Title: Scotty Piper Collection, ca. 1920-1969

Storage: Box Lot (6 boxes, horizontal)

Accession number: G1981.0087

This descriptive inventory includes:
1. Description of collection
2. Container list
3. Inventory of entertainers A-Z
4. Inventory of sports personalities
5. Inventory of entertainers/biography A-Z, oversize
6. Materials transferred to other CHS collections
7. Xeroxes of dispersed broadsides
8. David Jackson obituary
9. "The Dancing Tailor of 47th Street" READER article

Description of Collection:
The Scotty Piper Collection consists primarily of photographs of black entertainers collected by Louis "Scotty" Piper, the "legendary tailor of East 47th Street." Piper's career as a tailor began in 1925, nine years after he moved to Chicago from New Orleans at the age of twelve. As a tailor, Piper has outfitted many famous black entertainers, including Nat King Cole, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Earl Fatha Hines, and T-Bone Walker. Collecting photographs of his customers and other celebrities became a hobby for Piper and the result is the 300 photographs represented in this collection. Included are portraits of singers, dancers, musicians, actors, and even a few sports personalities. Some of these photographs, however, were acquired from promoter J.W. Monk Harris. Personal photographs of Piper, his family, and friends reflect Piper's involvement with social, church, and civic affairs.

An alphabetical list of entertainers has been prepared and Xerox cross-references of well-known celebrities have been filed in the Master Vertical File. It remains for many of the photographs in the collection to be identified.

Material has been transferred to the Printed Collections, Manuscript Collections, Decorative Arts, and Costume Collection. Broadsides have been dispersed within the Graphics Collection. Photographs taken by photographer David Jackson have been xeroxed and the originals filed throughout the Scotty Piper Collection. In 1975 a small exhibit of some of the photographs in the collection were displayed at CHS. Xeroxes of these photographs are located in the CHS Archives folder on exhibits. For additional biographical information on Piper, consult the accession folder or Printed Collections clipping file.

Location: Box Lot
Broadside File

Inventory by: Maureen O'Brien Will, October 1983

Container List:
Box 1 Entertainers A-I (complete list below)
Box 2 Entertainers J-Z (complete list below)
Box 3
1 Female entertainers, unidentified
2 Male entertainers, unidentified
3 Male & female entertainers, unidentified
4 Children, unidentified
5 Miscellaneous
Box 4
1 Scotty Piper, family & friends, identified
2 Scotty Piper & others, unidentified
3 Sports personalities
Box 5 Scotty Piper & others, unidentified
Box 6 (complete list below)
1 Xeroxes of David Jackson photographs
2 Scotty Piper, entertainers, identified, oversize
3 Unidentified oversize photographs

Box 1 Entertainers A-H