I met Ben Selvin at a Record Research Associates meeting in NYC in 1980. Delightful guy.
Selvin is reputed to have made about 9000 recordings in one capacity or another. After making commercial records from 1909 into the early ‘thirties, he made recordings for Muzak and other outfits for many more years.
Selvin was, of course, Jewish. His son, Rick, became a Catholic in the 1990’s, and died a couple of years ago.
I knew Selvin lived up into the 1980s, which always seemed so surprising, since his heyday and fame was so far back. Nifty that you got to meet him! “Record Research”... was that the same outfit that always had that bi-monthly newsletter with auctions of records listed in tiny, tiny print?