I just read the news below as posted by Ryna Barna on ARSC list and thought that I'd share his post with those here - as many of you either knew Quentin or knew of him. Thank you for sharing this sad new Ryan. I corresponded with Quentin a bit back in the 1970s and I did have the pleasure of visiting him at his house in California nearly 40 years ago.
Another legacy that Quentin left us as pioneer recording artist collectors was the 12-15 minutes of silent footage that the then-young Quentin captured at one (or maybe 2) of the John Bieling Day events in the 1940s, attended by stars like Billy Murray and Henry Burr so we could see them. Those films - are not on You Tube but seem to have circulated for years. Steve Ramm ____________________________________ From: phonostal...@gmail.com Reply-to: arscl...@listserv.loc.gov To: arscl...@listserv.loc.gov Sent: 1/31/2013 4:32:49 P.M. Eastern Standard Time Subj: [ARSCLIST] Quentin Riggs, RIP I am extremely sad and sorry to report the passing of former ARSC member and stellar researcher Quentin Riggs, on October 26, 2012. For those of you who don't know Quentin, he contributed information to several books and articles on early recording artists. He was frequently mentioned (and pictured) in Jim Walsh's "Favorite Pioneer Recording Artists" in Hobbies magazine, often supplementing Walsh's research for well over three decades, up to 1985. He also wrote for other publications, including the New Amberola Graphic, Hillandale News, and Talking Machine Review. He is credited as a co-author of "Billy Murray: The Phonograph Industry's First Great Recording Artist" with Frank Hoffmann and Dick Carty (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 1997). Quentin also had a privilege that new researchers can only dream of -- with interest in early sound recordings that began in the 1940s, he was able to correspond and meet with several early recording artists before their passing, including (and by no means limited to) Elliott Shaw, Olive Kline, John Bieling, Irving Kaufman, Walter Van Brunt, and Billy Murray. All the way to the end, Quentin remained active, enthusiastic, and mentally sharp. He frequently sent emails, searched digital databases, downloaded mp3s, and streamed music and videos. He was still checking matrix numbers for me in his collection as late as August. Few of his fellow hobbyists knew about his passing. I only found out about this from curiously searching the web, to see why I hadn't heard from him in so long. That's when I found his obituary. I talked to his sister-in-law this afternoon, who gave me permission to announce his passing to the collecting community. His wife Evelyn is not on the Internet, so she was unable to notify his email contacts. His brother and sister-in-law are currently handling the estate. I told her I was very surprised and sad learn about this, since he was still active only a couple of months before his death, but as she told me, "congestive heart failure got the best of him. I'm sure that by now, Quentin knows all the biographical and discographical answers that people like us are still searching for. You may read about his life and leave sympathy comments on his Dignity Memorial page at http://obits.dignitymemorial.com/dignity-memorial/obituary.aspx?n=Quentin-Ri ggs&lc=7371&pid=160690567&mid=5286531. Ryan Barna _______________________________________________ Phono-L mailing list http://phono-l.org
