Duncan P. Schiedt Photograph Collection
name: label: Photographer
content: Schiedt, Duncan P., 1921-2014
topic: label: Occupation
content: African American musicians
label: Topic
content: African American music -- 20th century
label: Topic
content: African Americans -- Photographs
label: Topic
content: Blues musicians
label: Topic
content: Jazz
label: Topic
content: Music
label: Topic
content: Musicians
label: Topic
content: Jazz
label: Topic
content: Jazz -- 20th century -- United States
label: Topic
content: Jazz musicians -- 1940-1980 -- United States
label: Topic
content: Sound recordings
acqinfo: label: Provenance
content: Donated to the Archives Center in 2014 by Duncan Schiedt's daughter and son, Leslie Michel and Cameron Schiedt.
creator: label: Photographer
content: Schiedt, Duncan P., 1921-2014
culture: label: Culture
content: African Americans -- 20th century
label: Culture
content: African Americans -- 1900-1950
setName: label: See more items in
content: Duncan P. Schiedt Photograph Collection
abstract: label: Summary
content: Duncan Schiedt (1921-2014) was a jazz scholar, writer, photographer, film maker, researcher and pianist. He authored four books relating to jazz history. Many of his photographs and articles were featured in magazines, periodicals and documentaries. Schiedt also collected the work of other photographers on the subject of jazz. The collection primarily consists of photographs created by or collected by Mr. Schiedt.
bioghist: label: Biographical / Historical
content: For over sixty-five years, professional photographer Duncan Preston Schiedt combined his love of jazz with his love of photography.  Born in 1921 in Atlantic City, New Jersey to Jacob and Kitty Schiedt, he later moved with his family to New York City.  In the mid-1930s, he discovered the two loves of his life.  Ironically, he first heard jazz or "swing music" as it was then known in a radio broadcast while attending a boys' school in England in 1936.  Back in the States by 1938, he was enthralled when a friend showed him his basement darkroom and taught him how to develop film.  He soon bought his own camera and began taking pictures in the Times Square movie palaces, nightclubs, and big band shows of New York.  In World War II, he served as a cameraman in the Army Air Force, where he recorded atomic bomb tests in the western Pacific area, including Bikini Atoll. 

In 1950, Schiedt married Betty Benjamin and moved to Hollywood where he worked at the Atomic Energy Commission's film laboratory for eight months. After returning to civilian life, he worked as a photographer in advertising in New York before moving in 1951 to Pittsboro, Indiana, where his parents had relocated. He had two children, Cameron and Leslie. 

Thereafter, his interests in jazz and photography merged and became more than a hobby, as he transformed himself into one of the country's leading jazz historians and photographers.  He traveled the country to photograph performers in movie houses, night clubs, big-band shows, jazz festivals, and other venues.  Schiedt always shot in black and white, since to him that was the essence of jazz.  As he wrote in the introduction to his book, Jazz in Black and White: The Photographs of Duncan Schiedt, "Jazz is a black and white music.  Its range, from blinding brilliance to deepest shadings, seems to demand the drama that black and white can so easily provide.  Consequently, when I take a photograph of a jazz subject, I see it in those terms."  

He processed all his own film in his own darkroom so that any picture bearing his name was totally his own work.  His photographs have been exhibited in numerous galleries, including the Birmingham Civil Rights Museum, the Chicago Public Library, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, and the Pensacola Art Museum.  While shooting, Schiedt also interviewed his subjects, and those interviews added to his ever-growing scholarship in the field.  He was the author of three books, The Jazz State of Indiana, Twelve Lives in Jazz,and Jazz in Black and White: The Photographs of Duncan Schiedt, and co-author of Ain't Misbehavin': The Story of Fats Waller.  His photographs and articles have been published in the leading jazz periodicals and magazines.  Over the years, he also amassed a first-rate collection of historical photographs of jazz musicians.  Both his historical photographs and his original work were featured extensively in Ken Burns' Public Broadcasting Station series "Jazz." Duncan Schiedt died on March 12, 2014.
physdesc: label: Extent
content: 65 Cubic feet (124 boxes)
unitdate: label: Date
content: 1900-2012, undated
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: Archives Center, National Museum of American History
identifier: label: Identifier
content: NMAH.AC.1323
objectType: label: Type
content: Collection descriptions
label: Type
content: Archival materials
label: Type
content: Black-and-white negatives
label: Type
content: Black-and-white photographs
label: Type
content: Black-and-white photographic prints
label: Type
content: Motion picture film
label: Type
content: Oral history
label: Type
content: Photographs
label: Type
content: 16mm motion picture film
label: Type
content: Sound recordings
label: Type
content: Scrapbooks
arrangement: label: Arrangement
content: Collection is arranged into five series.

