Wow, that was priceless.

An absolutely amazing find!

But I wonder about some of the "unrecoverable" disks. The entire recovery process actually seems incredibly archaic. Why are they recovering 70+ year old disks with 50+ year old methods?

For example, why are they actually playing these with physical needles when laser turntables have been on the market for a couple decades now? Or image scanning the cracked disks and recovering the audio by virtually recreating the disks? Actual restoration and recovery methods for artifacts like this have advanced considerably over the last few decades, but they've appeared to ignore it all and dig up some ancient sound engineer has-been with a few bottles of solvent? Bringing him out of retirement to help is a touching story, but the limited restoration he's able to do and additional damage he can't help but inflict (solvents, needle wear, etc) just add insult to injury.

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p>This is a job for an institution like the Smithsonian. I'm very happy the collection has been found and will be made public, but I'm saddened that recovery will be more limited then it should be and the items that are recovered will be further damaged in the process. :(

I can't remember where I heard about this first but I actually met Loren Schoenberg at the jazz museum when I was in new York eight after he had returned from the trip to get the collection. I told him my link to the dance community and that I was excited by the 'discovery'. He was stoked that word was already getting out there and his excitement about the collection was palpable. I can't wait to hear more of these recordings.

Exactly what my 1st thought was.

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p>Also because these were recorded at dances I'm hopeful that there'll be some cool stuff, but to be honest I also fear that it will be mostly lots of long solo workouts of incendiary playing by incredible musicians at the top of their game, which to a moron like me will be as useful as 1 more Grateful Dead bootleg without the acid.

The material belongs to the museum so I would imagine that more than one engineer will get to utilize there restoration techniques - just like all other recordings outside of this archive. Recreating the cracked lacquer on discs seems the most achievable.

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p>I wish we could jump ahead 2 or 3 years to hear the results—because that's likely what it will be before hearing the first commercially available content after having resolved distribution rights and licensing.

This Saturday, September 25, there will be a lecture about the Savory Recordings:

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Who Was Bill Savory? 12:00 – 4:00pm Location: NJMIH Visitors Center (104 E. 126th Street, Suite 2C) FREE | For more information: 212-348-8300 
Guest panelists: Gene Savory, George Avakian, Larry Appelbaum, Larry Rohter and others "For decades jazz cognoscenti have talked reverently of “the Savory Collection.” Recorded from radio broadcasts in the late 1930s by an audio engineer named William Savory, it was known to include extended live performances by some of the most honored names in jazz — but only a handful of people had ever heard even the smallest fraction of that music, adding to its mystique. After 70 years that wait has now ended," begins the story reported in the New York Times (by Larry Rohter) on August 16, 2010. Today's panel discussion will uncover the identity of this audio engineer whose 100 hours of fine-tuned recording will breathe new life into the archival imperative of jazz music. The National Jazz Museum in Harlem is proud to have this treasure trove as part of its collection, and invite you to learn more about the man who museum executive director Loren Schoenberg describes as "a musician and a technical genius" as well as the music he captured for posterity. Guests include Savory’ son Gene, who rescued the collection from oblivion, legendary record producer and life-long Bill Savory friend George Avakian, NY Times writer Larry Rohter, who broke the story, Larry Appelbaum, archivist at The Library of Congress, and professor Susan Schmidt Horning, who interviewed Bill Savory as part of her research into his innovations.