About the History of Music & Modern Recording Project

Pride & Joy   Double Trouble w Stevie Ray Vaughn   1985

Update 2026: Having purchased another computer in early 2025, I continued working on HMR to examine romantic composers in Classical further and take Modern Recording into 1937 during which progress I was delayed by this and that of a technical nature, but more so by the death of my mother combined with challenges from aging myself. I was honored to able to spend some time with my mom during summer. I had no computer on which to work, but I didn't want work to interfere with my time with Mom anyway. As for aging, I'm going down slow, or so Eric Clapton might sing, but this and that accelerated in 2025, making work on this website, including HMR, nigh impossible. I do protest that I'm not that old, but I've been experiencing decline ever since starting these music histories above a decade ago, and some things don't care how old you are, making it both mentally and physically difficult for me to continue. Thinking positively, though I don't have the drive that I once did, I thought I would jump ahead a little bit in 2026 with the Russian modern, Shostakovich, and the black gospel of Sallie Martin before continuing through the romantics and finishing 1937. The year of 1938 was also a big year in music, particularly jazz, but I'll probably begin rotation through other genres before completing that year. If I do nothing else at least I've made it through a substantial portion of the romantics and made good progress into swing. Be as may, I've put a quarter century into this computing and website thing that all the world is going through. I'm very weary of it, the bad actors who make such insecure, the constant problems. I can't make so much as a typo without cursing anymore, after incessantly problematic code. I remember working on Pete Seeger years ago when I lost the entire completed page unsaved (which has happened to everyone). Seeger wasn't the easiest musician to approach, but at that time I got angry and fought back, diving into his music as not before toward a considerably more thorough examination. My program's memory failed more recently in early 2026 while working on Shostakovich, losing an entire day of work. I didn't fight back in spite to make it even better that time; I said "I can't do this anymore" and simply quit. At this point I no longer possess the momentum of completing at least three examinations per week. I'm a guy who looks at all the old people still making their own trips to the grocery store and am highly proud for them: it's a regular and something dangerous adventure when one doesn't function so well anymore. So I'm producing HMR at a leisurely pace now, and we'll see what happens. If I get caught in the undertow and dive deep under as I'm used then other aspects of my life such as health and finance, now demanding more attention, will be neglected. At this advanced stage I'm slow at everything.

Update December of 2024: About the 15th of December my computer was attacked, resulting in the destruction of the OS. I had nearly finished the first four decades of recording — marked by the disappearance of the cylinder format when Edison Records closed shop entirely in 1930 — and was hoping to begin the New Year with Spanish composers and in the early thirties in Brazil. This is delayed, pending this and that including another computer. (I'm writing this with a spare.) I hope to be squared away and back to publishing music history before you blink sometime in early 2025. At this point (Romantic period and early Swing) I've pretty much poured a chronological foundation such that I hope to be finished through 1936 in modern recording by latter 2025, after which I'll start cycling through other genres and periods.

Update September 2023: I've not been able to solve any of the problems for which cause I stopped working on the histories last April. But there doesn't seem to be a lot more worthwhile to do than get back at it. As of October I'm only nearing the end of the Baroque period, and have a considerable distance to go to complete early jazz and blues in the twenties. I typically write three profiles each week, one in Classical, two in Modern Recording.

Update April of 2023: I've developed problems with the server that I've used for the last twenty years. The more money they charge and the richer they get the more irresponsible and worthless they become. For every customer they lose there are ten more mullets to replace them. Unfortunately I've experienced some difficulty switching to a more capable and ethical website host. (This one is another of not a few which are rewarded with an incentive to push the nightmare that is WordPress while neglecting more fundamental responsibilities as a server. Insert: now servers are pushing the horror that is vibe coding with AI.) Though there is no lack of website hosts the vast majority are into easy money and poor security while doing as close as possible to nothing at all beyond their monthly collection plate. The business model of success in this world is oft not of something to be proud, but something that siphons up money like Jabba the Hutt.

The HMR Project is Version 2 begun in 2021 of Version 1 that is the VF History which serves as Notes to this work begun tentatively in 2011, in earnest in 2013 when I no longer drove big trucks. The VF History is a densely compacted contextual arrangement of (imperfectly) chronological chapters intended to cover the Western Hemisphere from circa 500 AD to artists of the modern period who recorded to commercial issue by 1970. The design of jamming, say, 40 artists, on the same page in the VF didn't permit the best coverage of individual musicians, that getting sacrificed to scheme. Thus Version 2 in which each artist finds an individual page to take up all the space that is needed. In the meantime I've discovered that such as a Dashlane extension in Chrome can prevent videos from loading in addition to other YouTube problems. As well, text and link hex values may not function correctly on some devices.

