James R. and Susan Neumann Jazz Collection

Record Group

Identifier: SC-CON-01-01

Scope and Contents

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The James R. and Susan Neumann Collection consists of five record subgroups: I. Sheet Music; II. Record Company Catalogs; III. Concert Programs, IV. Memorabilia and Ephemera, and V. Objects.

Subgroup I (1923-1962) is organized into four series: Lead Sheets, Transcriptions, Educational/Method Books, and Full Orchestra scores/parts. This series contains over 140 works by artists such as Dave Brubeck, Duke Ellington, W.C. Handy and Stan Kenton. Series 1 and 2 - Lead Sheets and Transcriptions - are further separated by items that are a single piece or contain a compilation of multiple pieces.

Subgroup II (1935-2006) comprises primarily jazz and blues record company catalogs and discographies from 1935-2006 that spans 150 different record companies in the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, England, Germany, and Italy.

Subgroup III. (1920s-2023) contains approximately 1050 concert, jazz festival and dance event programs from the United States, United Kingdom, France, Spain, Sweden, and Germany among others. Many of these concert programs are autographed by the band leaders and/or supporting performers. In this subgroup, there are souvenir program booklets from American jazz musicians' European tours including John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, Thelonius Monk, and Art Blakey; programs from lauded jazz festivals such as Newport (RI), Pittsburgh Jazz Festival, Chicago Jazz Festival, and Jazz at the Philharmonic tours in the United States and Europe. There are also a significant number of programs from British artists such as Humphrey Lyttleton, Chris Barber, and Ronnie Scott. Venues locations include Carnegie Hall, Town Hall, Royal Albert Hall, DePaul University, The Cotton Club (Harlem, NYC), Jazz at Lincoln Center, Hot Club de Paris, and Birdland (Midtown, NYC).

Subgroup IV. (1920s-2023) is the largest of this collection and consists of over 7,500 paper items in various formats. These include photographs, professional and autographed headshots, paper scraps, contracts, union cards, advertisement fliers, calendars, checks, correspondence, lobby cards, film and concert posters, framed memorabilia, and news clippings. A substantial proportion of these materials are autographed or signed. Jazz musicians such as Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Charlie Parker, Count Basie, Gene Krupa, Dizzy Gillespie, James Moody, Art Blakey, Stan Kenton, Woody Herman, Tommy Dorsey, Dave Brubeck, and many others are represented. The majority of these materials originated within the United States but there are examples from Europe, South America, Germany, Sweden and Japan. A handful of materials from Subgroup III are arranged and inventoried within Subgroup IV to preserve the Collection's original order and to provide further contextual information, while maintaining current institutional and archival best practices.

Subgroup V. (1933-2006) holds three-dimensional objects related to jazz as a cultural phenomenon in the 20th century including textiles (pennants, hats, scarves, t-shirts) drinking glasses, buttons, a cigarette lighter, ash trays, noisemakers, matchbooks, napkins, pennants, and award plaques.

In addition to these archival materials, Neumann gifted his extensive book, periodical, and audio/video recordings collections to Oberlin Conservatory. These items are also housed in the vault of the Bertram and Judith Kohl Building. This donation contains over 100,000 jazz audio recordings - analog LPs - 33 1/3, 78 and 45 RPM records, CDs, cassette tapes, 183 DVDs, and 243 VHS tapes. Neumann also donated approximately 2,000 books and full and limited runs of over 100 titles of jazz and blues periodicals, including the entire Downbeat catalog.

A large portion of the sound and video recordings, as well as the books and periodical titles are discoverable at search.libraries.oberlin.edu.

Dates

Creation: 1880 - 2023
Creation: Majority of material found within 1920 - 1980

Creator

Neumann, James R. (Collector, Person)
Neumann, Susan (Collaborator, Person)

Conditions Governing Access

Collection is open for research. To request access to the Collection, contact Conservatory Library special collections staff at: con.special@oberlin.edu. Access to materials is granted by permission of the Conservatory Special Collections librarian.

Conditions Governing Use

The archives reserves the right to limit reproduction, digitization, or reformatting of materials and to restrict certain forms of use, including: publication or broadcast, commercial or promotional use, citation or quotation, particularly when individuals or communities may be affected. Researchers are responsible for obtaining any necessary permissions from rights holders or communities before publishing or redistributing materials. Please consult the archives for guidance before using or citing material from this collection.

