Jack White and the National Recording Preservation Foundation are on a mission to digitally preserve and distribute American music that’s been lost or forgotten:
“Less than 18 percent of commercial music archives are currently available” through iTunes, Spotify and other legal portals, [NRPF executive director Gerald] Seligman says. “We’re concerned with the other 82 percent languishing out there somewhere, that’s culturally important while maybe not commercially viable.” Take Maine country music recorded in the 1920s with a regional Down East accent. “Now most people singing country music affect a kind of southern drawl even if they’re from Canada or Australia,” says ethnomusicologist Clifford Murphy. “People forgot about regional country music recorded before Nashville became the power center of the genre.”
The NRPF is hunting down recordings taken off of local radio stations during the 1960’s civil rights protests, which could offer lost glimpses of that era, Seligman says. In New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, Massenburg helped save recordings from heritage radio station WWOZ, some of which were underwater or in the muck. Those that were not beyond recuperation were baked in a “pie oven” at a low temperature and then could be played back only once. But on that one play many were successfully saved to digital media.
The Dish 