Recording the American Soundtrack

Imagine sitting on your porch relaxing after a hard day's work on the farm. It's 3 p.m. and the blistering heat from a typical Texas summer day took its toll already. Then, a strange car arrives on your property and a well-dressed gentleman from the Library of Congress gets out and greets you. He's there because he was assigned a task to record guitar styles from all across the nation. You politely oblige and happen to know a few songs, some of which you might have written with one too many beers. He records your performance with a portable contraption set up in the trunk of the car. Your sound recording gets stored on a shellac disc and registered in Washington D.C. The United States did this to get a feel for the type of music being written in all parts of the country and preserve it for generations to come. Archiving is something uniquely human, and it applies to all forms of creativity. Before modern digital devices and communications equipment, this was the kind of town-to-town legwork that had to be done in order to assure musical record for posterity.