The Saul Nowitz Collection

This collection consist of 23,124 seventy-eight rpm shellac discs and 1200 sixteen-inch transcription discs, V-discs and one-of-a-kind acetates collected by Saul Nowitz (1938 -2018). From his early years Saul was a record enthusiast, sneaking 78s into the family home - mostly jazz dance discs frowned upon by his father.  Soon the entire upper floor of the house was buried in albums, cutting lathes, short-wave radios - a wide range of musical gear and recordings that shaped a career in music.  

From his home in Connecticut there were frequent trip to New York City to hear live Jazz and hunt down recordings, his musical focus centering around jazz, country and classical.  Saul has written. “I first walked into a Radio Station WNAB Bridgeport Connecticut at age 15 years. I did grunt work filing 78 records and sixteen [inch] transcription [discs] after school. Also learning basic electronics from Norm Howard. I found working behind the scene more interesting than behind the Mic at that time, I also learn to cut blank lacquers or radio delay broadcast disc and commercial spots that lead to a job at the Columbia Record factory from my uncle who work there at the head of manufacture. My Job was to cut 45 and rpm master and long play records. That lasted until it was time for me to go into the Military in 1962.” 

“After the Air force I went to school on the GI Bill and got my first class commercial FCC ticket. I went to California and got a job at KWTC Barstow. I obtain a job doing an all night program called “Truck Stop.” It was a Country and Western Show. In 1970 I went back home and got a job and work at the Scully Recording Instrument Company.”  At Scully Saul worked on professional tape recorders and studio equipment.  After a year he was back in the studio at WWCO, a new Country Music FM station in Waterbury, CT.  By 1972 he was the number one DJ in the state.  That job lasted until 1974 when the station was automated and DJs, no matter how successful, were a thing of the past.

Next stop was Fairfield University, where Saul did maintenance in the A/V department and was program director for their radio station, WVOS.  There he bough artists like Billy Joel, Merle Haggard, Harry Chapin into the studio.  His expertise in sound also brought him technical work at Atlantic Records for the Stones and Ringo Starr, and at Columbia Records for Bob Dylan.  Late in life and even on vacation Saul kept to the airwaves securing a license to broadcast from the Turks and Caicos Islands.  As his friend Peter Halstead said, “Saul always had a smile on his face because of the music in his heart.”

The mysterious label above was detached from the disc and is yearning to be reunited. With luck we hope to unearth some of the discs Saul personally cut for major record companies among the many unidentified recordings in this collection.

 Thanks to the Nowitz family and The Sidney E. Frank Foundation for this generous gift.