Bernie Klatzko Remembered

Gayle Dean Wardlow

1962 - It was shortly after the Cuban Missile Crisis when I received a letter from Bernie Klatzko of Glen Cove, Long Island.

Bernie had heard from an Alabama collector that I had several Charlie Patton Paramounts and he offered $15 each for them.

I replied that I wanted to keep them but his letter was the start of a long relationship that lasted up to his death in December, 1999.

Bernie taught me what records to look for and was always fair but a hard man to refuse sometimes.

Once we had a verbal fight over a record I had found he thought I should trade him (Rev. D.C. Rice 1289) but we always resolved our differences eventually.

Once I found the first known copy of Son House 12990 (Dry Spell Blues) in Louisiana. I couldn't get it from the owner so I took $25 he (Bernie) sent me, went to Rayville, LA and bought it for him. I cried when I sent it off.

Years later I got it back in a swap just before he sold his collection to Nick Perls around 1979. In the 1960s no one knew what could be found on Paramount. No company files existed and the recording ledgers became part of a World War II paper drive for the war effort.

Bernie came south in the summer of 1963 and we went looking for Charley Patton's place of death and other facts about Patton.

That trip is republished in my book "Chasin' That Devil Music." It has been described as the best writing in the collection of articles. I agree!

Bernie and Pete Whelan were the prime movers in the rediscovery of the "country blues." in the 1960s. Both were New Yorkers but without them less information would be known today. Pete put out Charley Patton on his first issue of the Origin Jazz Library series (that preceded Yazoo by seven years!).

Their mentor had been Jim McKune, a postal worker who came to New York City from North Carolina after World War II and began collecting guitar blues.

Eventually Bernie had the most comprehensive guitar blues collection in the world. He had a copy of anything found by the great Mississippi masters.

He had all three Son House Paramounts, a new Skip James "Devil Woman" about twenty Pattons, etc. Nick Perls bought that collection for the reported sum of $55,000.

Bernie was the champion of black sanctified music which he believed originated in Mississippi also.

He started the Herwin reissue program that lasted for many years, including some 78s of House, James and Willie Brown.

He died at age 73 but he was truly the pioneer for Delta Blues and Patton research.

I do not believe I would have worked as hard on researching the Mississippi blues without his encouragement or the occasional argument.

I have enclosed a copy of his collection [it was not enclosed] that was once offered to the University of Mississippi and they turned it down. Perhaps that was for the best as Perls used it as the nucleus of his Yazoo issues.

His many letters to me have been donated to the Ole Miss Blues Archive for future reference and study. They belong there. They are historically importand and will be used in future publications as primary reference material.

Gayle Dean Wardlow January 2000 Meridian, MS

P.S. Bernie's death leaves Pete Whelan as the lone pioneer in early "country blues" research and reissues. Perls died the the late 80s and McKune about the same period.

Pete Whelan's Obituary for Bernie:

NOTED JAZZ AUTHOR-RESEARCHER, BERNARD KLATZKO, DEAD AT 73

Bernard Klatzko, a longtime resident of Glen Cove, lost a 35-year battle after radiation treatments for lymphoma on November 15. Internationally prominent in the world of blues and jazz aficionados, Mr. Klatzko's most recent article was a detailed biography of the New Orleans legendary clarinetist, Johnny Dodds, most of whose life was previously unknown. It appears in the current issue of 78 Quarterly. Together, in 1965, Mr. Klatzko and author Gayle Dean Wardlow formed a partnership involving field trips and ground-breaking research on the life-histories of pioneer Mississippi Delta blues singers, such as Charlie Patton, Son House, Skip James, and Henry Sims. The result was published in a two-set LP booklet by Origin Jazz Library. Later, Mr. Klatzko started Herwin Records assembling and reissuing what critics consider the best and rarest blues and jazz from America's "Golden Age" (1926-1932). By 1978 Mr. Klatzko had also acquired what is considered to have been the premier, rarest 1920s jazz and country blues 78-rpm collection ever assembled in a single location. They included records from companies that were entrepreneurial and courageous, but long-forgotten, such as Paramount, Gennett, Okeh, Vocalion, and Black Patti. They were financially fragile, and, by 1932, were bankrupt. A New York University CPA graduate, Mr. Klatzko was also an authority in physical anthropology and a former jazz clarinetist He is survived by a son, Joseph Klatzko, a daughter, (Mrs.) Rose Ferris, and four grandchildren, Joseph, Brianna, and Jason Klatzko, and Terrence Burns. He is also survived by his many good friends from all over the world. He will be sorely missed.