Frederic Ramsey audio recordings
odd: label: Shared Stewardship of Collections
content: The Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage acknowledges and respects the right of artists, performers, Folklife Festival participants, community-based scholars, and knowledge-keepers to collaboratively steward representations of themselves and their intangible cultural heritage in media produced, curated, and distributed by the Center. Making this collection accessible to the public is an ongoing process grounded in the Center's commitment to connecting living people and cultures to the materials this collection represents. To view the Center's full shared stewardship policy, which defines our protocols for addressing collections-related inquiries and concerns, please visit https://doi.org/10.25573/data.21771155.
name: label: Creator
content: Ramsey, Frederic, 1915-1995
place: label: Place
content: Southern States -- Music
topic: label: Topic
content: Blues (Music)
label: Topic
content: Music -- African-American
label: Topic
content: African American musicians
label: Topic
content: Jazz musicians
label: Topic
content: Jazz -- Louisiana -- New Orleans
label: Topic
content: Jazz
acqinfo: label: Provenance
content: This collection was donated by Frederic Ramsey's daughter Alida Porter in 1996.
creator: label: Creator
content: Ramsey, Frederic, 1915-1995
setName: label: See more items in
content: Frederic Ramsey audio recordings
abstract: label: Summary
content: This collection contains open reel recordings made by noted jazz scholar Frederic Ramsey during his tour of the American South in the 1950s.
bioghist: label: Biographical / Historical
content: Frederic Ramsey Jr. (1915-1995), son of painter Charles Frederic Ramsey, was a jazz scholar and author who worked with a number of musicians in the South and the New York/New Jersey area, notably Lead Belly. After receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1953, Ramsey undertook a tour of the South in order to explore and document the African-American music environment. His goal was to record the speech and music of persons at least sixty years of age or older in an attempt to trace the evolution of the musical genre that would become jazz. Ramsey produced a number of recordings for the Folkways label in the 1950s-1960s.

[From Jeff:
Frederic Ramsey Jr. (1915-1995) was a jazz critic, scholar, fieldworker and record producer. He was the author of a number of books on jazz, including Jazzmen (with Charles Edward Smith) and the Jazz Record Book. He became one of the main producers for Moses Asch at Asch, Disc, and Folkways Records of jazz and blues.
Ramsey was one of the first to deploy an open reel tape recorder using it in New York City in 1949 to record Lead Belly in a set of sessions at his apartment, that were to be Lead Belly's last. What was noteworthy about this is that a reel to reel deck allowed one to record a longer recording than the previous 4 minutes on instantaneous discs. This allowed Led Belly to stretch out and do his extended rhymes and longer songs and to tell stories of his life. It was released by Folkways as a 2 LP  2-records each set. Each side was one track so more material could be fit in.
The new LP format allowed for Folkways to create anthologies of music with multiple tracks per side. This allowed Ramsey the ability to create a 11-volume anthology of jazz in the early 1950s. It was the first of many anthologies for Folkways.
He also received a Guggenheim fellowship in 1954-56 to go to Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana to record vernacular African American music. This included field hollers, spirituals, and brass bands. It was Ramsey's desire to find the roots of jazz in early African-American music forms. He recorded hundreds of tapes they make up the bulk of Ramsey Tape Collection. A 10 LP set Music from the South was released from these trips. Also, there was a book Been Here and Gone with his magnificent photographs from the trip.
Other notable recordings released by Folkways include an interview album of Baby Dodds, a box set of shape-note singing, and recordings of a, then, teenaged Michael Hurley.
In 1975, with other grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Ford Foundation, he researched the life of Buddy Bolden.
After the death of Frederic Ramsey Jr., folklorist Kip Lornell arranged the donation of Ramsey's tape and record collection to the Smithsonian.]
physdesc: label: Extent
content: 8.83 Cubic feet
unitdate: label: Date
content: 1945-1959
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections
identifier: label: Identifier
content: CFCH.RAMS
objectType: label: Type
content: Collection descriptions
label: Type
content: Archival materials
arrangement: label: Arrangement
content: The tapes are organized and shelved by accession number.
processinfo: label: Processing Information
content: Prepared by Jeff Place and revised by Stephanie Smith.
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents
content: The collection includes 400? Open reel audio tapes. They are from Ramsey's fieldwork and various projects, many for Folkways Records. The bulk of the recordings come from Ramsey's fieldwork in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana in 1954-56.
relatedmaterial: label: Related Materials
content: Frederic Ramsey's personal papers are available at Rutgers University Institute of Jazz Studies.

Ramsey's photograph collection (many from the same field projects) can be found in the collections of the Hogan Jazz Archive at Tulane University.