Series 1: Background Information and Research Materials, 1915-2012, undated

Series 2: Photographic Materials, 1900-2012, undated

Subseries 2.1: Historical Photographs and Negatives, 1915-2012

Subseries 2.2: Artist Files Photographs, 1900-2000, undated

Subseries 2.3: Subject Files Photographs, 1916-2002, undated

Subseries 2.4: Roscoe Allen Photographic Prints, undated

Subseries 2.5: Individual Instrumentalists Photographic Prints and Negatives, 1938-1990, undated

Subseries 2.6: John Minor Negatives, undated

Subseries 2.7: Indianapolis Theater Photographic Prints and Negatives, 1935-1956, undated

Subseries 2.8: Theater and Vaudeville Negatives, 1910-1948, undated 

Subseries 2.9: Glass Plate Negatives and Copy Prints, undated 

Subseries 2.10: Publicity and Festival Negatives, 1930-1962, undated

 Series 3: Charles T (Ted) Grubb  Papers, 1919-1999, undated 

Series 4: Scrapbooks, 1901-1950, undated

Series 5: Audiovisual Materials, undated
processinfo: label: Processing Information
content: Collection processed by Alex Jeffries, Anne Morgan Jones, Brittany Lewis, Corey Schmidt, Elizabeth Livesey, Franklin Robinson Jr., Holly Nelson, Marian Tatum Webb, Michaela L. Feltman, Nelse Greenway, Ramona Williamson, Rebekah Keel, Rebecca Kuske, and Vanessa Broussard Simmons.

Collection digitized by Noah Stewart, digital imaging technician, 2018.
genre_format: label: Genre/Form
content: Black-and-white negatives
label: Genre/Form
content: Black-and-white photographs -- 1950-2000
label: Genre/Form
content: Black-and-white photographic prints -- Silver gelatin -- 1950-2000
label: Genre/Form
content: Motion picture film
label: Genre/Form
content: Oral history -- 20th century
label: Genre/Form
content: Photographs -- 20th century -- Black-and-white negatives -- Acetate film
label: Genre/Form
content: Photographs -- 20th century -- Black-and-white photonegatives -- Glass
label: Genre/Form
content: 16mm motion picture film
label: Genre/Form
content: Sound recordings -- Audiotapes -- Audio cassettes -- Music
label: Genre/Form
content: Scrapbooks
label: Genre/Form
content: Scrapbooks -- 20th century
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents
content: The collection consists of Schiedt's own photographs of jazz performers, photographs of jazz performers taken by other photographers, research notes, films, and recordings of jazz.
relatedmaterial: label: Related Materials
content: Archives Center, National Museum of American History

William H. Quealy Collection of Duke Ellington Recordings, NMAH.AC.0296

Sam DeVincent Collection of Illustrated American Sheet Music, Archives Center, Series 3: African American Music, NMAH.AC.0300.S03

Duke Ellington Collection, NMAH.AC.0301

Duke Ellington Oral History, NMAH.AC.0368

Robert Udkoff Collection of Duke Ellington Ephemera, NMAH.AC.0388

Ruth Ellington Collection of Duke Ellington Materials, NMAH.AC.0415

Herman Leonard Photographic Collection, NMAH.AC.0445

Ernie Smith Jazz Film Collection, NMAH.AC.0491

Frank Schiffman Apollo Theatre Collection, NMAH.AC.0540

Ella Fitzgerald Papers, NMAH.AC.0584

William "Cat" Anderson Collection, NMAH.AC.0630

Tad Hershorn Collection, NMAH.AC.0680

William Claxton Photographs, NMAH.AC.0695

Edward and Gaye Ellington Collection of Duke Ellington Materials, NMAH.AC.0704

Benny Carter Collection, NMAH.AC.0757

W. Royal Stokes Collection of Music Photoprints and Interviews, NMAH.AC.0766

Smithsonian Jazz Oral History Program Collection, NMAH.AC.0808

Milt Gabler Papers, NMAH.AC.0849

Stephanie Myers Jazz Photographs, NMAH.AC.0887

Audrey Wells "Women in Jazz" Radio Series, NMAH.AC.0899

Leonard and Mary Gaskin Papers, NMAH.AC.0900

John Coltrane Music Manuscript, NMAH.AC.0903

Miles Davis Music Manuscript, NMAH.AC.0920

Bobby Short Papers, NMAH.AC.0946

Ramsey Lewis Collection, NMAH.AC.1126

Earl Newman Collection of Monterey Jazz Festival Posters, NMAH.AC.1207

Pat and Chuck Bress Jazz Portrait Photographs, NMAH.AC.1219

Floyd Levin Jazz Reference Collection, NMAH.AC.1222

Francis Wolff Jazz Photoprints, NMAH.AC.1238

Al Celley Collection of Duke Ellington Materials, NMAH.AC.1240

Chuck Stewart Jazz Photographs, NMAH.AC.1321

Duncan Schiedt Jazz Collection, NMAH.AC.1323

Ray Brown Papers, NMAH.AC.1362

Eubie Blake Letter and Music Manuscripts, NMAH.AC.1400

James Moody Papers, NMAH.AC.1405

Robert "Mack" McCormick Collection, NMAH.AC.1485

Anacostia Community Museum Archives, Smithsonian Institution

The Renaissance: Black Arts of the Twenties Exhibition Records, ACMA.03-024

Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections

Arhoolie Records, CFCH.ARHO

Moses and Frances Asch Collection, CFCH.ASCH

Smithsonian Institution Archives

National Portrait Gallery (Smithsonian Institution), Department of Exhibitions and Collections

Smithsonian Productions, Accession 04-062, SIA.FA04-062 

Management, Exhibition Records, Accession 07-149, SIA.FA07-149

Smithsonian Resident Associate Program. Office of Public Affairs, Record Unit 632, SIA.FARU0632

National Museum of American History, Program in Black American Culture, Program Records Accession
98-136, SIA.FA98-136

Duke Ellington Collection Records, SIA.FA98-129

Smithsonian Productions, Accession 06-181, SIA.FA06-181

National Museum of American History, Website Records, Accession 15-323