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Category: Special Collections

Woman with dark hair, fancy dress and pearls with eyes closed and mouth slightly open, singing

In the meadow we can build a historic snowman

Posted by: Pat Padua

The Mid-Atlantic United States has weathered an unusual amount of snow this winter.  In the Muse rang in the season with wintry songs to while away the eve of a storm that left the Washington, D.C. area with a blanket 19 inches thick. Today’s forecast predicts a storm to match or exceed that total. The …

Woman with dark hair, fancy dress and pearls with eyes closed and mouth slightly open, singing

Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr.

Posted by: Pat Padua

Martin Luther King, Jr. was born on January 15, 1929.  Let us celebrate the man, his dream, and our reality. From the Music Division, sing along to “We shall overcome.” On American Memory, read about The Civil Rights Era. Read more about Dr. King on Today in History.

Woman with dark hair, fancy dress and pearls with eyes closed and mouth slightly open, singing

The Big Beat

Posted by: Pat Padua

The photographs of  William P. Gottlieb (1917-2006 ) are a priceless document of the jazz era in the ’30’s and ’40’s.  In the Muse will occasionally highlight selections from this collection. Today we celebrate the birthdays of two legendary jazz drummers. When the Music Division prepared the Gottlieb collection for digitization in the ’90’s, Gottlieb worked …

Woman with dark hair, fancy dress and pearls with eyes closed and mouth slightly open, singing

In Memoriam: Edward Beach

Posted by: Pat Padua

The Music Division was saddened to learn that legendary jazz broadcaster Edward Beach passed awayon Christmas Day.  Beach was the host of “Just Jazz,” a radio program which ran in New York City from the early 1960s to the mid-1970s.  The Library of Congress is home to the Edward Beach Collection, which consists of his broadcast …

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Jazz Collections at Library of Congress

Posted by: Larry Appelbaum

The discovery five years ago of the Thelonious Monk-John Coltrane 1957 Carnegie Hall concert tapes focused attention on the deep jazz collections here at the Library of Congress (http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2005/05-090.html). The tapes, found while preserving the Voice of America Collection, were subsequently issued by Blue Note Records and became a sensation in the jazz world. Since …

Woman with dark hair, fancy dress and pearls with eyes closed and mouth slightly open, singing

You say it’s your birthday

Posted by: Pat Padua

When we’re not awarding honors to Knighted former Beatles, we in the Music Division are caretakers of one of the great performing arts archives in the world.  It’s an embarrassment of riches, and a lifetime could be spent studying just the online collections in the Performing Arts Encyclopedia (the website formerly known as I Hear …