The UC Santa Barbara Library’s Special Research Collections recently acquired a significant collection of African-American rhythm and blues, blues, and gospel 78 rpm recordings originally collected by songwriter and actor Richard Reicheg (1937-2021). The acquisition was made possible via a generous donation from his widow, Julie Payne.

The Richard Reicheg Rhythm & Blues Collection consists primarily of 10,000 commercial sound recordings documenting the evolution of African-American music in the post-WWII era from approximately 1945 to 1960. Almost exclusively focused on Black artists, the collection is extremely well-curated, tracing the path of musicians during the Great Migration to the urban recording centers of Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, and New York City. Rhythm and blues, jump blues, and doo wop vocal groups were a primary interest to the collector; however, the collection extends well beyond these genres to include other seminal blues, gospel, and even rock and roll artists of the era. It systematically documents the small record labels that brought urban African-American music to the public, such as Atlantic, Chess, DeLuxe, Domino, Duke, Peacock, Sun, Specialty, Vee-Jay, and dozens of others. These pioneering labels, many operated by African-American entrepreneurs, discovered talent that the major labels of the day (Victor, Columbia, MGM, etc.) typically overlooked.

As Reicheg built his collection in Los Angeles, it is strong in L.A. recordings. One example is his collection of scarece recordings on the pioneering Bronze Records, established in 1939 by Leroy Hurte out of a storefront on E. Vernon in South Los Angeles. There are many other thousands of other rare and possibly unique recordings in the collection.

Reicheg also was friends with African-American musicians and entrepreneurs Leon and Googie René, a father son team who owned several L.A. labels, including Exclusive, Excelsior, and Class. He inherited hundreds of publicity photos and some business papers from the René family as well as hundreds of lacquers and unissued tests. These materials are an unknown and yet to be explored portion of the collection.
 

Sound recordings in the Richard Reicheg Rhythm & Blues Collection are organized numerically by record company and catalog number and are currently accessible while awaiting cataloging. An inventory of the photographs, lacquers, and other paper materials in his collection is awaiting processing.

For more information on the collection or assistance in using the materials, please contact Special Collections staff at special@library.ucsb.edu.

Images courtesy WENN Rights Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo (Reicheg) UCSB Library (Bronze label) UCLA Digital Library (Leon and Googie René)