David Porter, via Dick Hihn, wrote in part:

>cri plans to release a CD with over an hour of Ives' own recordings from
>the 1930s and 1940s some time this year.  Some of this was on the 1974
>5-LP Columbia box set, but this CD will include Ives' complete extant
>recordings.

I presume at least some of these are the recordings made by the late
Mary Shipman Howard (in her studio in 1943), the pioneering engineer for
NBC.  Howard was interviewed by Vivian Perlis for the book "Charles Ives
Remembered," Yale Univ.  Press, 1974.  I have heard second hand that Howard
felt cheated after the Columbia project and wanted to have nothing more to
do with the it.  Perlis says in her introduction to the Howard interview
that she "recorded Charles Ives and many of the great composers,
conductors, and musical lights of the day" and that Howard said
"...people...came to have me make recordings for them." [She was the
first private person to have a Scully lathe.]

There are a number of important questions to be answered.  Did CRI get the
tapes for this project from Sony/Columbia, or were they able to find the
originals? This is important because, as far as I know, Howard's archive
of recordings is not only lost, but there is no list of who or whatever
was recorded.  I heard via Ed Berlin that Perlis was told the list included
"Ellington, Toscanini, Milton Berle...." Howard's recordings, according to
Oliver Daniels (BMI) were supposed left to the Manhattan School of Music,
but Perlis checked and no one knew anything about them.  Perlis then went
back and Daniels said maybe me meant the Mannes School of Music.  Perlis
checked there with no luck.  Returning to see Daniels, he had died.  Can
anyone shine any light on this? If any recordings she made were of the
quality of Ives', they are a potential goldmine of historical practice.

Jim Hunsley