Recorded Sound Archives

A new semester is full of possibilities. As students return to campus and dive into new subjects, ideas, and experiences, there are countless opportunities to discover something unexpected. Sometimes, those discoveries come from listening to the sounds of the past.

At the Recorded Sound Archives, history comes alive through recorded sound. From music and popular culture to religious traditions and cultural heritage, our collections offer a unique window into the people, places, and moments that shaped earlier generations. Read More About This…

Happy Birthday, Louis Armstrong! Today would have been Louis Armstrong’s 121st birthday. Did you know that a Jewish immigrant family helped Armstrong buy his first horn?

In a memoir from 1970 titled Louis Armstrong and the Jewish Family in New Orleans, LA the year of 1907 Armstrong described his time working for the Karnofsky family, a local Lithuanian-Jewish family who hired him to do odd jobs for their peddling business. Read More About This…

The Second World War waged around the globe from 1939 to 1945.

The impact of WWII on the daily lives of Americans and Europeans cannot be overstated. As the atrocities of the Nazis raged in Europe, American men were drafted and called to war. American music of the WWII era spoke to the soldiers far from home and also to those they left behind. Read More About This…