[Dixielandjazz] Library of Congress National Jukebox

[Robert Ringwald]

National Jukebox Opens Doors to Musical Past
by Anita Wadhwani
Nashville Tennesseean, May 28, 2011
The latest innovation in streaming music reaches back nearly 100 years for its inspiration.
The National Jukebox launched this month by the Library of Congress provides public
access to more than 10,000 songs recorded between 1901 and 1925. Some of the music
has been out of the public domain for 100 years.
The collection provides access to Sony Music Entertainment's entire pre-1925 catalog,
including recordings from Columbia Records, Okeh and Victor Talking Machine Co.
The music, whose audio retains the scratchy original sound of an old gramophone,
can be streamed online for free, although it can't be downloaded.
Still, it provides access to an era of American music that witnessed the birth of
country music, jazz and the blues, the voices of Bessie Smith and Al Jolson, ragtime,
opera, gospel, spoken word, whistling and yodeling.
Holling Smith-Borne, director of the Anne Potter Wilson Music Library at Vanderbilt's
Blair School of Music, said the treasure trove presents tremendous educational opportunities
for colleges and universities as well as K-12 schools, which haven't had the chance
to introduce students to much of the country's audio history until now.
Some country, but no Nashville recordings
But it also presents the first significant crack in access to historic American recordings
that a host of complicated state and federal copyright rules have, until now, prevented
the public from hearing.
At Vanderbilt, for example, the music library has 22,000 recordings, some rare and
some in delicate condition, Smith-Borne said.
The university also has a unique trove of regional recordings that may not exist
in any form elsewhere -- some of which no one has been able to listen to in years.
Even preserving the music -- digitizing aging, fragile 78 rpm records to ensure the
sound is saved -- is fraught with legal complications. All music before a 1972 revamp
of copyright laws is subject to complex state and federal copyright standards that
require tracking down original songwriters' and performers' descendants. Many of
those recordings will not legally be in the public domain until 2067 under those
rules.
The National Jukebox collection is still owned by its original copyright holders.
In addition to Sony Music, they include the University of California at Santa Barbara
and private collectors David Giovannoni and Mark Lynch, who have contributed old
and rare recordings.
But the Library of Congress has all rights to stream the entire collection.
Users can locate albums by title, artist, genre, language, place, date range and
target audience. There are 73 pieces classified as "country," three dozen language
categorizations and an invitation to search the collection for recordings made on
a birthday or special occasion. The recordings were made in dozens of cities, although
none from Nashville is yet online.
Experts at the Library of Congress created playlists, and members of the public are
invited to submit their own suggested playlists, which can be embedded and shared
on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.


--Bob Ringwald
www.ringwald.com
Fulton Street Jazz Band
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H. L. Mencken 1880-1956