Jazz Long-Playing Discs

Meticulously built over forty years by a comprehensive collector, the Frederic Klinger Collection of 40,000 jazz long playing discs is a remarkable achievement: roughly ninety percent of all jazz LPs produced from the 1950s to the 1980s. Over 2,000 record company labels, US and foreign, reflect the innovative improvisatory sounds of an ever-evolving, truly American art form.

Collectively, the discs chronicle a critical forty-year period in the history of jazz. Included are rare discs as well as common ones, all in good condition. The artists represented range from the famous, to infamous, to relative-unknowns; include various races and cultural backgrounds; and performances running the gamut of styles collectively known as jazz-from Big Band and repertory jazz to Bop, Third Stream and beyond.

The collection is a particularly welcome addition to the Library's sound recording holdings as it covers a sizeable portion of the pre-mandatory copyright deposit era. In the process of building his collection, Mr. Klinger compiled an exhaustive jazz discography. He continues to search for the elusive 10 percent of jazz LPs needed to make his collection truly exhaustive. Together with the Library's impressive holdings of early jazz 78 rpm recordings, the Klinger Collection is a prime resource for jazz researchers.