Duke Ellington Collection
The collection documents Duke Ellington's career primarily through orchestrations (scores and parts), music manuscripts, lead sheets, transcriptions, and sheet music. It also includes concert posters, concert programs, television, radio, motion picture and musical theater scripts, business records, correspondence, awards, as well as audiotapes, audiodiscs, photographs, tour itineraries, newspaper clippings, magazines, caricatures, paintings, and scrapbooks.
Sam DeVincent Collection of Illustrated American Sheet Music, Series 4: Songwriters Volumes I and II
Sam DeVincent loved music and art and began collecting sheet music with lithographs at an early age. Series 4: Songwriters: A "songwriter" for this series is defined as a composer, a lyricist, or both. An overview to the entire DeVincent collection is available here: Sam DeVincent Collection of Illustrated American Sheet Music.
Bureau of American Ethnology negatives
Smithsonian Folklife Festival records: 1972 Festival of American Folklife
The Smithsonian Institution Festival of American Folklife, held annually since 1967 on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., was renamed the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in 1998. The materials collected here document the planning, production, and execution of the annual Festival, produced by the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage (1999-present) and its predecessor offices (1967-1999). An overview of the entire Festival records group is available here: Smithsonian Folklife Festival records.
Ernie Smith Jazz Film Collection
Smith, Ernie
Webster, Ben
Armstrong, Louis, 1901-1971
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More than 300 reels of 16mm black and white and color film, silent and sound, fiction and documentary motion picture film documenting jazz and related musical performances, social and popular dance styles and performances, jazz musicians, performance locales, and documentation of African-American popular culture. A list of featured performers in the collection is shown below. The films are frequently compilations produced by Smith for lectures.
Scurlock Studio Records, Subseries 4.1: Black-and-White Silver Gelatin Negatives
Scurlock, Robert S. (Saunders), 1917-1994
Custom Craft
Scurlock, Addison N., 1883-1964
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The Scurlock photographic studio was a fixture in the Shaw area of Washington, DC from 1911 to 1994, and encompassed two generations of photographers, Addison N. Scurlock (1883-1964) and his sons George H. (1920- 2005) and Robert S. (1916-1994). Subseries 4.1 includes black and white silver gelatin negatives. An overview to the entire Scurlock collection is available here: Scurlock Studio Records
Sam DeVincent Collection of Illustrated American Sheet Music, Series 8: Geography
Sam DeVincent loved music and art and began collecting sheet music with lithographs at an early age. Series 8: Geography is divided into three sections: the United States, Foreign Countries, and Natural Features. An overview to the entire DeVincent collection is available here: Sam DeVincent Collection of Illustrated American Sheet Music.
Moses and Frances Asch Collection
Distler, Marian, 1919-1964
Folkways Records
bulk 1948-1986
This collection, which dates from 1926-1986, documents the output of Moses Asch through the various record labels he founded and co-founded, and includes some of his personal papers. The Asch collection includes published recordings, master tapes, outtakes, business records, correspondence, photographs, and film.
Frederic Ramsey audio recordings
This collection contains open reel recordings made by noted jazz scholar Frederic Ramsey during his tour of the American South in the 1950s.
Maida Babson Adams American garden collection.
Photographic prints (black and white, 3 1/2 x 5 inches)
Photographic prints (black and white, 8 x 10 inches)
Contact sheets (black and white)
35mm slides (photographs) (color, 2 x 2 inches)
Negatives, 35mm negatives (color)
Negatives (black & white, 4 x 5 inches)
Negatives, 120mm negatives (black and white, 2 x 2 inches)
Film transparency (color, 4 x 5 inches)
Transparencies, 120mm transparencies (color, 2 x 2 inches)
The Maida Babson Adams American Garden Collection documents the work of Molly Adams, a free-lance garden photographer who photographed hundreds of private and public gardens, many of them in the mid-Atlantic region, from the late 1950s through the mid-1990s. It includes slides, photographic prints, negatives and transparencies. A significant number of images document the work of landscape designers Nelva M. Weber, Alice Recknagel Ireys, and Friede Stege. Roughly 50 gardens do not have an identified location. Some images have captions and other information written on them.
