Syracuse University Library's Belfer Audio Laboratory and Archive has received a
major gift from the family of the late Morton J. "Morty" Savada-the complete
inventory of his Manhattan record store, Records Revisited, including more than
200,000 78-rpm records, along with a related print collection of catalogs,
discographies and other materials. With the addition of the Savada Collection,
Belfer's holdings now total more than 400,000 78-rpm recordings-second in size
only to the collections of the Library of Congress.
The Savada Collection, valued at just over $1 million, is a treasure trove of popular
music, including unique and hard-to-find genres. It is strongest in big band and jazz,
but also represents a wide variety of other musical genres, including country, blues,
gospel, polka, folk, Broadway, Hawaiian and Latin. It also contains spoken-word,
comedy and broadcast recordings, as well as V-disks, which were distributed as
entertainment for the U.S. Armed Forces during World War II.
In addition to the popular labels of the day-such as Columbia, Decca and Victor-
Savada collected rare and specialized recordings. Dates of recordings in the collection
range from 1895 to the 1950s.
"The library is grateful to the Savada family members for their generosity," says
University Librarian and Dean of Libraries Suzanne Thorin. "The rich and varied
resources in this collection will greatly enhance research and scholarship done at
Belfer for years to come."
Savada, who died Feb. 11, was well known by audiophiles and the entertainment
industry in New York as an exceptional source for both sound recordings and
recording history. Will Friedwald remarked in his Feb. 13 obituary in The New York
Sun: "For any collector looking for a rarity, historian working on a research project,
or reissue producer in search of something so rare it wasn't even in the vault, Records
Revisited was generally the first call to make.
"Savada specialized in filling gaps and finding vintage single tracks that had never
been reissued in any of the long-playing formats," Friedwald wrote. "Savada
regularly collected 78 collectors together for lunches and bull-sessions. His shop off of
Herald Square was a hub of such activity, where younger aficionados of old music
picked up folklore in addition to the discs themselves."
Savada opened Records Revisited in 1977 but had been collecting 78s since 1937.
Records Revisited was the last store exclusively selling 78-rpm recordings and was a
frequent haunt for those in the film and music industries, including actor/directors
Woody Allen and Matt Dillon. Savada often lent his 78s to movie and music
producers rather than selling them, and never sold the last copy of a recording
because he regarded his collection as an archive, not an inventory.
Savada had wanted to donate his collection to a major institution that would
maintain the collection and make it available to enhance research and teaching. He
was very familiar with SU's Belfer Audio Laboratory and Archive and its staff, whom
he knew from regular meetings of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections
(ARSC). He also had another connection to the University: his granddaughter
graduated from SU in 2005.
"I am unaware of another donation of recordings as large as the Savada gift to
Syracuse University Library," says Sam Brylawski, immediate past-president of the
board of ARSC. "It is an outstanding gesture by the family. It is gratifying, too, to
know of Syracuse University's commitment to preserving the work of Morty Savada
and making it available to the public and the research community."
Sound recordings are a rich resource for researchers, faculty and students in a variety
of disciplines. In addition to documenting the musical styles and performance
practices of the day, these sound recordings provide a glimpse into social, political
and cultural history. At SU, sound recordings are regularly used by faculty teaching
music, musicology, history, filmmaking, journalism, political science and many other
fields.
"The Savada Collection is precisely the kind of collection music industry and Bandier
Program students need to work with," says David Rezak, director of SU's Bandier
Program for Music and the Entertainment Industries. "Students in the 'Music
Company' course operate a functional record label and publishing company. For
them, the process of exploring the recordings in the Belfer Archive for potentially
releasable material is an education in itself."
"The Savada collection is truly an archival wonder-an exhaustive survey of popular
music recordings from the first half of the 20th century," says Theo Cateforis,
assistant professor in SU's Department of Fine Arts, who also makes extensive use of
sound recordings in teaching. "For students whose relationship with music and
technology rarely extends beyond the confines of the iPod, it is always eye-opening to
see and hear the original 78s that were the mainstay of the recording industry for
many decades. As such, these recordings offer an invaluable social and historical
context."
The Savada gift constitutes an important contribution to the University's $1 billion
capital campaign, The Campaign for Syracuse University, the most ambitious
fundraising effort in SU's history. By supporting faculty excellence, student access,
interdisciplinary programs, capital projects and other institutional priorities, the
campaign is continuing to drive Scholarship in Action, the University's mission to
provide students, faculty and communities with the insights needed to incite positive
and lasting change in the world. More information is available online at
http://campaign.syr.edu.
"The Savadas' contribution is remarkable not only for its impact on our academic
and research communities but as a significant contribution to The Campaign for
Syracuse University," says Brian Sischo, associate vice president of development and
campaign director. "It is one more example of a gift that has the potential to affect
students, faculty and researchers across many different disciplines. It truly represents
the University's belief in Scholarship in Action."
The Savada Collection will be relocated to Syracuse this month, when work will begin
to process the collection. For additional information on the collection, contact Melinda
Dermody, head of arts and humanities services at SU Library, at (315) 443-5332 or
mderm01@syr.edu.
