I have about 70 Grey Gull records under its various labels.  All feature
Dalhart on at least one side, although often under a pseudonym.    Jack
Palmer

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jon Noring" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, October 14, 2004 11:11 AM
Subject: [ARSCLIST] The Grey Gull Transfer Project (was Re: [78-l] Grey
Gull)


> Everyone,
>
> Just a heads up...
>
> Regarding Grey Gull, Sound Preserve (aka Project Gramophone) is very
> interested in digitizing every known Grey Gull-related record we can
> get our hands on. In addition to digitizing each side and putting them
> online for research purposes, we'll digitally photograph each label
> and runout area at high-rez (and these images will also be available
> online), and plan to mobilize a few volunteers to manually transfer the
> data from the label scans to a discographical (or more appropriately
> 'labelography') database.
>
> The value of having much if not all of the GG corpus online (both
> recordings, label photographs and discographical data) is that a group
> of interested discographers can work together world-wide to finally
> untangle the mess that is Grey Gull. There are times when listening to
> the recordings themselves is necessary to assemble the discography (e.g.,
> identify performers, resolve alternate takes, etc.) Of course, there is
> historical and musical value in the recordings themselves independent of
> discographical interest -- GG represents a great era in recorded
> sound (even if the sound quality of GG is marginal for that era.)
>
> (Of course, we'll scan any written material which exists about GG,
> such as advertisements, record sleeves, articles of that time and
> later research findings, and even ledgers if any exist, and get that
> online. We may even rely on Digital Proofreaders' system to convert
> any scanned text images into higher quality digital text so it is
> structured properly and searchable online.)
>
> If any of you have a collection of GG-group records, large or small,
> and are willing to loan them to us for digitization purposes, contact
> either Eric Jacobs at [log in to unmask] or me. We'll even
> consider donations of GG collections (we will be a non-profit 501(c)3,
> and in effect are now 501(c)3 via our association with the Internet
> Archive). But we are not sure we want to go the route of building a
> record collection (to any significant extent anyway) since maintaining
> a collection of records will require significant time and money to do
> properly, both better spent on transferring/digitizing. It largely
> depends upon if Brewster Kahle at the Internet Archive will build an
> archival-quality storage facility he has considered for storing books,
> old software, and other fragile and outright odd media artifacts that
> IA will acquire as part of their long-term digitization effort. Right
> now they have a few closets of oddball stuff they've acquired, such as
> old boxed software (they want to digitally preserve old software!)
>
> We're not yet ready to do the transfers, but would like to begin
> finding out who is willing to share their collection of GG-records,
> whether large or small. We have no problem with duplicating the more
> "common" GG recordings from various collections. Not only will this
> give everyone more choice in transfers to work with but may help
> resolve alternate takes in a few cases.
>
> Of course, we could use one or more knowledgeable GG collectors to
> advise us on GG in general, to assure we get as complete coverage as we
> can. From my perusing through the Abrams file on GG, GG is certainly a
> real can of worms discographically-speaking. As a final note, I assume
> that the ownership of the GG recordings (those done by GG itself, not
> licensed from other companies) has been 'abandoned', and thus the
> recordings (but not the song titles, a different issue) are
> effectively public domain since no one can claim legitimate title to
> them (and certainly they could not produce any metal masters to prove
> ownership unless the metal masters were secreted from all collector
> knowledge until now!) We do intend to contact the Shaw family to see
> if we can get their blessing for the project (even if none is needed
> legally-speaking) -- they may even want to be involved in some manner.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Jon Noring
> Sound Preserve (aka 'Project Gramophone')
>