Like the VF History which required about nine years, the ten main divisions of the HMR Project are Black Gospel, Blues, Classical, Country (C&W), Folk including Bluegrass, Jazz, Latin, Boogie Woogie, R&B-Rock and Popular including Ragtime and the silver screens of film and later television.

Background: The rough draft of nigh all of the VF History had been written between 2012 and 2015. I then spent six years going more in depth with sessionographies and such. Unfortunately, I grossly miscalculated the time it would require to finish Version 2 (HMR Project). I've sabotaged myself yet again with another impossible task, for there are nearly 2700 profiles in VF with 33 chapters in Modern Recording in addition to Classical. This means that a lot of errors like typos in the VF History won't get addressed for years to come, much less what malicious hacking. As I work on HMR I nigh invariably find at least one error in every profile in the VF. Albeit I make corrections to the VF they aren't thorough (like links gone bad) since I concentrate on the HMR.

I experimented with making the HMR Project its own website until I couldn't get anywhere by various other options for too long. So I simplified and gave Viola Fair another gig as the Fat Lady. The launch of the HMR Project in 2021 was populated per organizational and representative purposes (directions it would be heading). HMR will cover largely Classical, Jazz and R&B-Rock as I cycle through genres and periods. If I ever "finish" Classical, Wimpy's hamburger after that will be Jazz.

The VF histories had originally been pursued upon discovering so much at YouTube of high historical or rare value. One could provide a chronological history pointing to audio or video samples of just about anyone or anything at any time. Unfortunately, a link check in 2013 returned so many flown that I wondered if I should pursue it at all. YouTube's value as an archival tool was peerless for but a moment, the next nigh nil due to disappearing references, meaning a history built on shifting sands. I nevertheless continued to approach it as a YouTube History to gain aught that one could of a musical source of yet considerable value. References kept disappearing as fast as I pointed to them, but I kept calling it a YouTube History until 2021 when the sun came out, I surprised to learn that it was actually a Viola Fair history with the YouTube part continuously vanishing. YouTube references in this project (HMR) began disappearing even several months before its launch. They are included as are because I can't go forward by rewriting all the past. For now, embedded videos in HMR reveal extinct sources better than only text links in VF, but YouTube embeds are a ceaseless problem, particularly with Microsoft which doesn't care that its technological push may not jive with older tech (which works just fine so keep it that way). Much of the world was left with a huge problem when FrontPage went defunct (I had used FrontPage instead of Adobe's much more expensive Dreamweaver because I didn't know if I really wanted to pursue a website at all back then. Then Microsoft discontinued Expression Web, the only editor that I will use: Dreamweaver is the top website editor which I would recommend to one and all, but for me its insistence on CSS where I myself don't want to use it makes it impossible.) Now it's Windows 11, an OS with numerous problems making it difficult to nigh impossible to use as accustomed. The more technology advances the worse it becomes in not a few cases. Everyone works, works, works for a pittance of accomplishment or reward while the giants like Google leap from billion to billion at your inconvenience and risk. They do what they will, but even without a website computing online remains very much the Wild West for one and all.

As for "Video Unavailable" on web pages featuring videos, individual curators decide whether or not their material should display on websites other than YouTube. When it comes to selecting videos information, audio and accuracy are king. I also factor detouring advertisements and video availability. Selecting videos is easily one of the most time consuming tasks involved in these histories. It usually requires hour upon endless hour, nor always to find the best quality. Incidentally, Google doesn't presently apply information within video frame code (<frame>...</frame>) to its search algorithms unless it's from YouTube or another video website where videos are placed within the viewport of the webpage. It has to be the first thing you see coded at the top of the webpage. On a site like this only related text might help find it. True, "available" videos may get watched on this site instead of YouTube. But they have link value in exchange for the jazz and reduction of distraction. So if you curate a music channel at YouTube, now you know that my selective process is a juggle and every link hard-won. I use this opportunity to thank all the music curators at YouTube without whose video contributions there would be no histories. I might have solved the problem of vanishing links not a few years ago by downloading videos to my own machine. You could do that for free at YouTube at the time and I was able to make a number of CDs of early music. But I felt greedy so stopped, then began the VF history, using links rather than downloads something in a manner of appreciation. I don't know when YouTube started to charge a monthly download fee. That would have prevented not a few dead references, and I'd have one hell of a collection all to myself by now. I chose the linking route instead toward recognition of musical colleagues.

