Sacramento Traditional Jazz Society records, 1936-2017 (bulk 1968-2015)

View only results with digital items

Summary

Extent:
112.97 Linear Feet (81 boxes, 7 photograph drawers, two map case drawers, and digital files)
Language:
English
Preferred citation:

[Identification of item and/or item number], [box and folder number], Sacramento Traditional Jazz Society records, MS0007, Center for Sacramento History.

Background

Scope and content:

The collection documents the creation, management, and activities of STJS from its inception in 1968 through 2015, three years before STJS disbanded in 2018. It also documents the creation and management of Jubilee from the first Jubilee in 1974 through 2014, three years before the final Jubilee in 2017. The last three years of STJS's existence and of Jubilee are not documented in this collection; it is unknown if records documenting that time period still exist, and if so, where they are.

The collection is organized into seven series. The first series documents STJS's management, operations, finances, and other administrative activities.

The second series is made up of STJS periodicals, including a nearly full run of "And All That Jazz" from 1970 to 2012. This series also includes newsletters and newspapers published by other jazz clubs and jazz bands, and periodicals about jazz.

The third series documents Jubilee from the first festival in 1974 through 2014, three years before the final Jubilee. Records chronicle Jubilee's management, finances, operations, attendance, staff and volunteers, performers, sites, and the changes the festival went through over the years. The series also includes demographics reports, photographs, programs, posters, brochures, fliers, scrapbooks, and audio and video recordings of performances.

The fourth series documents STJS's other programs and events, including its monthly meetings, Trad Jazz Camp, Elderhostel, and other programs and concerts. It also includes fliers, programs, brochures, and photographs for non-STJS trad jazz events.

The fifth series contains files kept by STJS on the performers who played (or sought to play) at STJS events. These are divided into three subseries: musicians, youth bands, and guest stars. Files include a variety of material, including photographs, contracts, biographies, member lists, promo packets, recordings, Jubilee band evaluations, correspondence, musician pitches to play at Jubilee, and descriptions used in programs. There are a small number of files on early jazz musicians, as well. The last subseries in this series contains musician lists, set lists, sign-up sheets, and other information about specific musicians.

The sixth and seventh series contain audio and video recordings of STJS monthly meetings, Jubilee performances, specific musicians' performances and studio recordings, Trad Jazz Camp concerts, and publicity videos.

Biographical / historical:

The Sacramento Traditional Jazz Society (STJS) was founded in 1968, and disbanded after 50 years in 2018. It was founded by a group of local traditional jazz musicians who gathered at the Orangevale Grange Hall to play for a small group of jazz fans. Originally called the New Sacramento Traditional Jazz Society, the group's purpose was to play, promote, and preserve the roots of jazz, which they considered to be traditional jazz, also known as trad jazz or, formerly, Dixieland. The group also published a monthly newsletter about local jazz happenings.

These first STJS musicians included Dr. Bill Borcher, the Dean of Men at American River College and trumpet player for the Delta Moonlighters; John Knurr, a local high school music teacher; jazz trombonist Jerry Kaehele; and George Boyd and his Good Time Go-to-Meeting Band. They met informally in the afternoon on the first Sunday of every month and elected Jerry Kaehele as the first president, Jack Burke as vice president, and Roy Harper as secretary-treasurer. As news of STJS spread, more musicians joined the Sunday sessions and their membership grew. In October 1969, Borcher and friends arrange a fundraiser on the Delta King riverboat, which attracted a crowd of 4,000. Publicity from the fundraiser and two more successful fundraisers in November and December of that year generated even more interest in STJS.

STJS quickly outgrew the Orangevale Grange Hall and by 1970 the musicians moved their Sunday concerts to larger venues, such as the El Rancho Hotel and the Carmichael Elks Lodge, with paid guest artists and bands joining the STJS musicians. Also in 1970, they dropped "New" from their name, becoming simply the Sacramento Traditional Jazz Society, and began publishing a monthly newspaper called "And All That Jazz," which chronicled the society's activities and monthly meeting performances, other trad jazz events, and included listings of upcoming jazz concerts and interviews with musicians.

