A recent donation here at the ARC included 500 jazz books. One of them was by a journalist I had once met in Paris, Mike Zwerin. The book reminded me of a new acquaintance, Amanda Petrusich, who has just published a terrific and terrifically researched story in the New Yorker, “The Jewish Trumpeter Who Entertained Nazis to Survive the Holocaust.” And that reminded me of a story in the Guardian, UK, from 2014, “Swing time for Hitler: how the Nazis fought the allies with jazz.” And that reminded me we have a facsimile of a picture disc here at the ARC – one of the earliest made for adults – propaganda and hate at 78rpm. And that reminded me of a book we can’t afford, Collecting Third Reich Recordings by Stuart C. McKenzie. And that reminded me of a Holocaust survivor who once came to an ARC sale and told us how he had devised a way of playing 78s without a gramophone. It’s good to be reminded once in a while how sophistry and hate speech can seep into politics with horrific results.
We’re the ARC. We save everything about music, even speeches, even stories. We’ll have this book and many others that are duplicates in our collection at our Summer Sale June 8-23. We’re also in the last few days of our online Fundraising Campaign Help if you can.