The Library of Congress's Larry Applebaum speaks to MP&E students about the need for engineers trained in preservation.

By Brenda Pike
Berklee.edu Correspondent
August 2, 2007

Larry Applebaum: "There is no graduate degree program currently for audio preservation. . . . This is a glaring need in our field right now."
Photo by Nick Balkin

Applebaum is hailed for discovering tapes of John Coltrane playing with Thelonious Monk. “Not only are they two extraordinary figures in music, but they were only together for a very short period of time,” said Applebaum. “They only made three songs together in the studio for Riverside. And then many years later a bootleg low-fidelity recording came out made at the Five Spot. That’s all we had for many, many years, so this fills in some of the holes in jazz history.”

Applebaum found the tapes while working on preserving the Library of Congress’s huge collection of analog music and video. Looking through old Voice of America recordings, he found eight reels labeled “Carnegie Hall Jazz 1957,” with an additional penciled notation of “T. Monk” and a few song titles. 

“It did not appear that it had ever been played. . . . The tape was perfectly packed,” said Applebaum.

The recording is now being released by Blue Note Records. But who knows how many more of these lost gems are sitting in archives, just waiting to be discovered? “It’s a vanishing skill set,” said Applebaum. “Everybody being trained today knows ProTools inside and out, but how many people have ever transferred a Berliner disc? Or worked with cylinders or wire recordings? This is part of our historic legacy, this is our culture, and you can’t have access to it unless you have the skills and the experience to extract this content.”

Brenda Pike is a content editor in Berklee's Office of Communications.