Primary Sources: African-Americans: Music

"The sheet music in this digital collection has been selected from the Sheet Music Collection at the John Hay Library at Brown University. The full collection consists of approximately 500,000 items, of which perhaps 250,000 are currently available for use. It is one of the largest collections of sheet music in any library in the United States. The sheet music, primarily vocal music of American imprint, dates from the 18th century to the present day, with the largest concentration of titles in the period 1840-1950."

A collection of items from JScholarship digital collections from Johns Hopkins University.

"The Blues Archive houses a large number of blues-related photographs. Taken by a variety of photographers, these images help document the blues from the beginnings of its popularity in the 1920s through today. The photographs highlight performers, festivals, and locations important to the blues.

The Blues Archive does not own copyright to the majority of these images and permissions must be obtained for their use. "

"This collection consists of oral histories regarding music in north Mississippi, with particular emphasis on gospel music."

"The Louisiana Sheet Music Collection is comprised of sheet music published in, or with topical relevance to, Louisiana (with an emphasis on New Orleans). Many important local composers are represented, including Basile Bares, Eugene Chassaignac, Edouard Dejan and Louis Moreau Gottschalk as well as several interesting, but lesser known, nineteenth-century composers. The collection covers 100 years in the history of local publishing (1838-1938) and represents a wide range of styles of popular and vernacular music, including Creole songs, nineteenth-century dance music, Confederate anthems, Mexican and Cuban danzas and danzon, ragtime, blues, and jazz . "

"At the core of the Louisiana State Museum's Music Collection is its internationally known Jazz Collection, the largest and most comprehensive of its kind in the world. The Jazz Collection chronicles the music and careers of the men and women who created, enhanced and continue in the tradition of New Orleans jazz at the local, national and international levels. It consists of instruments, pictorial sheet music, photographs, records, tapes, manuscripts and other items ranging from Louis Armstrong's first cornet to a 1917 disc of the first jazz recording ever made. It includes the world's largest collection of instruments owned and played by important figures in jazz- trumpets, cornets, trombones, clarinets and saxophones played by jazz greats such as Bix Beiderbecke, Edward "Kid" Ory, George Lewis, Sidney Bechet and Dizzy Gillespie." Some materials are available online

A series for young people of our time, it embraces classical music as well as jazz. After each performance, Marsalis illuminates the music in terms that everyone can understand, using language that is clear and simple, and infused with the colourful vernacular of Jazz. Musical performances include 'The Nutcracker', Prokofiev´s 'Classical Symphony', 'Stars and Stripes Forever' and more.

"Ralston Crawford was a painter, lithographer and photographer. " Tulane University provides an online collection of some of his photographs related to jazz music and culture.

"The Ralston Crawford Collection of Jazz Photography comprises some 800 black-and-white documentary photographs by Canadian-born painter, lithographer, and photographer Ralston Crawford (1906-1978), culled from his New Orleans work. Enamored of New Orleans music and culture, Crawford often made field trips to the city between the late 1940s and the early 1960s, photographing second-line parades, funerals with music, church services, night clubs, streetscapes and signage as well as portraits of local musicians and bands."
Tulane University

"Many of the minstrel songs contained in this digital collection are extremely offensive. However, it is impossible to adequately understand American racial attitudes of the late 19th- and early 20th-centuries, without examining some blatantly racist ideas. Most of the music featured in this collection is not fringe material, but some of the most popular songs of their times."

"In 1967 Mrs. Walter Lyons wrote letters to a number of her husband’s favorite jazz musicians, asking them to surprise her husband by wishing him happy birthday. This scrapbook contains letters, postcards, and signed photographs extending birthday greetings to Mr. Walter Lyons. Musicians include Louis Armstrong, Ray Charles, Chuck Mangione, J. J. Johnson, Benny Golson, Sonny Rollins, Phil Woods, Wayne Shorter, and others."