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Special Collections and Archives
PAUL WHITEMAN
researched by Music Librarian Christopher Popa
The finest extant source for Paul Whiteman materials is the Archives & Special Collections department of Williams College, a liberal arts school in Williamstown, MA. Its "Paul Whiteman Collection" includes "4000 manuscript arrangements of orchestral jazz dating from the 1920s to the 1940s, as well as contemporary recordings, clippings files, and small collections of photographs and artifacts."
Supplementing the materials at Williams College is the "Ferde Grofe Collection" at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. Grofe, who was associated with Whiteman from 1919 to 1931, is best known for his orchestration of George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, popularized by Whiteman's band. The Library of Congress holdings contain many arrangements which Grofe made for Whiteman.
Additional materials touching on Whiteman are in the "Ferde Grofe Papers, 1930-1969" and the "Charles Grayson Strickfaden Papers, 1927 to 1981" held by the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, WY. For example, there is "an unpublished manuscript of Strickfaden's reminiscences of the jazz era." Strickfaden worked with Whiteman from 1924-37.
Other Whiteman memorabilia, such as the photograph shown below of him with Colleen Moore in 1926, is in the hands of private collectors.
sources:
Entertainment Industry Resources, http://ahc.uwyo.edu/documents/use_archives/guides/
Entertainment_Industry_Resources.pdf.
Library of Congress, http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.natlib.scdb.200033602/default.html
Paul Whiteman collection, http://archives.williams.edu/pwc/pwc1.php.
