One Woman in a Hundred: Edna Phillips and the Philadelphia Orchestra

Afterword

AfterwOrD Edna Phillips’s original plan for her memoir was to keep its focus on her years in the orchestra, and I have stuck to that plan with her biography, but she and Sam accomplished so much in their lives that I would be derelict if I didn’t give at least some attention to their many achievements later on.  Sam Rosenbaum did indeed pick up the strands of his career after he returned from the war, and his achievements in later life were impressive. At the end of 1948, the U.S. Secretary of Labor Maurice J. Tobin named him to the position of independent trustee of the Music Performance Trust Funds for the Recording Industries. The position was created as part of a collective bargaining agreement between the record companies of North America and the American Federation of Musicians to settle a national strike that prevented the making of records for most of 1948. The AFM had staged the strike because recordings had reduced the need for live performances by musicians and drastically cut the number of jobs available to them. In the strike settlement, an independent fund was created in accord with the provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act, which was passed by the U.S. Congress the year before. The record companies agreed to pay a small royalty on each record sold, which would then be kept in a nonprofit fund for the public good. It was Sam’s responsibility to organize and administer the accumulated assets. Long active in labor relations, Sam had served as chairman of the Labor Committee of the National Association of Broadcasters when he Welsh_Text.indd 205 10/22/12 8:55 AM 206 6 Afterword was president of radio station WFIL in Philadelphia in 1937. In that role, he negotiated the national plan of settlement with the AFM to avert a nationwide strike of network musicians. Following that, in 1941, the U.S. Department of Labor called him in to settle the differences between the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington, D.C., and its musicians in a strike that had caused the cancellation of the National Symphony’s 1940–41 season. The New York Times included the following in its announcement of Sam’s appointment to the trustee position in 1948: “Expressing himself specifically on the matter of records, Mr. Rosenbaum said . . . it was not surprising that musicians should protest the loss of employment resulting from the use of disks which they themselves had made. He added that ‘there is an economic and human problem here which must be approached with tolerance and understanding.’”1 Sam’s appreciation of both the manufacturers’and the musicians’sides in the dispute led James Caesar Petrillo, president of theAFM, to endorse his appointment. Edna loved the way Petrillo gave his approval, which she characterized as “If he’s alright wid youse guys, he’s alright wid me.” In his role as trustee, Sam set up the operating structure of the Music Performance Trust Funds and, during his tenure, distributed over $100 million of royalty income to musicians across the United States and Canada who gave free concerts in schools, parks, and other public venues. “You wonder why I have so many friends?” he once asked Edna with a twinkle in his eye. After retiring as trustee in 1967, Sam finally had time to devote to his lifelong fascination with languages. In the ensuing years, he completed three important translations: Maurice Ravel: Variations on His Life and Work by H. H. Stuckenschmidt (Calder and Boyers, 1969); Theodora, Empress of Byzantium by Charles Diehl (Ungar Publishing Co., 1972); and Euripides, by Siegfried Melchinger (Ungar Publishing Co., 1973). After that, he began to explore the possibility of writing a biography of his old associate and friend Arthur Judson. He was in the process of gathering information on Judson when he died on November 9, 1972, at the age of eighty-four. Before Edna Phillips ever met Sam Rosenbaum, she told a reporter from the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin that she didn’t see why she shouldn’t marry as long as she chose the right husband.2 One would have to say after observing their long, successful marriage that she chose well.  Welsh_Text.indd 206 10/22/12 8:55 AM 207 6 Afterword As Edna Phillips foresaw when she left the orchestra, she never did step out of the world of music. She continued...