Topic: Elvie (L.V.) Thomas

[oddenda]

K -

          Please keep me posted on your attempt - say "hai" to Peter Bartis for me. My one-time fiancee also works there, but... never mind! If you are interested, I can e-mail you a copy of my master book so that you can look for anything specific (save studio stuff).

Peter B.

[wreid75]

Does anyone know of the status of Macks research?  Has anyone learned what Susannah McCormmick Nix's plans are for his vast collection of blues research?

[Blues Vintage]

Alan Govenar is currently working on putting out a book that McCormick and Paul Oliver never finished (Texas Blues). He said the book will most likely be published in 2017.

[tinpanallygurl]

Okay, I have heard mixed messages from people I know that live near Macks home.  I do know a couple of people trying to secure grant money (potential grant money) and have some details ironed out.  Money is easier to raise than people who would be willing to join the effort for little to no money.  Macks family wants compensation, she said so herself in her post here around page 10.  That is the main reason for trying to secure funds plus costs to archive and database the collection.  Even with a large team it will take weeks.  Small team would take months.  I doubt anything will happen at all except that it collects dust and/or gets misplaced/destroyed.  Most people here who love the music and history will die before it comes out and that is very very sad.

[Stuart]

Scanning the printed material and digitizing the recorded material is a very time consuming and painstaking process. The important thing is that it all be preserved and protected. Hopefully Mack's daughter can find an individual(s), an organization or an institution to step in. Setting a price can be tricky. You don't want to give it away to just anybody, but pricing it out of reach is also counter productive. Smithsonian or LoC come to mind as homes for Mack's efforts.

[poymando]

The Southern Folklife Collection at UNC or the Center for Popular Music at MTSU would be good candidates as well. That material would benefit from being placed in a stable, well funded and accessible academic archive where it could be processed, scanned etc by professional archivists.

[tinpanallygurl]

Update............all funding has fallen through.  There has been a consistent decrease in federal funding for projects like this.  After speaking with 14 different universities there is a problem here.  They only want it if its donated and then only half would take it.  The costs of processing the information is quite high.  4 schools would only take this kind of project if it were donated with additional sources of funding already in place.  Friend at ETSU said that the Smithsonian would take it as a donation but that it could take decades before anyone got around to scan in and organizing the information.

[Mr.OMuck]

Anyone try the Schaumburg Library in Harlem?

[Mr.OMuck]

There's also the NYPL performing Arts Library at Lincoln Center. This needs a prominent Black musician to make the proposal.

[Blues Vintage]

Update............all funding has fallen through.  There has been a consistent decrease in federal funding for projects like this.  After speaking with 14 different universities there is a problem here.  They only want it if its donated and then only half would take it.  The costs of processing the information is quite high.  4 schools would only take this kind of project if it were donated with additional sources of funding already in place.  Friend at ETSU said that the Smithsonian would take it as a donation but that it could take decades before anyone got around to scan in and organizing the information.

tinpanallygurl, did you try to contact Alex LaRotta (Professor of History, Lone Star College, Houston)? He gave a lecture on McCormick at the Contemporary Arts Museum january last year.

[Johnm]

For what it's worth, there is little or no point in people who have no connection to the heirs trying to line up some placement for the collection/archive.  If you can't deliver the goods, who cares how much you care about the collection, especially since no one here is able to speak with any knowledge as to the contents of the collection, its condition, how it is currently stored, et al.  The value of the collection/archive is all hearsay and supposition at this point, the stuff of legends.  For all anyone here knows, the information may have been stored in ways that were only decipherable to Mack McCormick. 
Somehow we've all managed to live reasonably interesting lives thus far without access to this collection.  Seems like a good choice to continue doing so.  Stop obsessing, you'll make yourselves ill.  As the cops used to say, "Move along, there's nothing happening here." 

[Stuart]

You're correct, John--you make some very good points. But that doesn't mean that people should not try, as long as they do in with both eyes open. Devoting the time and effort to find a suitable place to archive Mack's work could result in preserving a singular collection of invaluable information about a very important area of American musical culture--Or it could ultimately be a fool's errand. There's only one way to find out. (Hopefully without obsessing over it.)

