Collection consists of photographs, commercially published sheet music, and original music manuscripts from the McNallys' vaudeville careers. Materials include minstrel show and blackface material; photo of Albert Tovell, once the master of ceremonies for Frances H. "Peaches" Browning; and a photograph of "Gov. Jordan," a blackface female impersonator.

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.

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.

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.

The Cook Labs records, which date from 1939-2002, document the activities of audio engineer Emory Cook and his label Cook Labs. The contents include business records, materials relating to recording artists, photographs, and production materials, as well as phonograph records, master recordings and unpublished recordings produced by or associated with the Cook Labs label. The collection also contains two interviews conducted with Emory Cook in 1990: one by Jeff Place and one by Anthony Seeger and Nicholas Spitzer. There are several physical objects relating to Cook Labs including a bag of powdered vinyl, a binaural playing arm, and a condenser microphone.

The major part of the collection, series 1-4, contains nearly 28,000 glass plates, including original stereoscopic negatives, interpositives, and both negative and positive non-stereoscopic plates used to produce lantern slides and paper prints. The photographs were taken all over the world. The majority are from the Underwood & Underwood active fi...

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.

The Lisa Chickering and Jeanne Porterfield collection documents their work as travel filmmakers, photographers, and writers from 1954-2015. Their films are an example of the travel lecture film, a genre which combined silent travelogue films with live narration. Chickering and Porterfield presented their films throughout the United States and Canada in the 1960s and 1970s before turning to freelance still photography and travel writing in the early 1980s. The audiovisual and photography collection begins with their first joint travels in the 1950s and covers a range of their professional activities through the early 2000s, mainly encompassing original travel footage, edited travelogues, and travel still photography. Supporting documentation includes film scripts, lecture recordings, personal and professional manuscripts, financial and professional records, and a substantial amount of newspaper and magazine articles which serve as a record of the press generated by and about Chickering and Porterfield.

The J. Scott Odell folk music collection (1945-2016, inclusive) contains AV recordings, photographs, correspondence, writings, and other materials relating to Odell's career at the Smithsonian as a musical instrument conservator and researcher of American music traditions. The collection largely consists of materials relating to Odell's research trips (often combined with personal visits) throughout the Eastern United States. Research strengths of the collection include the history of the Appalachian dulcimer and banjo, the Smithsonian Folkways project "Black Banjo Songsters," musician and poet Burt Porter, and the Bread and Puppet Theater.

Environmental portraits of Cajun musicians: 64 inkjet photographic prints, 1980-2008, some in black-and-white and others in color.