American Folklife Center Audio Recording Albums

These pages present liner note booklets for long-playing recordings (LPs) of field recordings from folklife collections published by the Library of Congress, including the Folksongs of the United States series, along with audio recordings from these albums, as they become available. Additional previously published albums of recordings or recording series may appear in the future.

Cowboy Songs, Ballads, and Cattle Calls from Texas LP cover.

Historic AFC LP Liner Note Booklets

These recordings were first published as LPs and were issued as cassettes in the 1980s and 1990s. Because the cassettes did not include the liner note booklets, the Center began producing these as PDFs available online. Consequently there are more liner notes than recordings currently available. Some of the recordings were issued as CDs by Rounder Records in the 1990s, but are now out of print.

Recordings

Folk music of the United States LP Series (1942-1978)

American Fiddle Tunes, AFS L62, Edited by Alan Jabbour, 1972. Liner notes: PDF, 44 pp., 5.95MB. Also available on iTunes.

Cowboy Songs, Ballads, and Cattle Calls from Texas, AFS L28, Edited by Duncan Emrich, 1952. Collected by John A. Lomax. Liner notes: PDF, 16 pp., 2MB. Also available on iTunes.

Folksongs of America: The Robert Winslow Gordon Collection, 1922-1932, AFS L68, Edited by Neil V. Rosenberg and Debora G. Kodish, 1978.

Negro Blues and Hollers, AFS L59, Edited by Marshall W. Stearns, 1962. Liner notes: PDF, 18pp., 5.80MB. Also available on iTunes.

Additional LPs

Indian Songs of Today, AFS L36, Edited by Willard Rhodes. First issued in 1954, reissued in 1987. Music of the American Indian LP series. Liner notes: PDF, 20 pp., 9.39MB. Also available on iTunes.

Omaha Indian Music: Historical Recordings from the Fletcher/La Flesche Collection, AFS L71, edited by Dorothy Sara Lee and Maria La Vigna, 1985. Available in HTML. The liner notes for the LP album form part of the online presentation Omaha Indian Music, which includes sound recordings collected by Francis La Flesche and Alice Cunningham Fletcher between 1895 and 1897, songs and speeches documented at a 1983 powwow, a 1985 Hethu'shka Society concert at the Library of Congress, and photographs from the powwow and concert, as well as field notes and other documentation.