[78-L] Jacob S. Schneider—Part 2

[Geoffrey Wheeler]

(Continued from Part 1)

“Of all the people who were after early jazz records,” says Henry 
Renard, “Schneider was the only one that had money. Even some of the 
bootleggers had to borrow records from friends so they could dub them 
because they didn’t have money to buy the originals or European master 
pressings. Most of the bootleg labels were based in New York. The 
owners usually didn’t want anyone to know who they were, but serious 
collectors knew. If a really rare record came out on a bootleg label, 
collectors would say ‘That’s so-and-so’s copy because he has the only 
one in good enough condition to issue so he must be behind that 
particular bootleg label.’ About the only guy who produced reissue 
records that made himself known to everybody was Dante Bollettino. As 
an attorney, Schneider handled divorce and civil cases. He also had a 
few retainers. One was with a guy who owned three or four cafeterias in 
the area. For a number of years, Schneider was stretched pretty thin. 
In addition to an ex-wife, he supported his mother, his brother who had 
never held a job, and two children. Finally, the stress became too 
much. He went to a doctor who diagnosed him as having a heart 
condition. He told him that if he continued with the record business, 
he would be dead within six months. If he got rid of the records and 
moved some place quiet, he might live four or five years. He sold the 
collection to two people. One got to the collection before the other 
guy and picked all the best records. The other guy got the dregs but 
never knew it. Years later, I was talking to a collector friend who 
said he had seen Schneider on a beach in Florida.”

An article by publisher-author, Pete Whelan, in 78 Quarterly #1 1967 
describes how the collection was arranged on 8-foot-high bookcase 
shelving that “face each other and extend 25 feet. They are stacked 
with 78s in green and tan sleeves. Midway through one shelf, a narrow 
passageway opens into a large room with one light bulb in the ceiling 
[and more records].... Straight ahead and beyond a locked door, another 
room, called the ‘vault,’ contains wall-to-ceiling shelves of the 
rarest labels in the record collecting fraternity”: Autograph, Black 
Patti, Electrobeam Gennett, Merrit, Paramount, 16000 series Champions, 
Brunswick 7000 series lightnings, Conqueror, Supertone, Challenge, 
Vocalion 1000s, Superior, Herwin 75000s, Columbia 15000s, QRS, and 
unissued tests. He claimed to have owned at one time the only known 
copy of “Zulus Ball” by King Oliver and His Creole Jazz Band (Gennett 
5275), which he had purchased from the man who had found it, Monte 
Ballou, banjoist/guitarist on the Castle Jazz Band, of Portland, 
Oregon. The author has viewed this record and studied the labels on 
both sides. The word “Zulus” is in the plural, not the possessive, 
form.

“Schneider wanted to hear the record before he bought it,” says Henry 
Renard, “so he demanded that Ballou make a dub for him. Although 
‘Working Man’s Blues’ was known to some collectors because Oliver had 
recorded a version for OKeh nobody knew what ‘Zulus Ball’ sounded like 
because nobody else had recorded it. Schneider wanted something he 
could have knowledgeable collectors listen to. He wanted assurances he 
was buying the genuine article. This was back in the days when a lot of 
business was done by mail, not face to face. Being an attorney, 
Schneider knew full well the problems involved in trying to chase a 
check across state lines if the record was not genuine. When the dub 
came in, he had Bill Grauer of The Record Changer listen to it to 
confirm that ‘Zulus Ball’ was indeed Oliver. It was, of course. The 
source for the Biltmore issue of ‘Zulus Ball’ and ‘Working Man’s Blues’ 
was not the original recording but a dub of the dub Ballou had made. 
[Note: This was later issued on Biltmore 1028. As noted above, “In the 
10th Anniversary Issue of The Record Changer August-September 1952 
[page 36], the editors voted this the Worst Recording Job of the Decade 
(1942-1952). King Oliver was also voted the “Musician who just couldn’t 
have made that many records” [page 35].” Schneider didn’t want to wear 
out the original. Max Vreede, who later owned it, was just the 
opposite. He would play it on an old windup phonograph for anybody that 
visited him. The second dub was made on a home recorder. Schneider 
didn’t want to go to the expense of having it dubbed by a professional 
studio. That’s why the Biltmore issue sounds so bad. The best transfer 
was issued some years later on the Herwin LP label.”

All told, Biltmore reissued 26 sides (13 records) by King Oliver: 1007, 
1024, 1028, 1049, 1050, 1051, 1052, 1053, 1054, 1055, 1056, 1057,  and 
1102.

  “Zulus Ball” and “Workingman Blues” were also reissued in England on 
Temp R29. Here’s what reviewer Tom Cundall had to say in the June 1950 
Jazz Journal: “If your heart leaps at every King Oliver reissue, it 
will fall with a thud when you hear this one, which can only be 
described as a travesty of the work of this great band. The original 
was recorded in 1923 for Gennett and one can only surmise that the copy 
from which the Tempo reissue was dubbed must have been played 
incessantly for the last twenty-seven years. The extraneous surface 
noise is almost past belief, and this, coupled with the poor recording 
and distortion of the original, doesn’t leave much music. If you can 
bear to listen, you will find that the first side is entirely ensemble 
work, but the reverse has an interesting series of breaks, and some 
brief snatches of Oliver cornet at the end…”

“I used to visit Schneider every so often,” says Paul Bacon. “The place 
was pretty ghastly. There were ground- up 78s on the floor. When you 
walked on the shards, they went crunch-crunch. They had been walked on 
so often they were almost dust. He had all his legal files on one 
floor, and if you asked him about a certain record, he would pull down 
one of those large, heavy, green ledgers that lawyers use. He would 
turn the pages until he found what he was looking for and say: ‘Yes, I 
have four copies of that in N, E, V, and G condition. Which do you 
want?’ The impression I got was as the number of copies of a given 
record declined, he increased the price regardless of

the grades of the remaining copies. Records were piled everywhere. 
Nothing looked organized, although he knew where to find things. Even 
his ledgers looked sloppy, certainly not as neat as those kept by 
Alfred Lion and Frank Wolff of Blue Note. They had a fabulous record 
collection they had brought over from Berlin. Everything was neatly 
organized on shelves. Frank was the keeper of the collection and 
everything was written down meticulously.

“I think Schneider did a lot of pro bono work. His nick-name was ‘Jake 
the Snake.’ He knew people called him that and he was somewhat amused 
by it. He didn’t sell records cheap but I always thought him fair. One 
time, out of the blue, he gave me some very rare opera records. ‘Here,’ 
he said, ‘take these. I’m not really interested in opera.’ It’s hard to 
say what his actual interest in music was. He never really talked about 
it. One time he came to our apartment and told Max [Paul’s wife] and I 
that he was quitting law. We were very surprised. He said: ‘I had been 
working on a tax case for a client. It was late when I went to bed. In 
the middle of the night I awoke and felt like my chest was encased in 
an iron band. I realized I could never fix my client’s problem and that 
was kind of the last straw’.”

As an attorney, Schneider spoke some Puerto Rican Spanish and, along 
with his regular clientele, served the burgeoning Puerto Rican 
immigrant community on New York’s West Side. It is said he sometimes 
collected his legal fees from clients in the form of record 
collections. This was particularly true in divorce cases when the wife 
would acquire her husband’s collection and turn it over to Schneider. 
He would also buy collections from the families of military killed in 
World War II. Schneider’s secretary would go through back issues of The 
Record Changer and periodically send out postcards to people who had 
advertised auctions. According to several sources who visited Schneider 
regularly, he was thorough about this and missed no opportunity to 
obtain records.