THE ADRIAN ROLLINI PROJECT
ATE VAN DELDEN
VUURDOORN 16
5666AW GELDROP
NETHERLANDS
DATE 2012-01-17
2011 Progress
Dear friends and supporters of the ADRIAN ROLLINI PROJECT
Last year I wrote: Another year passed and first of all I like to thank you for your great help. You will see that progress is good but there is still very much to be done.
Well, its much the same this year.
Heres the status..
Major Events
I made a presentation on the Adrian Rollini Project at the Canadian Collectors Congress in Toronto in April/May. Reactions were extremely positive and I even received the offer to use my presentation as the starting point for a documentary. Maybe in the future, but the biography comes first.
I had the pleasure of meeting many well-known collectors in Toronto and one of them, Mark Miller tipped me to an internet site that holds 17 million of newspaper pages for the state of New York. This produced a very large amount of news items on the California Ramblers and on Adrian Rollini. Much of this has been used to add to chapters which, I thought, were ready.
Biography.
The first chapter of the biography was written in November 2009 and last September I completed chapter 7 of an estimated number of 15. Much time was spent on adding material to earlier chapters. Not much could be added to the chapter on Rollinis piano rolls though, since new information did not come in.
Early publications in digital form are continuously becoming available. However, Variety, probably the most important vintage publication in the field of entertainment, and which has been digitized, was missing from my sources, due to its extreme cost. Searching the magazine on internet is free of charge though, but it was quite frustrating to see a great number of hits and not being able to see the full articles. However quite recently, and with the invaluable help of an American expert, I have now acquired the first articles from this magazine.
Discography and music
This year an amazing number of some 400 previously undocumented 78 rpm issues have been added to the discography, so that today 2900 issues are known (of which I own 700). The number of label images went up significantly too, from 3000 to 3500, yet 40 % are still lacking. These include Rollini issues on the following rare labels: Ace, Angelus, Ansonia, Beltona, Bon Marche, Buddy, Carnival, Chantal, Citizen, Cleartone, Dandy, Electrola, Embassy, Emerson, Kadewelt, Leonora, Lindstrom, Lucky, Lucky Strike, Lyratone, Mitchell, Mouldy Figge, Music Box, Nipponophone, Octacros, Olympic, Palings, Peacock, Polydor, Puritone, Resona, Scala, Sterling, Stradivari, USA.
This list is identical to last years with one exception: Rollinis single Timely Tunes issue was found (and the same title appeared on the even more elusive Aurora label). From the Bluebird family, also the Electradisk and Sunrise labels came up: though listed as having Spencer Clark on bass sax, Bert Lowns 1933 Bluebird sessions are strong candidates for the Rollini discography. I have most of the Electradisk labels from these sessions, but how about the issues on the Sunrise label?
Next steps
The emphasis is now on the biography, but whenever new discographical data comes in, it will be incorporated.
Time to look around for a publisher!
I look forward to another year with good progress to the final product.
Thank you for your help and have a happy 2012!
Ate van Delden