[cross-posted to MLA-L and ARSCLIST]
Hello, colleagues,
On behalf of a friend who's doing some musical genealogy (if you will), I'm passing along a reference query to the collective wisdom:
"Here’s what I know about my mother’s dance band, and if you can point me in the right direction for finding out anything more (including recordings), it would be wonderful.
I thought the band was called “Sylvia’s Orchestra” because the one set of photos of the band, on an NBC sound stage, shows the name “Sylvia” in big block letters on the front of the music stands. The band leader (a violinist) was named Esther Mueller (who lived in San Francisco). Other members included my mother, Beth Rutledge, on trombone, and the drummer Dorothy “Dot” Erickson. However, I have also some correspondence about Mom playing in something called Kay Barclay’s All-Girl Orchestra, or Kay Barclay and her California All-Girl Band (I have a local newspaper review of them while on a 1937 tour out West…which says they “really swing out”!)" Obviously, searches in standard reference sources have not been fruitful, and she's been looking for years. If you can point us in the right direction, or better, have any information of merit, please respond to me privately. Thanks!Casey
___________
Casey A. Mullin
Music Cataloger
BookOps
New York Public Library
"Those who need structured and granular data and the precise retrieval that results from it to carry out research and scholarship may constitute an elite minority rather than most of the people of the world (sadly), but that talented and intelligent minority is an important one for the cultural and technological advancement of humanity. It is even possible that if we did a better job of providing access to such data, we might enable the enlargement of that minority."
-Martha Yee
|