All-Media Guide Huge site that is an inexhaustible source of information on the history of music on records and other media. It includes the material in the published All-Media Guides: Biographies, including selected discographies, mainly of CDs, with critical annotations of many items; length of treatment varies with importance of the figure. There are many "music maps", ie. historical diagrams of key figures, genres, etc. etc. There is all sorts of cross-referencing between the historic materials, biographies and discographies.
World of Gramophones This is a browser's delight, a cornucopia of goodies relating to old jazz and other music 1900-20s-30s. It has a large listening library, lists of CDs, books, and films. Don't be put off by the commercial intent of the site. The creator(s) have provided a source of inspiration by presenting many potentially useful and interesting items for your consideration. By rattling around the site, I found a lot I'm glad to know about.
Traditional Jazz Educators Network
This website focuses on pulling kids into the music.
It has an outstanding essay on the various Traditional jazz styles, plus
various info, resources and links.
Traditional Jazz
(Dixieland) K. Quick This is but one module of a
site that has a Bluegrass page, and a selection of fun and weird links
to lead you astray when you should be doing something useful...
Kaye
Wade's Home Page Loads of links re Dixieland and
some more general music topics.
Cotton Club
Orchestra Home Page Website of an Australian 30s
orchestra, with loads of links.
Eric Holroyd's Home
Page Another Australian site with a variety of links.
Eric goes to Jazz festivals on the West Coast, and has photos of DJML "Face2Faces".
Heptune Classical Jazz
and Blues Lyrics Page
This page contains hundreds of lyrics transcribed from
classic records to 1948. It also has many links to jazz, blues and lyrics
pages. Scroll down the entire page! Go to the home page and you'll find
all sorts of interesting and fun stuff to while the hours away.
These sites have extensive information on Dixieland and Traditional Jazz history:
Jazz Overview When
you get there, click on "Big Bands Database", when that page comes up,
scroll down to "Dixieland/Jazz" and click.
Tom Morgan's Jazz Roots: Early Jazz
Be sure to explore the other sections of this website...
Louis Armstrong
Chronology of his recording sessions, listing the tunes
recorded. No discographical info or personnel.
Bix Beiderbecke This
site is a fount of info on Bix, his life and music, and includes a very
active Message Board.
Jelly Roll Morton
Major biography and discography, lots of pictures and
documents. The website has all sorts of other information relating to 1920s
piano and rolls, plus midi files.
Fats Waller
Includes a major discography and a list of his compositions.
Banjo website Contains all sorts of information on tenor and plectrum banjos, links to lessons and books, etc.
Swinglist SwingList membership consists mainly of swing dancers and some of the musicians and leaders of nightclub bands that cater to swing dancers. Discussions center on dancing, the clubs, bands, vintage clothing, dance floor protocol, and to an increasing extent, the original Swing music genres; members are very good about providing information when someone asks where the action is in a particular city.
Washington Post Music Calendar
Washington DCDanceNet Includes a separate page for Swing events.
78-l Mailing List "78-L is a discussion group devoted to music and recordings of the pre-LP era. The list is open to collectors and lovers of all kinds of music of this era, such as early jazz and blues, big bands, show music, vaudeville, classical, etc., as well as spoken word and other historical recordings ... recording history, discography, the collectors' market, and vintage phonographs ..." Much discussion of record players, restoration of 78s, and CD reissues.
Tyrone's Record and Phonograph Page Mainly devoted to 78s. Of particular interest is it's extensive links page.
Past Perfect Records Includes a Bulletin Board. Past Perfect has many excellant CD collections of our music.
John Farrell's Midi Files Farrell is a British stride pianist who makes piano rolls; he also makes wonderful midi files that can be downloaded from his site. If you want to play the tunes, he has sheet music versions of most of them for sale.
Printed Music source: YesterTunes Charles Anderson of San Diega CA made it his mission in life to preserve the old American pop and jazz music. 1. He collected sheet music and lead sheets, put them into lead sheet format, compiled them into a reference library of ca. 9000 tunes that occupies 8 large-size loose-leaf binders. 2. He collected ca. 8000 vintage published dance orchestra and other arrangements. He sold copies of all this, making it possible for many more people to play the music. Before he died, he passed his collections on to YesterTunes, which continues to make them available at reasonable cost. YesterTunes has several printed catalogs of the arrangements.
I Catalog my CD collection in a series of databases. They are in the standard .dbf format which most major database and spreadsheet programs can import. I'll be happy to eMail the files (in .zip format) to anyone who wants them. This page includes a list of CD dealers I use regularly.