Finding (and making) musical treasures at the Vault

From the outside, the neutral-colored building that was once a bank branch is a nondescript structure on a nondescript stretch of the White Horse Pike in Berlin. But, as if to illustrate the old “book/cover” saying, it is actually as extraordinary on the inside as it is ordinary on the outside.

The generic, forgettable exterior obscures the building’s status as, arguably, South Jersey’s (if not the entire Philly region’s) finest small-scale, live-music venue, as well as a repository for a crucial chunk of American pop culture.

The complex is called The Vault, a nod to its past life. Its main space can accommodate up to 120 people and boasts superb acoustics and sight lines. Its intimacy is second-to-none among regional listening rooms of similar size. Since its 2015 opening, The Vault has hosted scores of live performances representing multiple musical forms (although the emphasis tends to be on rock and its sub-genres). Among the acts who have performed there are Leigh Nash, lead singer of the band Sixpence None the Richer; longtime Billy Joel drummer Liberty DeVito, who has appeared with his band The Slim Kings; Grammy-nominated singer Kim Richey, and Sarah Lee Guthrie, daughter of Arlo and granddaughter of Woody.

But it is The Vault’s status as a museum of recorded sound that makes it truly special. It houses a treasure trove of some 10,000 recordings, many of which date back to the earliest days of publicly distributed recorded music. Included in the collection are works by operatic titan Enrique Caruso and jazz giants Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong. Among the individual items are a 1918 version of Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade” by the Philadelphia Orchestra under the direction of legendary conductor, Leopold Stokowski, and a 1939 unreleased version of the song, “When I Awake” by Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra with vocals by a young singer named Frank Sinatra.

There is also a song by an ensemble called the Haydn Quartet from 1904 which, quite possibly, contains the first known use of the phrase “rock ’n’ roll.”

The Vault is the brainchild/headquarters of Camden native Graham Alexander, a singer-composer whose resume includes two stints on Broadway performing as Paul McCartney in the Beatles tribute productions, “Rain” and “Let It Be” (for which the righthanded musician learned to play left-handed bass in the manner of McCartney). It is he who owns not only The Vault, but the rights to the Victor Talking Machine Co. name, as well as those of Victrola, Camden and His Master’s Voice, He even owns the likeness of Little Nipper (just the dog, not the famed corporate logo that also features an antique record player with a large sound bell).