Books, Novels and Longer Works

This series includes All Those Great Cats, unpublished Vignettes of Encounters Between Berton and Various Great Jazz Musicians (boxes 16-17); and catalogues, monographs, books, and novels by Berton (boxes 18-21).

Box #15 contains various manuscripts for the novel, The Ad, based on the true life adventures of one of Berton's former partners as a consequence of placing a personal ad in the Village Voice. This novel was completed in the early 1980s, though never published, having been criticized by several publishers as "dated" and "unrealistic" despite the fact that it was based, almost verbatim according to Berton, on true life situations.

Boxes #16 and #17 should be of special interest to jazz researchers and aficionados. These boxes contain the manuscript for an unpublished memoir of Berton's personal encounters with more than 30 classic jazz musicians. The manuscript appeared very nearly ready for publication at the time of Berton's death in 1993 and is arranged in the document boxes as nearly as possible in the order that Berton apparently intended for publication based on his own pagination, though there were several revisions and Berton was apparently still working on the organization of the sections at the time of his death. For the most part these are not biographies, though Berton does in several instances rely on secondary sources for brief biographical asides. What they largely amount to are accounts of Berton's encounters or alleged encounters with various jazz musicians. Sometimes these encounters were so fleeting that they seem barely worth putting into print for public consumption as for example Berton's recollections of Sid Catlett, whom Berton recalls as a nice person who once agreed to sit in at a session that Berton had organized on very short notice, but that is about all the substance involved in that particular vignette.

On the other hand Berton waxes long and eloquently in his discussion of Armstrong, Eldridge, Beiderbecke, Pee Wee Russell, Frankie Newton, Lionel Hampton, Benny Goodman, Ruby Braff, Dizzy Gillespie, Monk and especially Marilyn Moore and Al Cohn. Also of note is Berton's discussion of classical pianist Sylvia Marlowe, who Berton claims hired him to teach her (unsuccessfully) what it meant to "swing" and how to do it.

Box #18 contains both manuscripts and finished products of technical catalogues and other technical material authored by Berton in Folder #1. Folders #3 through #5 contain the manuscript of The Cruise, a pornographic novel authored by Berton and published under the pen name Richard Stander. Box #18 Folder #6 contains an outline and fragmentary manuscript for Duffer's Chess, co-authored with chess Grand Master Larry Evans. Box #18 Folders #7 through #12 house various outlines, synopses and incomplete manuscripts for a novel entitled Dynamite, yet another project which Berton gave every conceivable treatment: as a technical paper, a short story, a novel, a screen play, and a TV script.

Again, for jazz fans in particular, Box #18 Folder #13 contains an outline for a proposed monograph entitled From Swing to Rock: A Primer for Squares. This theme (comparing jazz to rock) too recurs in several places throughout the collection as an essay under various titles, as the underlying theme of a short story, a play, a screen play, a teleplay and a musical, as the theme to a scripted radio show, and in outline form as a book length monograph.

The entirety of Box #19 is taken up with two complete manuscripts of the pornographic novel Full Circle, published under the pen name Richard Stander or Richard Bennett.

Box #20 contains titles H through J and includes all sorts of material from a ghosted biography of Ian Fleming to technical manuals. Of special note to scholars of jazz is the outline of a monograph to be entitled Jazz: A Primer for Longhairs in Box #20 Folder #5, apparently written in the 1950s, and Jazz + Richie Rivers + Murder: The Jazz Murder, an unpublished murder mystery with an underlying setting among jazz musicians. Box #20 Folder #7 contains a fragment of an untitled book on jazz with very good autobiographical material on Berton. The balance of Box #20, Folders #8 through #13 is made up of various complete and incomplete drafts for Jewel City Inn, an unpublished autobiographical novel about Berton's experiences as a young Hollywood screen writer in the early 1930s. Like many other conceptions of Berton's, Jewel City Inn too was given every conceivable treatment: as an essay, a short story, a radio script, a novel, a screen play and the basis of a TV series. These other treatments can be found in the appropriate sections of this collection.

Box #21 Folder #1 contains Le Coté de Woodstock, an autobiographical novel of Berton's years studying art in Woodstock, NY in the late 1920s. Box #21 Folder #2 though #5 contain various treatments of the notion of Leonardo Da Vinci coming back to Earth in the late 20th century. Berton also considered developing this idea as the basis for a TV series and had some correspondence with Steve Allen about this, urging him to produce it, without success. Box #21 Folders #6 through #13 contain the manuscript with author's penciled revisions of a book variously titled Listen to Jazz, Understanding Jazz or, 1023 Jazz Records. Written in the early 1940s, the book was based largely on Berton's experiences as one of the first jazz disc jockeys and became the basis of the courses he would teach on jazz many years later. Berton was contracted to write the book by Modern Age Publishers and while galley proofs of some pages exist in Box #21 Folder #13, and evidence of a contract for the book exists in the correspondence section of the Collection, there is no other evidence that this was ever published.

Box #21 Folder #15 contains an autobiographical fragment entitled My Story.

Box #22 Folders #1 through #14 contain all the author's material on his major published work, Remembering Bix: A Memoir of the Jazz Age. These include an incomplete manuscript of all chapters with penciled author's notes and revisions, expense vouchers, galley proofs, press and public relations material and background research material for the book.