In 1979, STJS incorporated as a nonprofit organization with the mission of preserving and promoting traditional jazz music. That same year, the organization established its Youth Scholarship Program, which provided scholarships for young musicians for private music instruction with an emphasis on jazz. That program expanded into the annual Trad Jazz Camp, which began in 1986. The weeklong youth camp was held every summer at Sly Park near Placerville, California. Youth musicians stayed at the camp where they learned from a faculty of professional musicians and played in small bands with their peers. An adult version of the camp was also held for many years. After STJS folded in 2018, facilitation of the youth camp was taken over by the Sacramento Jazz Education Foundation. As of 2024, the camp still operates annually and is known as the Teagarden Jazz Camp, named after pianist Norma Teagarden.

Throughout its lifetime, STJS held its monthly meeting concerts, supported jazz education, and put on local concerts and public programs. But, STJS is possibly best remembered for creating Sacramento's Jazz Jubilee, a four-day festival held every Labor Day in Sacramento from 1974 to 2017 that featured musicians from all over the world, local acts, youth bands, and big-name performers.

Jubilee got its beginnings in late 1973, when then-President Ozzie Belmore and Bill Borcher organized a committee to investigate the feasibility of holding a jazz festival in Sacramento. They decided on Memorial Day weekend 1974 to hold the first Old Sacramento Dixieland Jazz Jubilee, as it was originally known. That first festival featured seven performance sites in West Sacramento and Old Sacramento and 21 bands, and attracted 3,000 attendees, with 300 volunteers managing the event. Admission badges for that first year cost $12.50 for three days and revenues totaled $32,000, but expenses totaled $35,000. Despite the loss, STJS decided to continue putting on the Jubilee as an annual event, eventually adding locations at Cal Expo and other locations around the city.

The festival continued annually for more than 40 years and was at one point one of the country's most-attended music festivals. Jubilee was STJS's major fundraiser and provided most of the funds for their other programs. However, as the popularity of trad jazz began to fade in the mid-1990s and the festival's core audience aged, ticket sales began to flag. Organizers made several efforts over the years to attract a wider and younger audience. In 1995, they began including other types of jazz, including swing, gospel, Latin jazz, zydeco, and barbershop. When swing dancing had a resurgence in the late-1990s, they incorporated that into the festival. In 2007, they produced an "Alternative Jubilee" program that highlighted all the non-trad-jazz bands playing that year. But from 2002 on, the festival saw a steady decline in attendance.

In 2011, the organizers took their biggest step yet to try to boost attendance by rebranding Jubilee as the Sacramento Music Festival, adding more non-jazz musical genres, and featuring big mainstream pop, country, and rock headliners. From 2012 to 2015, Sacramento's Convention and Visitors Bureau (later known as Visit Sacramento) partnered with the festival and helped market it. In 2012, the festival reported a drop in attendance and a $132,424 deficit.

In 2014, the Sacramento Bee reported that the festival had brought in $2.7 million in revenue in 2002, $1.3 million by 2010, and only $42,000 in 2014. At its peak in the 1980s, Jubilee brought in nearly 100,000 attendees; in 2014, it brought in only 20,000. That year, festival organizers issued a plea for funds after a major budget shortfall left them with an $80,000 deficit, despite the festival making some money. The budget shortfall was never explained. Shortly after the plea for funding, STJS laid off its two paid staff members, closed its downtown office, and became an entirely volunteer-run organization. The festival was scaled back for the next three years, and attendance continued to run at around 20,000.

