The Kansas City Sheet Music Collection

April 13, 2007 8:47 PM

The Kansas City Sheet Music Collection is an enormous catalog of zoomable, high-rez scans of old sheet music. See how the popular music of years past was marketed with Black and Native American imagery as well as exotica. There are lovely and fanciful calligraphic designs, songs of World War 1 and, uh, vegetables. There's even a little ditty by Mark Twain. Plus some undeniable truths and the age-old question.
posted by flapjax at midnite (8 comments total)

Please note that each link has a "description" button (with more details on the song) and an "other views" button, which will take you to the music itself and the back cover.

And for those who want more of the World War 1 songs, here's the University of Missouri's other collection, devoted exclusively to WW1 material.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 8:49 PM on April 13, 2007

And by the way, the Mark Twain tune doesn't actually appear to be by Twain. But his picture's on the cover!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 9:05 PM on April 13, 2007

Flapjax (after) midnite, this post is stunning. What an incredible find. Thank you!
posted by psmealey at 9:19 PM on April 13, 2007

Goddamn! Nice find flapjax at midnite.
posted by sleepy pete at 9:52 PM on April 13, 2007

You know I can use this. Thanks!
posted by miss lynnster at 11:31 PM on April 13, 2007

More online sheet music collections:

University of Colorado Sheet Music Collection

Piano Rags on the Theme of Animals

Duke University's Historic American Sheet Music (For ease of search, I recommend their browse by title pages page as a place to start.)

Brown University's African-American Sheet Music (Also a bit tedious to navigate, but well worth the effort: a great collection)

Also, the Library of Congress has a collection of material from the years 1870 to 1885, which is very interesting, if a bit clunky to navigate through. Great stuff there.

And I know there are a lot more sites out there, so if any of you know of any good links, hope you'll post them!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 12:29 AM on April 14, 2007 [1 favorite]

Ah! I take back what I said about the Brown University site! There's a handy browse by thumbnails feature there. This is a great site.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 12:37 AM on April 14, 2007

Thanks, f.a.m, these are fantastic...
posted by Jon Mitchell at 11:44 AM on April 14, 2007