News

Ottilie Patterson To celebrate International Jazz Day, we take a look at a collection that has caused much excitement with researchers and for one professional archivist (Penny Hutchins) who explored the world of jazz and blues for the first time. The collection consists of scrapbooks and photographs documenting Ottilie Patterson’s early life …

Don Lusher In October 2014 the Archive received some materials from Diana Lusher, wife of the late jazz and big band trombonist, Don Lusher. Don (1923–2006) started playing trombone aged 6 and joined the Peterborough Salvation Army Band, following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather. During World War II he was called up and served …

Nat Gonella In March 2014 the National Jazz Archive acquired a collection of materials from Nat Gonella’s personal papers.  The collection was donated to the Archive by his daughter, Natalie, and includes Nat's personal scrapbooks documenting his musical career, photos spanning decades including some of his time in the army during the Second …

Arts Council of Great Britain Tours One of the collections the Archive has is of promotional posters for the Arts Council of Great Britain Tours. In 1971 the Arts Council of Great Britain set up The Contemporary Music Network with the aim of increasing the number of performances of contemporary works throughout the UK, particularly outside Londo …

Southall Swing Club - 1948 In January 2014 Jo Blyghton, a NJA Project Archivist at the time, was searching for potential materials to add to our digitised collections. While handling the Kenneth Pitt collection, a great picture came to light. Pitt was a leading publicist/press agent and manager to significant popular music artists. The client file …

  Happy International Women’s Day! At the archive, we are incredibly lucky to have so many dedicated women who volunteer and work for us (such as Jenny pictured working on the digitisation of the Brian Foskett collection, with a picture of Nina Simone). We are also incredibly lucky to have had the opportunity earlier last year to put on an e …

Joe Daniels As well as the many photographs, books, programmes, journals, posters and letters that get donated to the Archive as part of jazz collections, we also have some jazz related objects donated. One of these jazz related objects donated to the Archive by Joe Daniels is this trick drum. The drummer constructed this wooden bass drum, with a …

Dizzy Gillespie One of the donations received by the Archive is the photographs and negatives taken by the late Denis Williams (1933-2009). Denis was a press photographer and enthusiastic freelance photographer of both jazz musicians and events and was a regular at the Bracknell Jazz Festival and London venues such as the Royal Festival Hall, the …

Glenn Miller On March 1st 1904, in Clardina Iowa, Alton Glen Miller was born. He went on to become the trombone player and bandleader Glenn Miller. Sadly, on December 15th 1944, while flying across the Channel on his way to entertain troops in Paris, his single engined C-64 Norseman aeroplane disappeared and Glenn Miller was lost. The Archive h …