Jim Walsh Collection

Journalist and collector Ulysses “Jim” Walsh (1903-1990) was born in Richmond, Virginia on July 20, 1903. Best known for his “Favorite Pioneer Recording Artists” column that appeared in Hobbies magazine for over forty years, Walsh was recognized as one of the greatest collectors and authorities on popular acoustical era recording artists and their recordings.

Walsh took an early interest in records, amassing a sizable collection and encyclopedic knowledge by the time he was a teenager. He began writing for newspapers in the late 1920s and had articles published in specialty magazines about recording artists. In 1934, Walsh moved to Johnson City, Tennessee to become a reporter for the Johnson City Press, a job he would hold for nine years. Ulysses Walsh acquired the nickname “Jim” which he went by for the rest of his life, while working for the Press. In 1939, Walsh began hosting a radio program on local station WJHL, in Tennessee. His program “Wax Works” showcased old recordings from his collection and gave him a forum to discuss the lives and accomplishments of the artists whose music he played.

In 1942, Walsh began writing his column on early recording artists for Hobbies magazine. The column, originally called “The Coney Island Crowd,” was soon renamed “Favorite Pioneer Recording Artists,” the name under which it continued to be published through 1985. The column focused particularly on popular and vernacular recordings made before 1909, including jazz, humor, minstrel and vaudeville; the focus was later broadened to include those artists who recorded before the dawn of electric recording techniques in 1925. In the following years, Walsh became well-known among collectors as the authority on these early popular recordings. Although best known for his Hobbies columns, Walsh reached an even wider audience through his contributions to Variety and The New Yorker, among other publications.

In 1943 Walsh moved to the town of Vinton, Virginia, adjacent to Roanoke, and joined the staff of the Roanoke World News. At the same time, he made connections with radio station WDBJ in Roanoke and resurrected his show “Walsh’s Wax Works” on the new station. After a short run, he moved the show to radio station WSLS, where it was broadcasted through 1960.

Walsh continued to collect recordings, playback equipment, and reference resources such as record catalogs, magazines and advertisements. For many of his favorite artists, such as Billy Murray, Al Jolson, Harry Lauder, and Vernon Dalhart, Walsh endeavored to collect every recording they had ever made. Walsh became a great correspondent, fostering relationships with recording artists, collectors, dealers, and his readers and listeners. In later years, Walsh traveled to gatherings of early recording artists and collectors, meeting many of the artists he had idolized as a child.

Walsh was a lifetime bachelor, and had a deep devotion to his many cats. He gave updates on his “family of cats” in much of his correspondence and occasionally in his columns; he even arranged to have poems published under the name of his favorite cat: Professor Plum Duff Walsh, Ph.D.

During the late 1970s and 1980s Walsh’s health declined, and he complained of memory losses. In May, 1985 his last column was published in Hobbies. He died in 1990 after several years of residence in nursing homes. Walsh was posthumously awarded the first Lifetime Achievement Award given by the Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) in 1991.

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SCOPE AND CONTENT

Jim Walsh devoted his life to collecting, researching and writing about early popular recordings and recording artists. These papers make up part of a much larger gift of early recordings, audio equipment and related items donated by Walsh to the Library of Congress between 1965 and 1987. The collection consists of approximately 40,000 discs, 500 cylinders and 23 early phonographs. Recordings in the collection are primarily of popular and vernacular music, recorded during the acoustical era (pre-1926). It includes a nearly complete run of 5,000 to 6,000 Edison “Diamond Disc” recordings as well as many early Edison cylinders.

This portion of the collection consists of documents and other paper records produced by Mr. Walsh that relate to his career and collecting efforts. They consist of correspondence with prominent artists and collectors, research notes, photographs of performers, scripts for Walsh’s radio shows, drafts of his columns and articles, clippings, bound journals, advertisements, scrapbooks and ephemera. The collection also holds a wealth of biographical information about Jim Walsh, including a diary, scrapbooks, photographs and writings. This collection has been divided into the following series: Correspondence/Research Files, Writings, Radio Scripts, Ephemera, Photographs, Oversize Materials, and Volumes.

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PROVENANCE

This collection was donated to the Library of Congress by Jim Walsh in several increments between 1965 and 1987.

Link to Series I.