Biographical Sketch

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James (Jim) R. Neumann is a business owner, jazz enthusiast and collector. Neumann is a 1958 graduate of Oberlin College, where he was a member of the campus Jazz Club, a predecessor to the Oberlin Jazz Society. These groups helped Oberlin College become an important location of American jazz performance history. The Jazz Club brought performers such as Dizzy Gillespie, Dave Brubeck, Woody Herman, Count Basie, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Duke Ellington, and Stan Kenton to the legendary campus venue, Finney Chapel. And ultimately this group’s actions in the 1950’s was a part of the groundwork for Oberlin to become one of the first conservatories in America to offer a dedicated jazz studies program.

During his studies at Oberlin, Neumann hosted a jazz radio show – “Jazz Hot and Cool” – on the campus station WOBC and would often travel all over Lorain and Cuyahoga Counties to post advertisements for jazz performances at Oberlin. After graduating, he served time in the U.S. Armed Forces. When he returned home to Chicago, he began a career working at New Metal Crafts, a family business that manufactures luxury lighting fixtures and products. This position required much travel, especially to Europe. While there, he would often bring back crates of LP records and other materials that could only be found on the continent.

In 1977, Neumann and his wife Susan founded Bee Hive Records. They recorded and released sixteen albums between 1977 and 1984, featuring musicians including Pepper Adams, Curtis Fuller, Clifford Jordan, Nick Brignola, and Johnny Hartman. Although their self-distributed recordings reached a smaller audience than stalwarts like Blue Note and Impulse, Bee Hive recordings were often released to critical acclaim. All the while, Neumann continued building his personal collection of recordings, memorabilia, sheet music and other crucial documentary materials of jazz. Over the course of more than five decades, Neumann amassed what is sometimes considered the largest private collection of jazz-related materials in the world.

Most materials in the Collection came to Oberlin Conservatory in two large donations. The first in 2011 and the second in 2022. Prior to the material donations, the Neumanns also helped fund the construction of the Bertram and Judith Kohl Building and Vault at Oberlin Conservatory, which opened in 2010 and is where the Collection is now housed. Then in 2022, they established a postdoctoral fellowship position in Jazz History at the Conservatory by creating several new courses in the Jazz Department that encourages use of the Collection and offers opportunities for project-based collaboration between students and the program fellow.

SOURCES CONSULTED

Burnett, Erich. “$1.6M gift supports endowed fellowship in jazz history at Oberlin Conservatory.” February 16, 2022. Burnett, Erich. “Still hot, still cool.” Oberlin Alumni Magazine. January 24, 2023. DeMuth, Jerry. “Chicago.” Jazz Magazine 3, no. 4 (fall 1979): 20–22 (at 21–22). Gitler, Ira. “Notes: Chicago.” Jazz Magazine 3, no. 1 (fall 1978): 10–20 (at 16–17) Hirsch, Adam. “Neumann ushers history of jazz into Oberlin.” Oberlin Review. November 16, 2012. Collection article. Kato, Yoshi. “Wanting it all: suggestions for the jazz fan who seems to own everything.” Downbeat 75, no. 12 (December 2008): 60. Thomas-Patterson, Walter. “Alum donates $1.6 million to Jazz department.” Oberlin Review. February 25, 2022. Postdoc article.

Full Extent

175 Linear Feet (This collection includes containers of various sizes and types: Hollinger boxes of various dimensions, 3" D-ring and O-ring binders, 1.5" D-ring archival binder boxes, oversized art portfolios, large flat files folders, poster tubes and framed objects.)

Language of Materials

English

Czech

Danish

French

German

Hebrew

Italian

Japanese

Russian

Spanish; Castilian

Swedish

Additional Description

Method of Acquisition

The items in this collection and all other Neumann related collections were donated by James R. and Susan Neumann to Oberlin Conservatory Special Collections.

The collection was received in two shipments from the Neumann residence and various storage facilities around Chicago, Illinois. The first occurred in 2012 and the second in 2023. The scope and physical extent of items: audio and video recoridngs, books, periodicals, paper items, and objects was roughly equal in both shipments.