The Charles N. Huggins Project: The World’s Largest Online Collection of San Francisco Jazz

In the late 1970s, Bay Area banker Jim Goggin, a longtime friend and fan of Turk Murphy, envisioned a “Turk Murphy Jazz Foundation” – a jazz museum which would include photos, recordings, posters and other memorabilia from Murphy’s career.  As Goggin acquired more items from other sources, he expanded the scope to include other Bay Area jazzmen. Thus, the actual title of the organization became the San Francisco Traditional Jazz Foundation (SFTJF). The Foundation was established in 1981, and Goggin’s book Turk Murphy: Just for the Record was published by the SFTJF in 1982.  Eventually, Goggin’s ever-growing collection outstripped the available storage space in his home so he transported everything to a rented garage in Oakland. In the 1990s, the San Francisco Traditional Jazz Foundation got a new chairman – William Carter – and an archivist – John Gill.  Gill oversaw the relocation of Goggin’s collection to a larger storage facility in Oakland. By that time Turk Murphy’s widow Harriet had donated Murphy’s personal collection of recordings, photos, band arrangements, sc