Notre Dame Collegiate Jazz Festivals to the University of Notre Dame Theodore Hesburgh Memorial Library Music Listening Center so that this terrific jazz music could be accessed and listening to by students, teachers and the general public at large. The twenty-five 1959-1966 cassette tapes, along with an additional thirty-two cassette tapes of outstanding festival groups (as chosen by attending judges each year) from 1985-1990, along with eleven University of Notre Dame jazz band/combo tapes from 1985-1990 Collegiate Jazz Festival years constituted my initial donation to this collection, which was entitled “The Joseph Kuhn Carey Collegiate Jazz Festival Historical Tapes Collection.” Assembled over seven years while researching my book about the Notre Dame Collegiate Jazz Festival (“Big Noise From Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 1986), these tapes were made from old vinyl records and reel to reel tapes, which were professionally transferred to cassettes at the Northwestern University Library Music Listening Center. On December 30, 1993, I donated another series of cassette tapes of finalist groups from the 1967-1970 Notre Dame Collegiate Jazz Festivals, along with a complete set of 1992 and 1993 Collegiate Jazz Festival participating groups recordings.

In addition, on December 20, 1991, I created a second collection of Notre Dame Collegiate Jazz Festival recordings and materials in the University of Notre Dame Archives, “The William and Helen Carey Collection of Collegiate Jazz Festival Master Tapes,” in honor of my parents. This collection consisted of seventy-three rare reel-to-reel Master Tapes pertaining to the early 1959-1966 early years of the University of Notre Dame Collegiate Jazz Festival, which included the first recorded performances of many student musicians who would go on to well-known careers in the professional jazz ranks (Marvin Stamm, Paul Winter, David Sanborn, Billy Harper, Randy Brecker, Oscar Brashear, David Baker, Bunky Green, Bob James, Omar Clay, Warren Bernhardt, and many others).

Also, on December 19, 2008, I created a third collection of Notre Dame Collegiate Jazz Festival recordings and materials at the Archives of the University of Notre Dame in the University of Notre Dame Theodore Hesburgh Memorial Library. Called “The Joe Carey Collegiate Jazz Collection,” this donation included 163 cassettes and 14 CDs of Notre Dame Collegiate Jazz Festival recordings (1959-1970, 1985-1995 and 2008), 24 festival programs (1962, 1966, 1968-74, 1978-1979, 198601992, 1994-1996, 2007-2008), 6 posters (1987, 1991-1995), a brochure and stationary from the 1979 festival, and an audio cassette with recordings made by Notre Dame alumnus and jazz musician, Charlie Davis (who graduated from the university in 1921, wrote the well-known jazz song, “Copenhagen,” and hired famed cornetist Bix Beiderbecke for his band). I had the pleasure of interviewing Charlie Davis once and wrote about an article about him for Notre Dame Magazine. What a wonderful character and raconteur he was!

Lastly, I helped to honor the Notre Dame Collegiate Festival (which I ran in 1979 as a student at Notre Dame) with a bronze plaque that was installed on the remaining tall brick cornerstone of the Old Fieldhouse in the center of campus in the early 1990s, obtaining permission from the president of Notre Dame, Theodore Hesburgh, for the plaque. I subsequently devised the plaque wording (along with the help of Fr. George Wiskirchen, who ran the student jazz bands on campus and had advised the festival student staff for years) and then had it cast at a Chicago foundry at my own cost. It was a thrill to eventually see the bronze plaque (pictured up above this section) up on the brick cornerstone, especially since I had an old, high-ceilinged apartment in the Old Fieldhouse on the campus as a “live-in custodian” during my senior year at Notre Dame. (Interestingly, the plaque was stolen once from the brick cornerstone, so I supplied Notre Dame custodial services with a picture of the plaque and they had it remade and installed!)

There’s no question that my book, “Big Noise From Notre Dame,” the bronze Collegiate Jazz Festival plaque and these three Library collections were all “labors of love” that I was happy to undertake. Several years ago, I heard from the University of Notre Dame Archives that famed jazz pianist/composer Bob James had called looking for a copy of a tape of his jazz trio from the 1962 Collegiate Jazz Festival, which he was able to find and obtain, since the collections I had donated were there at the Notre Dame Library! In addition, one of the University of Notre Dame archivists named Eric Dix, was able to digitize all of the reel-to-reel and cassette tapes over several years, so the Collegiate Jazz Festival collections are now preserved in a modern form and even more accessible to all! (Lastly, I was in touch with three or four other Notre Dame Collegiate Jazz Festival tape collectors over the years and, so far as I know, several of them have donated their extensive tapes collections to the Notre Dame Library, too, which will help to ensure that all of the 1950s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s festivals are represented in the collections at the University of Notre Dame Memorial Library.)