Nez Perce recording of CJ discovered

[David Robertson]

The following is excerpted from the "Boise Weekly", May 3, 2006.  --  Dave R


MAY 3, 2006
Old, Weird Idaho
Hearken to Idaho's earliest recordings, and meet the players who want you 
to listen back even further

BY NICHOLAS COLLIAS


"THIS IS SAM MORRIS TALKING" 

Dr. Loran Olsen has spent over 30 years cataloging and recording Nez Perce 
music, but he still only calls it his "hobby." While Olsen is perhaps the 
pre-eminent academic authority on Nez Perce music--indeed, my calls to 
various tribal agencies all resulted in referrals back to him--he says 
professional distance is essential to his authority. 

"My field is piano and composition," he says. "My doctor's degree is in 
hand. I have no vested interest in doing anything other than helping 
people." 

By "vested interest," of course, he is referring to money--the calling card 
of the numerous "shady characters" he has encountered in his hobby over the 
years. And so in 1987, when he learned that a dealer in Nez Perce artifacts 
had come into the possession of an authentic Edison Standard Model D 
recording machine, complete with 69 beeswax recording cylinders whose 
contents were unknown, Olsen had only one recourse--he had to make his 
hobby somebody else's vested interest ... preferably somebody not shady. 

After borrowing 10 of the cylinders, each of which can hold approximately 2 
minutes of recordings, and verifying their authenticity with the help of a 
Library of Congress sound engineer, Olsen says realized that the cylinders 
were "a priceless collection" of long-unheard Nez Perce music. 

"Our objective became simply to keep them in the Northwest," he 
recalls. "So many of these types of Indian artifacts simply disappear. They 
end up in Europe and places like that. We just didn't want that to happen." 

After no buyers could be found, the Washington State University Libraries 
stepped forward and made the purchase--sort of. Today, the delicate 
cylinders are on permanent loan to the Library of Congress. But digital 
copies of 61 of the 69 recordings (the other eight were either irreparably 
damaged or contained commercial musical recordings) are available at a tiny 
handful of Northwest locations--including a nondescript cardboard box in a 
back room of the new Idaho History Center. 

With funding help from both the Idaho Humanities Council and the Idaho 
Commission on the Arts, the recordings were digitally enhanced back in 
1994, and Olsen and a committee of Nez Perce elders, tribal historians and 
translators were able to delve into them. What they heard was this: 

"This is Sam Morris talking. He is saying: 'This is the way that the people 
played or had fun. This is a great feeling to know. Now the war dancers 
will take a moment of rest. All of you ladies, sing along. Take part in the 
singing. All you women, sing loud." 

Sam Morris, (his Nez Perce name translates to "Horse Blanket") was a 
mysterious Nez Perce man born in Washington in about 1856. He made the 
recordings between 1909 and 1912, probably in and around Lapwai, after 
already having led a life that typified the upheaval taking place in Native 
American culture in the late 19th century. 

On one hand, he was the half-brother of the warrior Yellow Wolf, a famed 
Nez Perce leader in the Nez Perce War during the 1870s. Yellow Wolf even 
makes an angry speech on one of Morris's recordings. On the other hand, 
Morris actually served as a scout for the U.S. Army in the early stages of 
the war, and Yellow Wolf would reportedly not enter Morris's house for many 
years because of it. Similarly, while Morris's recordings, most of which 
comprise a short spoken introduction followed by loud drumming, yelling and 
chanting, contain both tribal and Christian religious elements, he claimed 
in correspondence to have "no religion of any kind." 

"He didn't buy into either of the war factions, really. He was just kind of 
a loner," Olsen explains. "But he would be kind of a leader at the [Nez 
Perce] dances. We get an idea for what it was like at the turn of the 
century, as these young warriors became old, and as they came back and 
reminisced about all these experiences they had had." 

Morris's recordings, it should be noted, aren't the first musical 
recordings made in Idaho, or even the first recordings of Nez Perce music. 
Those titles go to ethnographer Herbert Spinden, who visited the Nez Perce 
village of Lapwai in 1907 and made 37 cylinder recordings, and famed 
anthropologist Alice Fletcher, who recorded Chief Joseph singing mournful 
war songs with other tribe members in Washington, D.C., in 1897. 

However, Morris's recordings, while less consistent in sound than Spinden's 
or Fletcher's, are the special for another reason: They are Idaho's first 
independent music. They're made for listening, not for study by outsiders. 
Spanning nearly an hour and a half, Morris's collection shows an artist's 
eye for capturing all the passion, contradiction and desperation in his 
embattled community. On one track, he captures his son, Jim Morris, playing 
the fiddle at a Nez Perce square dance. On another, he records a group of 
Nez Perce singing a Protestant hymn in Chinook Jargon, a trade language 
used by several regional tribes in the 19th century. The numerous war 
dances and "Hitting the Rawhide" songs (where women would sing all night 
before the tribe's men left for war) are packed with mournful, intimate 
wailing, but Morris also includes rare gems like imported songs from Sioux 
and Crow tribes, and even some occasional laughter--like when a man telling 
a hunting story says he shot a white-tailed deer and another man teases 
him, "Were there any witnesses?" 

Where Morris bought the Edison recorder, or where he even got the idea, 
isn't clear. The devices were widely available after the turn of the 
century, and Olsen estimates their cost to be about $30, plus 25 cents for 
each cylinder. 

"We're guessing that he must have heard Herbert Spinden making his 
recordings in 1907," Olsen says. "He was probably there watching. We can 
only guess." After the recordings were made, according to Olsen's 1999 
report "A Legacy From Sam Morris," the cylinders sat in Morris's attic for 
years, where his family occasionally listened to them--and children played 
with them as toys. After being officially "returned" in tape form to the 
Nez Perce tribe in 1995, they are today regarded as one of the most 
significant auditory "finds" in decades. 

"This is the only instance we know of where an Indian had his own machine 
and was recording music purely for his own purposes," Olsen says. "It's for 
his own family and his own joy." 

... 

To listen to free MP3s of selections from the Nez Perce music collection, 
including the oldest recorded music made in Idaho, or to hear the Williams' 
New Columbia Fiddlers performing songs from the Lewis and Clark era, visit 
www.boiseweekly.com. 

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