A 2016 survey of attendees showed the large majority didn't come for the mainstream headliners and preferred a festival experience with a variety of groups. Festival organizers heeded this feedback and scaled back the 2017 festival even more by ditching the mainstream headliners and going back to a more jazz, swing, and blues focused festival. This did not bring in more attendees, however, and as other festivals geared toward a younger audience over Memorial Day weekend became more popular, the festival was canceled in December 2017.

In February 2018, STJS filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and the society folded. STJS's educational goals are continued today by the Sacramento Jazz Education Foundation (SacJEF), which had its start as the STJS-adjacent Sacramento Traditional Jazz Society Foundation in 1996. Today, SacJEF funds and facilitates several programs started by STJS, including the Teagarden Jazz Camp, youth scholarships, the youth band TNT (The New Traditionalists), and the Traditional Jazz Youth Band Festival.

Acquisition information:
Donated by the Sacramento Traditional Jazz Society in 2001 (accession 2001/062) and 2014 (2014/037); Patrick Skiffington in 2022 (2022/026) and 2023 (2023/010); and Ron and Patti Jones in 2024 (2024/064).
Processing information:

Preliminary processing and research by Lola Aguilar, 2006. Complete processing and finding aid by Kim Hayden, 2024.

Arrangement:

The collection is arranged into 7 series:

  • Series 1. Administrative records, ca. 1963-2015
  • Subseries 1.1. Management, ca. 1968-2015
  • Subseries 1.2. Finance and legal records, 1968-2014
  • Subseries 1.3. Correspondence, ca. 1969-2011
  • Subseries 1.4. Ephemera and publicity, ca. 1963-2008
  • Series 2. Periodicals and publications, 1950-2012
  • Subseries 2.1. STJS periodicals and publications, 1968-2012
  • Subseries 2.2. Other periodicals and publications, 1950-2000
  • Series 3. Jubilee records, 1972-2014
  • Subseries 3.1. Operations and management, 1973-2014
  • Subseries 3.2. Sites, staff, and volunteers, ca. 1975-2011
  • Subseries 3.3. Performers and schedules, ca. 1974-2011
  • Subseries 3.4. Finance, sales, and attendance, 1974-2007
  • Subseries 3.5. Reports and statistics, 1974-2008
  • Subseries 3.6. Concessions, 1982-2006
  • Subseries 3.7. Programs and publications, 1974-2013
  • Subseries 3.8. Publicity, ephemera, and scrapbooks, ca. 1973-2011
  • Subseries 3.9. Photographs, ca. 1972-2010
  • Series 4. Other programs and events, 1968-2014
  • Subseries 4.1. Trad Jazz Camp, 1986-2010
  • Subseries 4.2. Elderhostel, 1992-2002
  • Subseries 4.3. Monthly meetings, Jazz Sunday, and other STJS events, 1968-2014
  • Subseries 4.4. Non-STJS traditional jazz events, ca. 1969-2013
  • Series 5. Musicians, 1936-2009 (bulk 1968-2010)
  • Subseries 5.1. Musician files, 1936-2009 (bulk 1965-2009)
  • Subseries 5.2. Youth band files, 1972-2007
  • Subseries 5.3. Guest star files, 1974-2008
  • Subseries 5.4. Musician lists, set lists, sign-up sheets, and other information, ca. 1968-2010
  • Series 6. Audio recordings
  • Series 7. Video recordings

Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Access and use

Restrictions:

The collection is open for research. Several series have records that include social security numbers. Those will be redacted upon access request.

Terms of access:

All requests to publish or quote from private manuscripts held by the Center for Sacramento History (CSH) must be submitted in writing to csh@cityofsacramento.org. Permission for publication is given on behalf of CSH as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained by the patron. No permission is necessary to publish or quote from public records.

Preferred citation:

[Identification of item and/or item number], [box and folder number], Sacramento Traditional Jazz Society records, MS0007, Center for Sacramento History.

Location of this collection:
551 Sequoia Pacific Blvd.
Sacramento, CA 95811, US
Contact:
(916) 808-7072
csh@cityofsacramento.org
Website