Playlist of Recordings

The National Jukebox features playlists compiled by Library of Congress curators, project partners, and guest experts. All playlists consist of audio selections available on the website.

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    National Jukebox Sampler
    14 recordings, 40:11     Gathered here are fourteen selections that comprise a National Jukebox Sampler, representing the diversity of repertoire to be found in this repository. Recorded between 1901 and 1912, these performances cover a broad range of genres, styles and categories, including unaccompanied jubilee singing, political and comic spoken word, vaudeville, ragtime, art song, and grand opera.
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    Eclectic Acoustic
    11 recordings, 30:33     The National Jukebox proudly presents a veritable Victor mash-up of melodies. Hear stirring bands and rousing choruses, delightful vaudeville-style comedy, opera, ragtime, and New Orleans jazz.
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    Ragtime
    8 recordings, 23:57     During the early 1900s America’s musical pulse was syncopated and ragtime, with its then novel, engaging beat, was seemingly everywhere. Here is a playlist highlighting a diverse group of performers—from a cimbalom soloist to a military band—demonstrating their take on this popular style.
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    Early Tin Pan Alley
    7 recordings, 18:12     Between the late 1890s and 1970s New York City’s music publishing district was known as “Tin Pan Alley”—a reference to the continuous sound of pianos emanating from nearly every open window nearby, allegedly causing a remark that it sounded like the banging of tin pans. And it is easy to believe; the activity of composing and “plugging” songs was ceaseless. Here we find pioneering…
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    Songs by Irving Berlin
    12 recordings, 33:22     Irving Berlin wrote songs from his own personal perspective, that of an Americanized European Jew. Slang, catch phrases and suggestiveness that borders on innocence pervades much of his work. Berlin’s music is full of boundless enthusiasm for ragtime bands, bagpipe bands, and new dance crazes. Like George M. Cohan, Berlin captured in his songs a strong and well-defined sense of what was termed “American…
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    Gems from the Jukebox
    12 recordings, 34:12     Here is an eclectic mix of a dozen selections from the National Jukebox’s vast array of Victor records. It features ragtime, opera, Hawaiian music, a New York-dialect specialty, and two African American recording pioneers, the Dinwiddie Colored Quartet and comedian Bert Williams.
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    Temperance & Prohibition
    9 recordings, 26:02     With the ratification of the Eighteenth Amendment and impending national prohibition of alcohol, Tin Pan Alley writers produced a plethora of songs about life devoid of intoxicating beverages. Here is a selection of humorous songs and an appropriately titled instrumental selection. Also featured are two temperance songs robustly sung by baritone evangelist Homer Rodeheaver.
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    Songs by George M. Cohan
    12 recordings, 32:11     George M. Cohan wrote, composed, directed and acted in his own plays and was famous for his star-spangled patriotic tunes. But he also wrote in other styles—always simple, elegant and undeniably American. Many of his lesser-known works contained a wry cynicism and dry, semi-cantankerous manner. Cohan himself appeared only on a handful of records. The tenor Billy Murray gave voice to Cohan’s songs in…
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    Sousa's Band in Concert
    18 recordings, 44:54     Here is a selection of likely pieces to have been included at a concert given during the early 1900s by the band of John Philip Sousa, easily the most famous musical group of its day. Typically these concerts included arrangements of popular operatic and symphonic airs, original marches penned by Sousa himself, dazzling instrumental soloists, and light, entertaining popular melodies of the day.
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    Rivers
    9 recordings, 27:57     The collection is assembled around flowing bodies of water in music and song; the Mississippi, the Volga, show music, classical, what have you - it's all wet!
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    Black Broadway and Tin Pan Alley
    12 recordings, 33:10     African American songwriters and performers made up a small, yet important part of the early recording industry. These are recordings of compositions by top African American composers and lyricists of the early 1900s, including Will Marion Cook, Paul Laurence Dunbar, James Rosamond Johnson, James Reese Europe, Noble Sissle, and Eubie Blake. The performances are by both black and white performers.The most famous black artists…
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    The Fox Trot
    10 recordings, 29:19     This playlist presents a musical evolution of this most popular of twentieth century ballroom dances as it grew from its schottische-like beginnings to its later streamlined sound.
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    Civil War Music
    12 recordings, 34:10     This collection of twelve performances evokes the years 1861 through 1865 through themes heard during the War Between the States. Included are melodramatic ballads such as "The vacant chair," stirring anthems such as "Tramp, tramp, tramp," a recitation by Len Spencer of Lincoln's address at Gettysburg, and the two opposing anthems "Battle hymn of the Republic" and "Dixie."
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    Comic Affairs of the Heart
    8 recordings, 23:57     This playlist offers a lighthearted and somewhat irreverent mix of songs about love, matrimony, and entanglement.
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    Pack Up Your Troubles
    12 recordings, 34:16     Put away your worries and concerns, and enjoy this eclectic playlist of Victor recordings from the acoustical recording era. Here you will find marches, opera, ragtime, jazz, and early 20th century pop.