9 of the Best Recordings From the Library of Congress' New Music Service

9 of the Best Recordings From the Library of Congress' New Music Service

The Library of Congress launched a project to make thousands of recordings from 1901 to 1925 available online yesterday. The collection documents the explosion of recorded popular music styles. The Library named the new free streaming service the National Jukebox.

A collection like this is daunting. How do you even know what you're looking for? We asked the lead curator of the Jukebox, Gene DeAnna, to create a playlist for us of some of his favorite recordings as an entry point for the collection. It's a great tour through some of the key types of recordings that you can hear, which were all originally put out by Sony's Victor Talking Machine Company.

One thing to note about all the recordings is that they were made without any modern production. "You're talking about no amplification or electronic tone control," DeAnna said. "The engineers had to locate instruments in the studio in front of this horn. They got very, very good at it."

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/05/9-of-the-best-recordings-from-the-library-of-congress-new-music-service/238749/

About the National Jukebox

The Library of Congress presents the National Jukebox, which makes historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge. The Jukebox includes recordings from the extraordinary collections of the Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation and other contributing libraries and archives.

Find out more about the National Jukebox project

http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/

http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/recordings/detail/id/1480

and more here:

http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/search/results?fq=take_genre_id%3A18

that's just so wild.

One actor who was trying to do the whole minstrel thing (offensive, but worth listening to) was clearly Eastern European. What a weird clash of cultures.

Some of the circa-1900 people (the older ones) who are recorded must have had grandparents born in the late 1700s. The people recorded talked to people (their grandparents) who knew and talked to people (their parents and grandparents) who lived before the French Revolution and American Revolution. Mind boggling.

(By William Howard Taft): http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/recordings/detail/id/1484

Thanks for that great link! We'll ALL be spending many hours mining it!

Makes me feel like I am way back in time listening to a radio broadcast - speaking of which, here is a link to many old radio shows:

http://www.radiolovers.com/

LOL...
Sony?

I know the corporate inheritance is that Sony owns these recordings now, but phrasing it that way is pretty dumb.

Just amazing.

k/r and thanks!

http://www.archive.org/

Here you can even download mp3s of the great old songs.

Listen to this collection of 78rpm records and cylinder recordings released in the early 20th century. These recordings were contributed to the Archive by users through the Open Source Audio collection.


http://www.archive.org/details/78rpm

And there are some cool recordings of presidents too.

Thanks for the link - bookmarked!

http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/recordings/detail/id/7491/autoplay/true

Rudy Wiedoeft was goooooood.

I like! :) Very relaxing and yet upbeat.