Gottlieb on Flickr: The Final Touches

Portrait of William P. Gottlieb, Music Division, Library of Congress.

It’s hard to believe that it’s already been seven months since we announced the Music Division’s William P. Gottlieb Collection joining the Library of Congress Flickr project. Clearly time flies when you’re having fun checking out Gottlieb’s stellar photographs, and here we are today uploading the last images in the collection. This week’s final batch of photos features portraits of many musicians including Mel Tormé (The Velvet Fog, Mary Lou Williams, the late Billy Taylor, and fittingly, portraits of Gottlieb himself.

We’ve really enjoyed joining the LC Flickr project with this wonderful collection of images that captured personalities and an environment that should fascinate jazz lovers for a long time to come. Flickr users’ comments on the photographs have ranged from expressions of excitement, to added descriptions of the locations and people in the photos, to links to YouTube videos showcasing performances by some of Gottlieb’s subjects – we love reading all of these. Thanks for your interest, and enjoy the final installment of the collection today!

Sheet Music of the Week: Remember the Alamo Edition

The Battle of the Alamo began on this date in 1836. In the Muse remembers this fight for independence with our Sheet Music of the Week, penned by Percy Wenrich and Ben Deely. The songwriters’ grasp of the actual battle seems tenuous , as Deely’s lyrics appear to riff on “Alamo” simply because, unlike “orange,” …

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“Mr. President”: Words That Will Live On

In recognition of President’s Day, I thought I would join NPR’s classical music blog, Deceptive Cadence, in highlighting the newly recorded choral cycle, Mr. President, commissioned in 2004 by Judith Clurman (renowned choral conductor and NPR’s Artist in Residence for the month of February). The cycle consists of 13 choral settings of quotations from various …

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Sheet Music of the Week: Swimsuit Edition

A major national magazine has just published their highly anticipated annual swimsuit edition.  The art blog Modern Art Notes recently put out a call to museums for their first annual swimsuit post. In the Muse offers its own modest suggestions for beach apparel, in the fashion that was all the rage of 1914.  Who knows what the amorous …

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Johanna Beyer: A Composer Forgotten

The following is a guest post by Music Cataloger Laura Yust, who recently researched composer Johanna Beyer in a seminar about American Modernist composers. Laura is pursuing her M.A. in Musicology at The Catholic University of America. Many people know of the composer Henry Cowell and his innovative compositions, but the name Johanna Magdalena Beyer …

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Remembering the Schumanns’ Love Through Letters

It’s Valentine’s Day, and love is in the air! As this blog has revealed to us over the last 14 months, the Music Division holds a plethora of materials in its collections including manuscript scores, correspondence, business papers, iconography, and yes – even love letters. There’s not a romance in the history of classical composers …

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Get Your Gottlieb Here

Today we release the penultimate set of photographs from the William Gottlieb Collection to Flickr.  This set includes classic portraits of jazz legends like Fats Navarro and Tadd Dameron, Ray Nance, and Buddy Rich.  There are also striking images of lesser known figures, like a Kodachrome portrait of singer Dottie Reid.  Her isolation in the frame – …

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Victor Herbert: From Babes in Toyland to Suite of Serenades

The following is a guest post by Senior Music Specialist Ray White. Victor Herbert’s 152nd birthday is this month.  If you recognize his name, you might recall that he composed operettas.  Perhaps Babes in Toyland comes to mind.  Its best-known number, “Toyland, Toyland, little girl and boy land…,” recorded by Doris Day, Johnny Mathis, the …

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