Thirty years ago at Hamilton College in Kirkland, N.Y., Milt Fillius Jr. and his fiancé, Nelma “Nikki” Nenneau, teamed up with jazz singer Joe Williams to launch an oral history project that eventually blossomed as the Fillius Jazz Archive.
Now celebrating three decades of producing more than 500 videotaped interviews with jazz performers, arrangers and critics, the Fillius Jazz Archive is busily embracing 21st Century technologies, according to Monk Rowe, its longtime director.
“We currently share this resource on the Fillius Jazz YouTube channel, my Jazz Backstory podcast, and at jazzarchive.hamilton.edu,” Rowe said. “There will be new ways in the future as we make choices about employing new technologies.”
A saxophonist and bandleader, Rowe has guided the archive since day one in March 1995. Over the ensuing years, he has conducted scores of interviews with jazz legends.
“From 1995 until 2020, we traveled around the country with lots of gear, meeting artists in person,” Rowe remembered.
Nowadays most interviews are conducted via Zoom, which has allowed the archive to connect with musicians in Europe and elsewhere. Recent sessions include Arturo Sandoval, Darius Brubeck, and Karolina Strassmeyer.
And under Rowe’s visionary leadership, the archive refuses to discriminate based on some strict definition of jazz. “We’ve expanded into other areas and met with versatile players like Paul Shaffer, Lou Marini, and Ruthie Foster,” Rowe reported.
Reflecting on the archive’s origins, Rowe fondly recalls the Fillius couple’s boundless enthusiasm.
“Milt Fillius Jr. had graduated from Hamilton in 1944, a member of the so-called ‘crazy-mixed-up years’ during which Hamilton men interrupted their college careers to serve in WWII,” Rowe explained. In the U.S. Navy, Fillius served on submarines, and as a civilian he became a successful businessman.
“He was a lifelong jazz fan, especially of music and players from the 1930s and ’40s,” Rowe recalled. “Milt and Nikki were sweethearts in high school, who then lead separate lives in which each raised families of their own. Eventually they married in their later years,” Rowe said.
It was on a spring day in 1996, a year after establishing the oral history project, when the couple exchanged their marriage vows in the historic Hamilton College Chapel. Milt Fillius died in 2002, followed ten years later by Nikki.
“Milt was like an old-fashioned patron of the arts,” Rowe said. “He faithfully attended jazz parties across the country and became close friends with the Georgia-born vocalist Joe Williams, who helped launch the jazz oral history effort in 1995.”
Two years earlier, in 1993, in the newly completed Fillius Events Barn, Milt Fillius staged his version of a jazz party at the college’s FallComing, now an ongoing tradition in its 37th year.
FallComing artists in the last few years have included Wendell Brunious, John Pizzarelli, Catherine Russell and Art Baron and the Duke’s Men. The next FallComing Jazz date is
Sept. 26, 2025, featuring a band fronted by saxophonist “Blue” Lou Marini.
Over the years, Fillius arranged for 13 jazz artists to receive honorary degrees from Hamilton, including Clark Terry, Dick Hyman and Marian McPartland.
Over the past three decades, Rowe has met many of his heroes. Among his list of highlights are and interview he did of pianist Dave Brubeck in his home in 2001. “He played me a work-in-progress for me, asking my opinion,” Rowe remembered.
“I once conducted interviews on a Jazz Cruise on which I witnessed Joe Williams interview Oscar Peterson and Milt Hinton.”
He had the pleasure of hanging out with members of The Statesmen of Jazz and Harlem Blues and Jazz Band. “It was tremendous to listen to their poignant and hilarious memories,” he said.
“Generally, I met most of my musical heroes, the players I listened to repeatedly on LPs, players whose names I read over and over as they moved from band to band. With very few exceptions, they lived up to my hero worship.”
The collection generally focuses on artists associated with mainstream jazz and the swing era. Former members of bands led by Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Woody Herman, Benny Goodman, Stan Kenton, and the Dorsey brothers are well represented. Significant soloists and arrangers from small ensembles dating from the 1930s have also been interviewed.
“The holdings are particularly viable for material pertaining to the learning process employed by young jazz musicians prior to the establishment of jazz education programs, and the realities of making a career in the jazz world,” Rowe said.
Just as Milt and Nikki Fillius made a productive and forward-thinking team, Rowe and the archive are enhanced by the work of his wife, Romy Britell. She has transcribed all of those 500 interviews and she oversees the archive’s youtube.com channel. She and Rowe also co-wrote a book, Jazz Tales from Jazz Legends (Couper Press).
Fillius Jazz Archive interviews are cataloged in WorldCat, and are available on loan in DVD format, from the Hamilton College Library, via Interlibrary Loan. Contact your local library’s Interlibrary Loan department to have them request specific items via WorldCat Resource Sharing or ALA Form; hamilton.edu/campuslife/arts-at-hamilton/jazzarchive; 315-859-4071.
Russ Tarby is based in Syracuse NY and has written about jazz for The Syncopated Times, The Syracuse New Times, The Jazz Appreciation Society of Syracuse (JASS) JazzFax Newsletter, and several other publications.
