DAVID GOLDENBERG REMEMBERED 1938-2001
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David Goldenberg was my 2nd cousin once removed. This picture was taken March 2001, 4 months before he passed away.
David Goldenberg
Memorial Library
Institute of Jazz Studies
Rutgers, State University of NJ
David Goldenberg, 63, record collector
David Goldenberg, 63, a pharmacist, record collector and film preservationist who accumulated a trove of more than 10,000 classic recordings and early-movie sound tracks, died Wednesday of complications after exploratory back surgery at Abington Memorial Hospital.
A Philadelphia native, Mr. Goldenberg had lived in Rydal for 18 years in a house that was part family home and part repository for thousands of thick, jet-black 78-r.p.m. records dating to the 1920s and '30s.
A founding member of the Vitaphone Project, a group of collectors devoted to saving early movie sound tracks, Mr. Goldenberg made a significant contribution to film preservation recently when he provided the Library of Congress with the only complete sound-track discs for the classic 1933 film The Emperor Jones.
THE EMPORER JONES:
By murder & guile, a black Pullman conductor becomes THE EMPEROR JONES on an impoverished Caribbean isle.
Eugene O'Neill's allegorical fable comes alive in this unique and intriguing film, recently restored by the Library of Congress. The legendary Paul Robeson dominates the film as a man who abandons his wife & Baptist upbringing to worship himself, wallowing gleefully in sin & violence as long as it furthers his goal for power & riches - the chance to become an emperor of his own tiny domain is merely the latest opportunity in a serendipitous sequence to be exploited.
"Finding lost pieces to these films is especially significant when you consider all the film that has been lost over the decades," said John Newton, a friend and cofounder of the Vitaphone Project.
Mr. Goldenberg began collecting as a 14-year-old after hearing early jazz and popular music on the radio in the Upper Darby home of his father, a cantor at a local synagogue. The boy collector spent a nickel for each record. He blithely ignored friends and family members who pointed out that he did not own a phonograph.
"He said he knew someday he would have the money to buy a record player," said his wife of 31 years, Eloise.
The cash value of Mr. Goldenberg's collection has not been fully established, but then he never counted its worth in dollars. He focused on the collection and preservation of classic recordings and relied on the income from his work as a pharmacist to support his private passion.
After training at the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science, Mr. Goldenberg served with an Army mobile surgical unit in the South.
After his discharge, he worked at pharmacies in Delaware and West Philadelphia. In his off hours, he haunted a West Philadelphia jazz club, an experience that only intensified his interest in collecting.
He became active with the International Association of Jazz Record Collectors and the Association for Recorded Sound Collections, and he mentored younger collectors.
Mr. Goldenberg worked 20 years as a pharmacist for the Albert Einstein Medical Center. He joined Express Scripts, a mail-order pharmacy in Bensalem, six years ago.
In addition to his wife, he is survived by a daughter, Rachel, and a brother, Joseph.
There will be a funeral at 12:30 p.m. 7/22/01 at Goldsteins' Rosenberg's Raphael-Sacks at 310 Second Street Pike in Southampton. Burial will be at Shalom Memorial Park in Lower Moreland Township.
http://inq.philly.com/content/inquirer/2001/07/21/obituaries/O-PGOLD21.htm
RELATED LINKS
David did NOT donate his collection to LOC only the disc was donated. Another rare disc was BOUGHT by LOC. The rest of his collection was/ is being auctioned.
David compiled a book on how to dispose of your record collection for IAJRC International Association of Jazz Record Collectors.
Goldenberg had been the Chairman of the International Association of Jazz Record Collectors http://iajrc.org/
IAJRC set up the
David Goldenberg Memorial Library
housed in the Institute of Jazz Studies
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
John Cotton Dana Library
185 University Ave.
Newark NJ USA 07102
Tel: (973) 353-5595
Fax: (973) 353-5944
Radio Compilation by David Goldenberg 1930-1960 housed at the University of Pennsylvania Library Schoenberg center for electronic text & image
Robert and Molly Freedman Jewish Music Archive
Gunnar A. Jacobsen
Puppy Jazz Distribution
PO Box 18311
Sarasota, FL
34276-2311
[p] 941-366-9805
support@puppyjazz.com
David was President from 1989-91 and was a Trustee from 1978-83. The archives were established by Gunnar A. Jacobsen before David died. After his death they honored him by naming the archive after him. The archives house, among other things, past issues of IAJRC Journals, books, records, copies of our recordings (both LPs and CDs) and miscellaneous papers.
The Etymology of Jazz
Irish American Vernacular English
It takes the gift of the goddess to reunite Karen Ellis, (David's cousin) the key 1982 "gin-i-ker" citation from the 1940's scholarship of Peter Tamony described by labor leader and folklorist Archie Green as "the keeper of the lore of the Irish clans of San Francisco."; the internet, and Professor Dan Cassidy to connect the source of the word "Jazz" is from Kildare, Ireland.
Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC)
a non-profit organization dedicated to research, study, publication, and information exchange surrounding all aspects of recordings and recorded sound. Find articles about where you can donate your collections.
