Help Document the Legacy of Ed Bickert – Memories and Materials Wanted

[beyondthefrets]

Hi everyone,

My name is Zakk Jones. I’m a professional jazz guitarist and educator based in Ohio, and I’ve been doing an extensive research project on the life and music of Ed Bickert. A big part of my work is a deep dive into his playing, recordings, and influence—some of which I share on my YouTube channel “Beyond The Frets,” where I’ve posted detailed analyses, transcriptions, and breakdown videos focused specifically on Ed.

As part of this project, I’ve conducted many interviews with some of Ed’s closest collaborators and colleagues, but I’m always looking to speak with more people who knew him, worked with him, or heard him regularly. I’m very happy to receive recommendations or introductions to others I should talk to.

I’m currently looking to connect with anyone who has personal anecdotes or memories of Ed (on or off the bandstand), photographs, rare or private recordings, radio/TV captures, video, gig posters, or any other related ephemera from across his career. This could include club dates in Canada, tour stops, festival performances, studio sessions, or informal/home recordings.
If you’re open to sharing anything—or even just pointing me toward someone who might have materials or stories—I would be very grateful. I’m happy to properly credit any contributions and to discuss how any audio or visual materials might be used or archived.

Feel free to reply here, or contact me directly at:
edbickertresearch@gmail.com

And if you’d like to get a sense of my work and approach, you can find my Ed Bickert content here:
https://www.youtube.com/@beyondthefrets/featured
Thank you for helping preserve and document Ed’s legacy.

—Zakk

[Dan Gould]

Hi Zakk,

I applaud your effort to elevate Bickert and document his career ... I can't help you there but I have spent 5 years or so documenting and elevating tenorist Percy France so I can relate.

Hopefully there are people here who can help - the one thing I can say is that FB and google were the key elements of my efforts regarding Percy.  If you haven't already I would identify musicians who knew Bickert and try to find them on FB.  I also found simple searches of "Percy France" brought up posts that led to information about him or Remembrances that I was able to add to the website. 

And on Google, image and text searches led to a lot of information about festivals and gigs. (And you won't run into the problem that "Percy France" was also an important city during WWII which led to many unhelpful hits!)

The interwebs is a pretty remarkable thing.

Good luck.