HPPAA PROGRAM
Jazz History
& Research
ARCHIVES · SCHOLARSHIP · ORAL HISTORY · PERFORMANCE · PUBLIC ACCESS
HPPAA researches, preserves, interprets, and shares jazz history through archival collections, recorded interviews, documentary media, scholarship, live performance, and public education.
The program begins in Texas but extends into the wider history of American jazz — connecting musicians, researchers, recordings, institutions, and cultural memory with audiences today.
RESEARCH COLLECTIONS
Jazz history through collections, people, and sound
HPPAA’s jazz-history work is organized around research collections and public projects. Some begin with a Texas musician or community; others preserve conversations, television performances, oral histories, and archival materials whose significance reaches across the history of jazz.
Texas Jazz History
Research, performances, archival documentation, and public-history projects exploring Texas musicians and their national influence. Eddie Durham is a central focus, joined by work involving Kenny Dorham, Texas jazz scholarship, museums, festivals, and living repertoire.
EXPLORE TEXAS JAZZ HISTORY →The History of Jazz Drums
A 32-part archival presentation from 1989 featuring master drummer Mel Lewis and jazz historian Loren Schoenberg discussing generations of jazz drummers, their techniques, equipment, ensembles, and musical influence.
EXPLORE THE 32-PART ARCHIVE →Just Jazz
Rediscovered television performances from WTTW Chicago’s Just Jazz, produced by Dan Morgenstern in 1970. HPPAA presents a curated public-access collection connecting archival recovery, research, television history, and jazz education.
EXPLORE JUST JAZZ →Dan Morgenstern Research
Research, interviews, writing, film, scholarship, and documentation developed through Hank Hehmsoth’s National Endowment for the Arts- supported work on NEA Jazz Master Dan Morgenstern. The collection is being prepared for long-term public preservation through HPPAA.
VIEW THE CURRENT TEXAS STATE COLLECTION ↗RESEARCH AS A LIVING PRACTICE
From evidence to public experience
Jazz history lives in recordings, scores, photographs, films, interviews, scholarship, archives, and the memories of the people who made and heard the music.
HPPAA brings those sources into active conversation with musicians, students, researchers, and audiences. Archival work provides evidence; interpretation supplies context; performance allows historical music to be heard again; and digital documentation keeps the work accessible.
The purpose is not simply to preserve the past. It is to make jazz history usable — something that can be heard, studied, questioned, taught, and carried forward.
COLLECTION 01 · TEXAS JAZZ HISTORY
Texas musicians inside the larger history of jazz
Texas Jazz History remains one of HPPAA’s major research collections. The work examines musicians, repertoire, places, scholarship, and cultural memory while connecting Texas stories to the national development of jazz.
ANCHOR RESEARCH PROJECT · EDDIE DURHAM
From San Marcos into the sound of swing
Born in San Marcos in 1906, Eddie Durham became a composer, arranger, trombonist, guitarist, and an important innovator in twentieth-century jazz. His work helped shape major bands led by Bennie Moten, Jimmie Lunceford, and Count Basie, and he was among the early musicians to expand the role of amplified guitar in jazz.
HPPAA’s Durham research combines archival interviews, scholarship, new arrangements, live performance, historical commentary, museum programs, festivals, documentary media, and digital preservation.
TEXAS JAZZ HISTORY · ARCHIVAL FILM
How Eddie Durham Helped Change American Jazz
This historical feature draws on interviews recorded through the 2018–19 National Endowment for the Arts Art:Works project Reminiscences of NEA Jazz Master Dan Morgenstern.
Dan Morgenstern, Phil Schaap, Loren Schoenberg, and Doug Lawrence illuminate Durham’s importance as a composer, arranger, trombonist, guitar innovator, and contributor to Southwestern and Kansas City jazz traditions.
The interviews demonstrate how one archival research project can illuminate another: national jazz scholarship returning to a Texas-born musician whose influence extended far beyond Texas.
TEXAS JAZZ HISTORY · PUBLIC CHAPTERS
Research returned to public life
The Durham collection moves between research, museums, festivals, live performance, education, and community history.
