I wanted to write a bit about my work concerning my father's jazz and
espionage collections otherwise known as The George A. Borgman
Archives.
Since my father died in October of 2009, I have been
going through my father's papers, writings, recordings, magazines and book
collection. I've been organizing his extensive collection of papers, writings
and recordings, backing up his computer files and indexing what his current
collection contains. I hope to add to and extend the collection too and
transcribe his recorded interviews with musicians so that one day these
transcriptions might be available to researchers.
He has a massive
collection of photographs that he took over the years of jazz musicians and
performers and I hope to be able to make some of those available for
purchase.
I'm a little behind in all this work and have not gone forward
with our plans to publish some of my father's writings. One book that is planned
to be published is his great Cold War spy novel, There Was an Old Woman Who
Lived in a SHU, which was heavily based on a real case that he worked on
while working as a counter-intelligence agent in Berlin in the 60s.
The
other book about the Casa Loma Orchestra is the culmination of many years of
devoted research into that band. He had done an extensive article on Glenn Gray
and the Casa Loma Orchestra in the last issue of the print version of the
Mississippi Rag back in 2006. The book has much more information on that
legendary band.
There is just so much potential in my father's life's
work that we are very excited about the Archives. Currently, The George
A. Borgman Archives has a blog up and running called Yankee Jazz Beat after my father's
column of that name.