Above left: Montreux-Detroit Kool Jazz Festival 1981, from the Graystone International Jazz Collection. Above left: The museum’s second location at 3000 E. Grand Blvd, where they operated throughout the 1980s, also from the collection.
Access collection material here.
Abstract: The Graystone International Jazz Museum Collection documents the almost thirty-year history of the Graystone International Jazz Museum and Hall of Fame, the first, and for many years only, museum dedicated to the preservation of jazz history. The museum collected materials related to the Graystone Ballroom and their African-American house band McKinney’s Cotton Pickers, as well as photos, stories, and artifacts related to both local Detroit and national jazz history. In addition to the museum’s exhibition materials, the collection contains museum records and audio and video recordings stored by former board members, including community jazz oral histories conducted in the 1980s and the entire run of Jim Gallert’s Detroit Jazz Alive series broadcast throughout the 1990s on WDET. A large portion of the collection was salvaged by Detroit Sound Conservancy from the museum’s final home in the Book Building in Detroit, MI in 2015. Documentation of this salvage operation is also included in the collection. A full finding aid for the collection can be accessed here.
Donor(s): Trenna Ruffner
Dates: 1920-2015, bulk 1975-1994
Extent: 37 Linear Feet, approx. 1TB
Collection Type: Physical, Digital
Subjects: Jazz, Detroit Jazz History, James A. Jenkins, Graystone Ballroom, McKinney’s Cotton Pickers, Detroit Jazz Alive, WDET, 101.9
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