Alex LaRotta received his M.A. in 2013 and is an adjunct History faculty member at LSC Kingwood.

[waxwing]

I've been holding off on this for a long time, all through the L.V. Thomas fiasco.

Let's hear it for the academics!

When David Evans dies, his entire life work will already be fully archived and available. He and so many others have contributed so much through hard work, corroborating sources and facts, networking with other researchers, doing the hard research through public records. Yet there's nothing controversial or romantic about an academic, so they get short shrift.

Mack was a cowboy, lets face it, following out the hot leads without bothering to corroborate or fact check. When the trail petered out and the hard boring work needed to be done, he was off to something else. No conviction, no fortitude, no training! Not bothering to catalogue, involved in paranoid legal battles over a photo, hoarding and hiding his notes. A mess.

I'd be really surprised to find out that the L.V. Thomas thing wasn't the crown jewel of all his efforts. He clearly was baiting that writer with it during their first meeting, then seemed to just leave a document out for him to find. Blame it on mental illness? I'm not so sure. I think quite possibly he knew what was coming and gained all the glory he could in his final days. What was money to him at that point? He just wanted people to see what he thought was his biggest achievement. He was the center of a movie published online by the NYT! Crazy like a fox.

The only hope to see what other stuff he might have amongst mountains of useless notes, I'm sure, is for someone like Tefteller to scoop it up and finance the cataloguing. But I'll bet people like him are just as skeptical of what it should be worth as the schools and museums are.

I'm not saying all independents are wanna-bees, many were very methodical, like Oliver, who was an academic in another field and knew the hard work and rigorous questioning that was needed. But Peter B., what happens to your storage container in NJ if a sudden health crisis befalls you? (God forbid!) I mean a lot of us are getting to a vulnerable age, eh?

So I agree, go about your way. Sad that Mack's gone. He was a colorful character and I'm sure he was wonderful to those who were close to him. He was certainly part of the blues scene. Maybe talked to a few interesting people, could tell a few stories. But maybe never really had enough to fill one book? None ever got written. Legends are built upon what we don't know. I'm not trying to be callous, just contributing to a reality check.

I say again, here's to the academics, who take their time, fact check and corroborate their sources, and whose work is archived as they dig it up. Ah, but the unknown is always so much more promising.

Wax

[oddenda]

WAX -

          Basically, I have left all in the hands of my son in my will, who appreciates what I have done WAY more than his mother does. (I'll not repeat the racist things that she has said all those "dead N*****s" that i care about more than she.) It ain't been easy, but I now have an in-house ally and he's been "given instructions". Being in Australia and my shit in NJ and me turning 75 next month and probably not able to physically travel back... .  Age is a bitch!

          The problem with my stuff is that I have nothing to do with either the so-called Delta or RJ, so interest is low save for a few died-in-the-wool crazies like myself. Fuller sold too many records and did not record for Paramount to be worthy. Such is life, especially when collectors are involved, setting parameters and creating canons - beginning at least with James McKune. Outsider White folks again!

Peter B. 

[jpeters609]

If Mr. McCormick's trustees are hoping for an institution to pay a large amount of money for his material, they may want to dig around in his archives for something Robert Johnson-related! That may sound a bit hackneyed, but when celebrity attaches itself (and Robert Johnson is surely the closest Mack's materials come to celebrity), crazy things can happen. Why, Bob Dylan's notebooks and other ephemera were just bought by the George Kaiser Family Foundation ? whose namesake is an oil and banking billionaire ? and the University of Tulsa. The price? $15- to 20-million. If Mack McCormick's archives hold a Robert Johnson lyrics notebook or the fabled third photograph or some such, then his heirs may have a legitimate shot at finding a buyer (though probably not in the range of Bob Dylan dollars).

Here's the link to the Bob Dylan story:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/06/arts/music/bob-dylans-secret-archive.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0