The Ouija Board Of Advisers

Jerry Garcia                Michael Hedges                       Levon Helm

Lee Allen                      Vince Welnick

U. Utah Phillips          Lux Interior

Richard Berry              Mark Vann

Merle Saunders           Richard Manuel

Fritz Richmond            Rick Danko

Norton Buffalo              James D. Houston

 

Several of our Advisory Board members have officially left this worldly plane, but can still communicate with us via the scientifically proven real magic of phonograph records, which in essence, are an invention for storing the artist’s voices, souls and performances. All we have to do is place the needle in the groove and call up their spirits whenever we want to hear them. We call this our “Ouija Board of Directors,” even though Edison’s marvelous invention of the phonograph has eliminated the need for the Ouija Board to contact those departed spirits who made records. These departed souls will be available only as long as their recorded legacy is properly preserved and protected, which is one of the primary missions of the AMHF.

Glenn Allen Howard  was the founder and curator of the American Musical Heritage Foundation. He developed an encyclopedic knowledge of the full spectrum of America’s recorded history over more than four decades of collecting and archiving one of the world’s largest private phonograph record libraries. Glenn established his voluminous collection as the Musician’s Reference Library in 1970 and has become world renowned for his expertise and talent at finding rare and unusual recordings. He provided countless samples of both original source material and inspirational recordings to musicians, collectors and educators worldwide. In 1992, Glenn established the AMHF as a 501(c)3 non-profit corporation in the State of California for the preservation of his own archives and those of other musicians and collectors. He continued to amass an awe-inspiring amount of vinyl, absorbing the collections of such noted as figures as Bing Crosby, Jerry Colonna, William Saroyan, Ron “Pig Pen McKernan, Shirley Temple Black, Eleanor Powell, Arthur Godfrey, Tom Lehrer, Charles Lindbergh, Phil Elwood, Stanley Kilarr, and hundreds of others. Prior to becoming a full time collector, Glenn had a “real job” at NASA which he left at the tender age of twenty one. He was fiendishly devoted to preserving the analog recordings of the last 119 years which he believes are the most important component of our cultural treasures. Glenn remains the Foundation’s key resource.

John Perry Barlow   originally became involved with the AMHF in the early 1990s, when he helped secure the support of the Grateful Dead and the Rex Foundation on behalf of the AMHF. He was an outspoken believer that reality, like vinyl, is analog. John was most widely known for his work both as champion of civil liberties in Cyberspace and as a songwriter for the Grateful Dead. In 1990, along with his friends Mitch Kapor and John Gilmore, he co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization which promotes freedom of expression in digital media. He served as Vice Chairman and member of its board of directors. John was an emeritus fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, and lectures internationally on subjects relating to the virtualization of society. He was a recognized consultant and commentator on the futility of copyright in the Digital Age. John has written extensively for Wired, as well as for the The New York Times, George, Nerve, and onto the open canvas of the internet. He was engaged with a group of NASA scientists in starting a company to turn algae, CO2, and sewage into jetfuel.

Leigh Hill   was perhaps the longest-standing ally of the AMHF. He had known Glenn Howard since they were in high school together in Palo Alto, California. Leigh was a well-known radio personality who originally borrowed records from Glenn to play on the air while he further developed his own collection. He specialized in American folk and country music, but collected a wide variety of other genres, eras, and styles. Leigh had the distinction of having had one of the country’s longest running bluegrass radio shows, Down On The ‘Pataphysical Farm. His show was a feature at KUSP FM in Santa Cruz, California, starting in 1972, and ran until their format change in 2008. Leigh had degrees in both history and mathematics, is a paralegal, and had served on the boards of directors for the Santa Cruz Bluegrass Society and KUSP FM. He spent most of his time teaching and making sure the world continues to be a safe place for vinyl records. He was the second member of the Board of Directors to have been a Jeopardy contestant.

Levon Helm

“Most rock journalism is people who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read.”

-Frank Zappa