Skip Navigation Links  The Library of Congress >> Researchers
Recorded Sound Reference Center (Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division)
  Home >> WWOZ Collection
Kermit Ruffins playing trumpet
Kermit Ruffins, New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, 2007
(CC BY) photo by Derek Bridges New Orleans, LA

WWOZ Collection

Selected Recordings from the Collection:

"Food Stamp Blues" audio icon
Treme Brass Band, March 30, 2003
Courtesy Treme Brass Band

"Bus Station Blues" audio icon
Little Freddie King, French Quarter Festival, New Orleans, April 11, 2003
Courtesy Little Freddie King, "Wacko" Wade Production, LLC

"Shake that Thing" audio icon
Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Tipitina's, New Orleans, January 12, 2005
Courtesy Preservation Hall Jazz Band

"By and By" audio icon
Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Tipitina's, New Orleans, January 12, 2005
Courtesy Preservation Hall Jazz Band

WWOZ is the premier jazz and heritage radio station of New Orleans, a city known as the birthplace of jazz and the prominent center of many musical styles. Since the early 1990s WWOZ has been broadcasting live and recording performances at musical festivals (including JazzFest, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival), concert venues, and night clubs throughout New Orleans.

Little Freddie King
Little Freddie King
photo by Jef Jaisun, courtesy WWOZ

Using a variety of affordable recording technologies, WWOZ amassed thousands of hours of recordings that document an incredible range of jazz, blues, gospel, rock and roll, Cajun and zydeco music, including performances by local and national musical legends.

Not long after the collection was nearly lost during the floods following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, WWOZ’s Station Manager David Freedman and Gene DeAnna, Head of the Recorded Sound Section at the Library of Congress’ Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation, entered into an agreement to preserve the WWOZ recordings. The agreement called for the recordings to be gifted to the Library of Congress where they would be stored, cataloged, and digitized. In return WWOZ would receive a complete set of archival quality preservation files made in the Library’s state-of-the-art facility. With help from a Grammy Foundation grant to inventory the collection, the Library of Congress has cataloged and digitized most of over 2,000 items in a variety of sound formats with a range of preservation challenges. The digitized recordings from the collection are available to the public for walk-in listening in the Library’s Recorded Sound Reference Center in the Madison Building on Capitol Hill.

DJ Bill De Turk WWOZ
DJ Bill De Turk,
courtesy WWOZ

 

The WWOZ Collection encompasses:

  • live musical performances from venues across New Orleans and surrounding areas, WWOZ radio shows, studio air checks, interviews, and DJ shows;
  • content and formats ranging from 1993-2007;
  • digital files transferred from CD-R, cassette tape, and DAT formats now accessible in the Recorded Sound Reference Center; and
  • jazz, blues, rock and roll, gospel, R&B, zydeco, and Cajun music;
  • performances by Kermit Ruffins, Rebirth Brass Band, Boozoo Chavis, Terence Blanchard, Levon Helm, Freddie King, Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, Boozoo Chavis, Henry Butler, Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Allen Toussaint, Dr. John, and Bob French’s Original Tuxedo Jazz Band.
Treme Brass Band at the Candlelight Lounge
Treme Brass Band at the Candlelight Lounge
courtesy WWOZ
 

 

Top of Page Top of Page
  Home >> WWOZ Collection
  The Library of Congress >> Researchers
  November 27, 2012
Legal | External Link Disclaimer

Contact Us:  
Ask a Librarian