LIP & Keith Knect 2

[Steven Vigeant]

The follow-up interview with Keith is set up for Sunday. I'm trying to prepare. We're open to topic starters. I just found two holes in my SignCraft collection, which fall right on the two most important articles about Keith. #10 (1982 collection) & #63. Is there any chance someone can .pdf me the profile and follow-up that are in those two issues. It would be a big help. Extra credit for finding one of his ST appearances. Cover issue? Truck of the month? Who is the archivist on this? Can ST pull that sort of stuff?
Thanks, Steve

[Kent Smith]

I would have to look if I have time into my magazines. ST does not have an archivist per se, especially anyone with time to wade through the colleciton. I have done my own searching there before and it is tedious at best.

As to Keith...ask him about the old Hollywood Sign Co., doing shocards various places, his last period in Calif. (we did a lecture circuit together then), time in Denver, his frindships with the likes of Big John Brassell, the Seelanders and other old timers of that era, Toledo and the changes that effected his business in the rust belt, he was at the Moore, OK meet as well as KC in '83 when things were beginning to move for the Letterheads.

[Mike Jackson]

Steven,
You might want to contact Keith again on these requests. More than likely, he has tear sheets or even full copies of the issues in which he had articles or photos. They might just be in a file folder in his cabinet, but I bet he has them.

SignCraft has a lot of the later issues stored as computer documents, but the earliest ones were surely done with the old traditional paste ups. Getting a PDF of some of them would be difficult except for a full page scan of each page. I have found the brothers at SC to be extremely helpful and giving when it comes to projects like this, so give them a call or drop them an email with the requests.

Back when Tod Swormstedt was editor at Signs of the Times, he could get duplicate copies of old magazines. Some of that asset is still available, but I am not sure if they have anyone there that tackles this kind of assignment. Tod told me he used to have to keep watch on palettes of old magazines because someone would want to put them in the dumpster during spring cleaning each year. I believe he said some were ruined by leaks in the roof and so forth.

Going back to Keith's articles, Tod would usually send half a dozen or more issues of the magazines to us when we had an article in the magazine. Keith might have an extra copy lying around.

Good luck on the LIP project.

Mike Jackson

[Mike Jackson]

Out of curiosity, I pulled out a couple of thick file folders of pages I clipped out of ST and SC over the years. I see an article about subcontracting with Keith being one of the people being interviewed. The issue was Oct. 1991 on page 83 and 84. There is also a photo of Keith in his "old-timers" uniform at the Kansas City meeting covered in the Aug 1983 issue of ST.

Those folders of clippings certainly has some "walk down memory lane" aspects to them!

Mike Jackson

[Steven Vigeant]

Mike, Thanks for the ideas. I'll study all of the comments before I speak with Keith, or rather listen to Keith. What a blast and half! The project will be focusing on Moore at some point. I'd like to do site visits someday and go over pictures and what not with you and others, but that seems far off. In the meantime, is there anything archived such as a program or sign-up sheet or registration list? I'd even be interested in paying for old negatives to be reprinted if that would be possible or at least a couple scans of the best ones. Have you ever seen the annotated poster of Bird's birthday in Harlem, with all of the jazz legends all pointed out. Don't we need one of those for the train group picture at Moore. I'm just sayin'.