UCSM Library awarded $350,000 to digitize prewar American music recordings

UC Santa Barbara The Current 

Considered one of the most fertile eras of American recording history, the 1920s and 1930s brought many now-legendary jazz, blues and gospel artists to the forefront, including Duke Ellington, Robert Johnson and Mitchell’s Christian Singers. To support the documentation, digitization and public streaming of thousands of those recordings, the National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded $349,993 to UCSB Library. 

The award will enable the library to add the discographic data for 12,000 recordings made by the American Record Corporation (ARC) to its Discography of American Historical Recordings (DAHR) project, and to digitize 8,500 recordings by ARC and its subsidiaries dating from 1922 to 1938 for free online access.

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