Saks, Norman R.
Biography
Norman Saks is a world class representative of the jazz collector, and endangered species whose world is disappearing. A new generation and a new system of jazz collecting have emerged. Its members consider anonymous and unverified postings on the Internet as discographical gospel. They store this information and the music they attach to it in small, often extremely small, boxes; and believe they own and know it all. Their new world, from the perspectives of jazz scholarship and jazz listening, is an inferior one and makes the publication of the artifacts and documents in Saks’ collection, at this moment, an important, even vital, issue. The illustration that someone, currently living, can go out and find – I mean discover! – originals: documents that demonstrate truth and can expand jazz knowledge and enjoyment is a profound lesson. That Norman Saks, in assembling his collection, can teach that lesson is a tribute to the science of discography, a superior methodology of music research that started with jazz, and Saks’ expertise in that science. Norman Saks has gone past the sequences of dates and master numbers to the documents that are the roots of such lists. Behold.
Source: Schaap, Phil. “Appreciation.” The Norman R. Saks Collection: Charlie Parker & jazz club memorabilia. Documented and designed by Ken Vail. New York: Phil Schaap, Curator of Jazz at Lincoln Center, Library Editions, 2007.
