Tag: Documentary

True Crime in the Music Archive

By Lara Canner, Curator of Music Special Collections

As Taylor Swift once sang “I think he did it but I just can’t prove it…”, true crime and music go hand in hand. There are hundreds of ballads based off horrific crimes: Nirvana’s “Polly”, the Smiths “Suffer Little Children” and Sarah McLachlan’s “Possession”, to name a few. Music invites passion, heartbreak, darkness, and yearning. It is no wonder that musicians have found a font of inspiration from terrible crimes and their instigators. Yet, not only has music immortalized tales of the horrific, but musicians are also the victims of true crime stories and the initiators.

True crime storytelling is having a cultural moment, but where do you think the researchers for the multitude of podcasts, books, and documentaries have gotten their information? Enter archives: the keepers of knowledge. Special Collections and archives are responsible for preserving and making accessible historic record, ranging from newspapers, court documents, organizational records, oral histories, and even films from television stations. Without an archive there would not be documentation for amateur investigators to pour over, map and theorize. There are so many in fact that archivists from the University of North Texas created an entire series called “True Crime in the Archives.”

If you are searching for your music true crime fix (featuring archives!), here is a list of podcasts, books, and documentaries to checkout.

Podcasts:

  1. Songs in the Key of Death – https://nevermind.fm/shows/death//
  2. Disgraceland – https://www.disgracelandpod.com/

Books:

  1. Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx is Burning by Jonathan Mahler
  2. BMF: The Rise and Fall of Big Meech and the Black Mafia Family by Mara Shalhoup
  3. Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground by Michael Moynihan and Didrik Søderlind
  4. Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business by Fredric Dannen
  5. Notorious C.O.P.: The Inside Story of the Tupac, Biggie, and Jam Master Jay Investigations from NYPD’s First ‘Hip-Hop Cop’ by Derrick Parker and Matt Diehl
  6. CrimeSong: True Crime Stories From Southern Murder Ballads by Richard H. Underwood
  7. Unprepared To Die: America’s Greatest Murder Ballads And The True Crime Stories That Inspired Them by Paul Slade
  8. Party Monster: A Fabulous But True Tale of Murder in Clubland by James St. James
  9. Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry
  10. The Axeman of New Orleans: The True Story by Miriam C. Davis

Documentaries:

  1. The New York Times Presents: Framing Britney Spears on Hulu
  2. FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened on Netflix
  3. I Called Him Morgan on Netflix
  4. Surviving R. Kelly on Netflix
  5. ReMastered: The Two Killings of Sam Cooke on Netflix

Music can inspire intense feelings causing us to cry, sigh, and dance for joy. Intense feelings can inspire music creating songs of sadness, love, and hope.  Archives that specialize in music are filled with songs of terrible heartache and stories yet unsung. Even Old Dominion University Special Collections holds secrets too if you are willing to look.

The Story Behind One of Our Most Popular Artifacts: John Duffy’s Emmy

by Maddie Dietrich, Music Special Collections & Research Specialist

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One of two Emmy’s awarded to composer John Duffy

One of the more widely-seen items in our holdings is an Emmy award belonging to the late composer John Duffy (June 23, 1926, New York City—December 22, 2015, Norfolk, Virginia). Oftentimes when a class visits Special Collections the Emmy is brought out along with a dozen or so other objects, oddities and memorabilia intended to demonstrate to students that Special Collections isn’t just about old papers and manuscripts but in fact consists of all kinds of artifacts, including old papers and manuscripts, which tell the stories firsthand of the persons to whom they once belonged. These introductory class sessions are intended to teach students how to use the collections and include brief hands-on exercises on how to examine items—papers, photographs, maps, calendars, and so on—and offers suggestions on the kinds of information a person might glean from viewing these items firsthand, free from the editorial framework imposed by some intermediary scholar for their own agenda.

So what about this Emmy award? What makes it so popular, so impressive? Well, it’s big and heavy, and it’s shiny and gold. And it’s easily recognized though relatively few people have ever seen one in person. And of course it represents a pinnacle of human achievement in television broadcasting–somebody, somewhere, sometime, did something so outstanding in their field that their peers deemed the accomplishment worthy of their highest award, to be remembered for all time. To see this Emmy, then, is to experience a brush with greatness. And so who was John Duffy and what did he do to win an Emmy, and how did it end up in Special Collections?

MonaEmmy
Retired Reading Room Supervisor Mona Farrow with the Duffy Emmy

Born and raised in the Bronx, John Duffy was a veteran of U.S. Navy and fought in the Battle of Okinawa during WWII. After the war he studied composition with such musical giants as Henry Cowell and Aaron Copland and went on to become music director at the Guthrie Theater and the American Shakespeare Festival. He wrote scores for the Broadway productions of J. P. Donleavy’s The Ginger Man and Barbara Garson’s MacBird! In 1974 he founded the organization Meet The Composer in association with the New York State Council on the Arts and the American Music Center. He was in fact a two-time Emmy winner, receiving his first for writing the score of the NBC documentary A Talent for Life: Jews of the Italian Renaissance (1979) and his second for the score of the PBS production Heritage: Civilization and the Jews (1984). In 2005 he worked with the Virginia Arts Festival to found The John Duffy Composers Institute, a workshop for young composers which for ten years was held in the Diehn Composers Room on the campus of Old Dominion University (the workshop later became the John Duffy Institute for New Opera). In 2011 Duffy donated his collection of scores, manuscripts and memorabilia to ODU Libraries Special Collections and University Archives (The John Duffy Papers, 1944-2012). Though he composed more than 300 works for symphony orchestra, theater, television and film, Duffy felt strongly that “classical” music was no more worthy an art form than any other type of music, popular or otherwise, and fought to expose the ingrained privilege and prejudice that often hides behind such hierarchies.

That’s who John Duffy was, and that’s why we have his Emmy. When the pandemic is over, make a plan to visit our collections and ask to see it!