With the impressive jazz collections at the Jean and Alexander Heard Libraries, Vanderbilt students and faculty can delve deep into the history of jazz and into the lives, music and impact of its pioneering musicians. Several collections were acquired through the Academic Archives Purchasing Fund, a five-year program now in its final year. Applications require the collaboration of a Vanderbilt librarian, faculty member and National Museum of African American Music staff member. Collections purchased are available at both institutions for research and display.
“Our partnership with NMAAM has enabled the Heard Libraries to significantly expand our music collections, particularly in jazz,” says University Librarian Jon Shaw. “As the libraries digitally preserve these important collections and make them accessible to researchers around the globe, Vanderbilt has a tremendous opportunity to advance scholarship on this uniquely American art form.”
“As the libraries digitally preserve these important collections and make them accessible to researchers around the globe, Vanderbilt has a tremendous opportunity to advance scholarship on this uniquely American art form.”
The largest collections from this initiative are the Yusef A. Lateef Collection, acquired in 2022—making Vanderbilt the only library or institution with a Lateef collection—and the John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie Collection, acquired in 2021.
Jazz program students have engaged with all the jazz collections—processing items, creating online exhibits, and researching and writing copy for library websites—because of the Buchanan Library Fellowship, which enables undergraduates to do hands-on work with library resources and services. In fall 2024, Buchanan fellows worked with the Dizzy Gillespie Collection, for which they mapped Gillespie’s Middle East tours from the mid-1950s using GIS to produce an online exhibit featuring photos, tour stop programs and selected audio. Gillespie’s personal scrapbooks of the State Department–sponsored tours are of special interest to interdisciplinary scholars and students and to jazz historian Maxine Gordon, widow of jazz saxophonist Dexter Gordon, who is writing a book about women in jazz. She has visited Vanderbilt numerous times to research the women who traveled with Gillespie on the Middle East tour.
“Working with Maxine Gordon was truly one of the best parts of this experience,” says Shivan Kundra, a Class of 2027 student from New York City who is a double major in trumpet performance and history. “She has so much firsthand knowledge. Interacting with an expert and someone that is part of the lineage of this music was incredible.”