International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies - Cemetery Project
Philadelphia Metropolitan Area: Pennsylvania
http://www.jewishgen.org/cemetery/northamerica/philpa.html
We are not related to the Phildelphia Goldenberg Peanut Chew family who came to Philadelphia from Romania and changed their name to Goldenberg.
National Yiddish Book Center founded by Aaron Lansky who tells a story from Outwitting History live at the National Yiddish Book Center. (21 minutes, MP3, 4.71 MB) * about collecting over a million yiddish books.
Yiddish Sheet Music
The Center for Digital Initiatives at Brown University has produced a number of excellent digital collections over the past years, including strong collections of digitized sheet music. The Yiddish Sheet Music collection
continues in that tradition by offering a wide range of pieces from the 19th and 20th centuries. Visitors can browse the collection by creator, title or even thumbnail images of the first page of each piece of music. The
collection offers an inside glimpse into the world of Yiddish music that dominated many a stage in places like the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and for persons with an interest in cultural history or ethnomusicology, this site is a real find.
Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman, a Yiddish poet and composer, grew up in Cernauti, Rumania (now Ukraine), immigrating to the U.S. in 1951. Her son Dr. Itzik Gottesman professor of Yiddish at University of Texas.
ANECDOTE
David was my second cousin once removed and unfortunately we never met.
My maternal great grandfather Joseph Lichtman was responsible for bringing David Goldenberg's family to Philadelphia from the Vincovitz & Zinkover area of the Ukraine in 1922. I've learned that Vincovitz is now known as eith Vin'kivci, or Van'kovichi or Van'kovitse (Van'kovichi), located 324.7 miles W of Kiev Ukraine
As a little boy, Sam Goldenberg (David's father) was thrilled at seeing his first electric light and his first movie and later became an elementary school teacher, cantor and a choir leader. The 2nd Choir leader in the family.
After being told the story about David Goldenberg collecting jazz music and his repository / archive it struck me - how I have so much in common with my 2nd cousin and how collecting music & singing runs in my family.
I am also a teacher, have collected music, and now have a connection with the etymology of jazz. My mother's first cousin Gloria, a music teacher, has a daughter (my 2nd cousin) Marci, who inherited that big voice, perfect pitch, sang in the opera and is now a cantor.
I am Karen Ellis publisher of the 
Educational CyberPlayGround and GUAVABERRY BOOOKS
Author of DOMINO Book and Cassette
60 Traditional Children's Songs, Chants, Games, Proverbs, and Culture collected from the American Virgin Islands. 45 minute Live Sound Field Recording. A Cross Curricular, Interdisciplinary, Multi-Cultural Resource.Currently building an online repository of children's music called the National Children's Folksong Repository
The Historic Electronic Online Archive of Children's Folk songs. A Public Folklore Project built by the children of the United States and territories. SEE ONLINE VIDEO
Movie Producer "Standing in the Shadows of Motown" that documents the life and times of musicians known as The Funk Brothers.
Digitized and Web-Accessible Early Recordings
- 6000 Cylindar Collection - UCSD Santa Barbara
- The First Jazz Records
- Listen to a live stream of Cakewalks and Rags
- Edison National Historic Site-Sounds
- Emile Berliner and the Birth of the Recording Industry
includes more than 400 items from the library’s collection of Berliner’s papers and 108 of his sound recordings beginning in 1894. Berliner was an immigrant from Germany who patented the flat-disc gramophone records that superseded the original cylindrical recordings. - Preservation of Audio Materials
- Norm's 78 Record Room
Mp3s for the downloading of 78 RPM recordings of old-time, blues, early jazz, Irish, Mexican and othermusic. These recordings appear to have filtered and edited to remove hisses and pops. - Library of Congress American Memory Project
- Emile Berliner and the Birth of the Recording Industry
- Inventing Entertainment: the Early Motion Pictures and Sound Recordings of the Edison Companies
- American Memory Collections: Original Format: Sound Recordings
<http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/S?ammem/collections:@field
(FLD003+@band(origf+Sound+Recording)):heading=Original+Format%3a+Sound+Recordings> - LOC The Recorded Sound Reference Center
provides access to the commercial and archival audio holdings of the Library of Congress. The collection dates from 1926 when Victor Records donated over 400 discs to the Library's Music Division to supplement its print and manuscript holdings. In the custody of the Motion Picture Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division since 1978, the collection has grown to include over 2 million items encompassing audio formats from cylinders to CDs. The holdings complement the field recordings of the American Folklife Center and the moving image collections served in the Motion Picture and Television Reading Room.
Location: LM113
Performing Arts Reading Room
James Madison Building
101 Independence Avenue, S.E.
Washington, D.C. 20540-4690 - National Library of Canada-Virtual Gramophone
- Percussive Arts Society-Gerhardt Collection
- Tinfoil.com-Cylinder of the Month
- Thomas Edison's Attic (WMFU Radio show)
- Antique Phonograph Music (WFMU Radio show)
- Trevor Hill-Cylinders on the Web
- Vintage Recordings from Menlo Park in Edison, New Jersey