JUNE 21 · 2026
COMPLETED
Texas Music Museum
Austin
Double Vision Jazz Ensemble, guest artists, new interpretations, and historical remarks by Texas jazz scholar Dave Oliphant.
OCTOBER 10 · 2026
COMPLETED
Eddie Durham Jazz Festival
San Marcos
Durham’s music and historical context returned to Eddie Durham Park for the annual San Marcos public celebration.
MARCH 7 · 2027
CONFIRMED
Eddie Durham Comes Home
Texas State Performing Arts Center
Double Vision Jazz Ensemble with guest artists in a major performance and public-history project supported through a City of San Marcos community arts grant.
EXPLORE THE 2027 PROJECT →BEYOND TEXAS
HPPAA’s expanding jazz research archive
Texas jazz remains a foundational HPPAA research area, but the organization’s archival work now extends into broader American jazz history, oral history, television archives, performance practice, and long-form research collections.
COLLECTION 02
The History of Jazz Drums
Master drummer Mel Lewis (1929–1990) and jazz historian Loren Schoenberg examine the musicians, techniques, equipment, ensembles, and evolving musical language of jazz drumming in an extensive 1989 presentation.
HPPAA preserves and presents the complete 32-part video series as a public jazz-history and educational archive while the original videos retain their existing HanksJazz histories.
COLLECTION 04 · IN DEVELOPMENT
Dan Morgenstern Research Archive
Hank Hehmsoth’s multi-year research project on NEA Jazz Master Dan Morgenstern includes interviews, writings, film and television research, artist portraits, lectures, documentary material, and archival resources developed through Texas State University and National Endowment for the Arts support.
HPPAA is developing a long-term preservation home for this work so that the research can remain publicly accessible beyond its current university-hosted environment.
COLLECTION 03 · ARCHIVAL TELEVISION RESEARCH
Just Jazz — Rediscovering Historic Jazz Television
HPPAA’s archival work includes surviving performances from Just Jazz, a remarkable television series produced by jazz historian Dan Morgenstern for WTTW Chicago in 1970.
Directed by Bob Kaiser, Just Jazz captured important artists including Erroll Garner, Gene Ammons, Dexter Gordon, Don Byas, Billie Eckstine, Ray Nance, and others.
Hank Hehmsoth recovered and researched rare surviving recordings while investigating Dan Morgenstern materials at the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University. The related work includes research at Rutgers and the National Endowment for the Arts-supported Morgenstern project at Texas State University.
HPPAA presents a curated YouTube collection as a public arts-education and jazz-history resource. Original video uploads remain with their existing channels.
HPPAA’s public Just Jazz playlist · 11 video entries. The collection links to existing recordings and preserves their original upload histories.
SCHOLARSHIP + INTERPRETATION
History begins with evidence
HPPAA’s research work is strongest when documented scholarship, archival evidence, first-person testimony, and informed musical practice illuminate one another.
TEXAS JAZZ SCHOLARSHIP
Dave Oliphant
Poet, writer, editor, and jazz historian Dave Oliphant has helped establish a broad account of the artists and communities that shaped jazz in Texas. His scholarship provides historical context for Eddie Durham, Kenny Dorham, and many others.
EXPLORE TEXAN JAZZ ↗HISTORY IN PERFORMANCE
Research becomes repertoire
HPPAA and Double Vision Jazz Ensemble translate historical inquiry into new arrangements, live interpretation, guest collaborations, and concise public commentary. Audiences encounter the music as music while gaining a clearer understanding of the people, places, sources, and creative decisions behind it.
MEET DOUBLE VISION →READ · WATCH · EXPLORE
Continue into the research
The History of
Jazz Drums
EXPLORE ARCHIVE →
Jazz in the
Handbook of Texas
READ OVERVIEW ↗
Eddie Durham
biography
READ BIOGRAPHY ↗
Dan Morgenstern
research collection
EXPLORE CURRENT ARCHIVE ↗
RESEARCH · EDUCATION · PUBLIC PROGRAMS
Bring jazz history into public life
HPPAA welcomes conversations with museums, libraries, archives, schools, colleges, festivals, historical organizations, researchers, and community partners interested in jazz-history research, collections, exhibitions, concerts, talks, educational programs, and interdisciplinary public-history projects.