Culminating Experience Resource Guide: Jazz Archives

Among their many collections, the Smithsonian houses the The National Museum of American History Archives, which documents America's popular music tradition. It holds the Duke Ellington Collection and several other music collections that you can find described on the Archive's website including The Sam DeVincent Collection of Illustrated American Sheet Music containing images, music, and lyrics of American life and culture between 1790 and the 1980s.

Billed as the world's foremost jazz archive and research facility. Part of Rutgers University Libraries. It was founded in 1952 by Marshall Stearns, a pioneer jazz scholar. The Institute is used by students from Rutgers and other institutions, teachers, scholars, authors, independent researchers, musicians, the media, record companies, libraries and other archives, and arts agencies.

The International Jazz Collections boasts world class jazz history archival and artifact collections of many great Jazz artists and critics, including complete collections of Lionel Hampton, Conte and Pete Candoli, and Leonard Feather, as well as partial collections of artists like Joe Williams, Dizzy Gillespie, Ray Brown, Ella Fitzgerald, and Stan Kenton.

Founded at Columbia College Chicago in 1983, The Center for Black Music Research is the only organization of its kind. It exists to illuminate the significant role that black music plays in world culture by serving as a nexus for all who value black music, by promoting scholarly thought and knowledge about black music, and by providing a safe haven for the materials and information that document the black music experience across Africa and the diaspora.

The Archives of African American Music and Culture (AAAMC) is a repository of materials covering a range of African American musical idioms and cultural expressions from the post-World War II era. The collections highlight popular, religious, and classical music, with genres ranging from blues and gospel to R&B and contemporary hip hop. The AAAMC supports the research of scholars, students, and the general public worldwide by providing access to holdings that include oral histories, photographs, musical and print manuscripts, audio and video recordings, educational broadcast programs, and the personal papers of individuals and organizations concerned with black music.

The Hogan Jazz Archive is the leading research center for the study of New Orleans jazz and related musical genres, including New Orleans ragtime, gospel, blues, rhythm and blues, and Creole songs. Among its holdings are 2,000 reels of oral history interviews with musicians, family members, and observers that document the stories surrounding the emergence of jazz in New Orleans from the late 19th century forward. Other holdings include sound recordings, film, photography, sheet music, personal papers, records of the American Federation of Musicians local 174-496, ephemera, and realia. Many Hogan Jazz Archive Oral Histories are available streaming online.

The Chicago Jazz Archive was founded in 1976 to preserve materials on the birth and early growth of Chicago jazz. Over time, and benefiting from a relationship with the Jazz Institute of Chicago, the collections have grown to span more than eight decades of Chicago and general jazz history. The collections include recordings, publications, photographs, articles, posters, programs, ticket stubs, and other ephemera of musicians, clubs, record companies, and jazz organizations.

The Los Angeles Jazz Institute houses and maintains one of the largest jazz archives in the world. All styles and eras are represented with a special emphasis on the preservation and documentation of jazz in Southern California. The Los Angeles Jazz Institute is housed on the campus of California State University, Long Beach. Research requests come from a variety of sources including musicians, scholars, members of the press, teachers, students and members of the general public.

Houses thousands of items related to the West Coast Jazz Revival that began in San Francisco about 1939. Collections include the Monterey Jazz Festival Collection, the Riverwalk Jazz Collection, the Jim Cullum Jazz Collection, and more.