In celebration of the 100th anniversary of the first jazz recording, Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, has established a YouTube channel where it will share oral history interviews from its extensive Jazz Archive. The first interviews that are being posted online involve jazz greats who have been awarded honorary degrees from Hamilton College.
Established in 1995, the Hamilton College Jazz Archive focuses primarily on artists associated with mainstream jazz and the swing era dating from the 1930s. The more than 300 recorded and transcribed interviews include stories of life on the road and in the active New York City recording scene as well as racial relations in jazz.
Below is one of the interviews with Harry “Sweets” Edison, a jazz trumpeter and member of the Count Basie Orchestra. Edison died in 199.