This website doesn't look real good on smartphones, that is, the back of a postage stamp. My apologies to the many without access to screens of reasonable size, but endlessly geeking smartphone code doesn't get music history done. This site is built with a rather ancient editor and code isn't one of my favorite things. Since writing code for smartphones wants to compete with music history I've largely blown off the former. I might get this fixed sometime, as this doesn't do wonders for traffic in a world where only phones are used instead of PCs, but not today, since numerous sites now compatible with smartphones are also now more difficult to use with a PC. Google doesn't give a fig about websites coded for any interface except phones. Only to have a website at all has become a never ceasing technological pain in the neck. Mom and Pop disappeared to Facebook years ago as billion dollar corporations took over the web to bloat it with locust hordes of advertising and hype. What Google means by content now is that people with phones can be steered to Amazon as the internet transitions from a means of sharing information to an agora of every last soul chasing a means to earn or spend a dollar. Selling knowledge has become infinitely more important in the world than knowledge itself. Universities and newspapers have been ignoring the latter for ages now as they concentrate on getting richer and richer instead. The last that I opened a physical 'New York Times' in the seventies it looked so much like a Sears catalog minus news that there was no reason to subscribe to it, not to the mention their agenda.

As this project begins I note some major changes in references since the VF History. One major loss to online discography is a restructuring of DAHR (ADP) with some of its master lists entirely removed. Hopefully this is temporary and will resolve itself. Some references to Google Books, the LOC, the BBC, et al, no longer point. Of major loss is Scott Alexander's Red Hot Jazz discography from 1895 through 1929. Google doesn't pull the pages that I cached when Red Hot Jazz went down before. I should have taken screen shots of Alexander's entire website. References to Red Hot Jazz will remain in the VF History, like other dead links, to inform of the source. Fortunately, Syncopated Times has assumed the project of presenting Alexander's extensive sessionography of early recording. This is incomplete at this writing. Update: Alexander's Red Hot Jazz at the Way Back Machine.

As well, the WorldCat authority source has been removed from the internet as of March 2023. Not a few dead links will have to remain. I also link often to Internet Archive: historical audio, historical documents, other manuscripts and scores. I don't use Internet Archive a lot in research, but point to it often as an instrument of confirmation, example or evidence. The recent lawsuit against Internet Archive has resulted in infinite bad links. That's the transitory internet where all are more homeless than gypsy truck drivers (been there). Though links that are ten or twenty years old on this website remarkably remain steady, references tend to fade more than collect, eventually never getting out alive. When does Wikipedia disappear, everything as secret in the end as the beginning?

Unfortunately, one thing that hasn't changed since the VF History is the dilemma of All Music. At the same time that All Music can be a valuable reference it continues to be a dangerous website (into 2026) that can shut down your computer. This is written in 2025 so this has been going on for well above ten years. I have sometimes wondered if I shouldn't remove all links to All Music in order to prevent a lot of pain possible to who may visit there. Rather than wholesale damnation I here advise that you keep visits to All Music brief and don't click anything. Like California to truck drivers, get what you need and get out. I once guessed that All Music was plagued with third party conflicts. But for all I know it's in their own code. Other noncommercial websites cause similar memory problems: Internet Archive stream pages (text only) and Henry König sessionographies (also text only) can be troublesome.

Discographies should be fairly well covered in HMR with the exception of Tom Lord's jazzography. Though used extensively, I don't link to it because I try to keep references, in general, to what anyone can access without subscription. Find the Index to Lord's sessionography and its Home Page.

As for works by classical composers, find directories or thematic catalogs at ClassicalNet. I had begun to include a kind of geographical or national menu in this project since those are major frames for histories like this. But that somehow got left behind like a suitcase at the station while the train was taking off. In lieu of that there is the Petrucci Music Library (IMSLP). A menu of composers by religious affiliation would also be a good reference, enough and perhaps not so difficult (ha ha) as to tempt me to make one (not yet as of 2026). With religion playing so major a part in music history I shake my head with "How did I miss this?" that a menu for such was wholly absent when the train took off. It doesn't go far, leaving out such as Lutherans, atheists, et al, but here are lists at the least of those who were Catholic or Anglican.

A hearty thank-you to Nhu Thao of Discogs for her superhuman assistance with not a few images. What an extra nice thing to do for somebody and the music industry in general. I have a lot of experience with major record retailers and highly recommend Discogs above all others, not only for information but purchasing hard copy music in 33 rpm vinyl or CD in general. I also note the best sources for cylinders on wax, 45s in vinyl and 78s in shellac. That is, though not a collector myself, the histories are made with collectors in mind.

One thing very different about this website is its entire absence of advertising. I find it distracting from other tasks at hand. There is one product, however, without which this website wouldn't be for the last twenty years, that CCleaner which I particularly recommend for the giant assistance and zero problem that it's ever been (until recently in 2026). I've also found Agent Ransack indispensable. I've no affiliation with CCleaner or Agent Ransack other than constant use of them. Nor do I affiliate or engage in commercial relationships with anyone else. This website is wholly educational as a concentration. I've nothing to gain from any links (such as affiliate), all of which are placed because that's where the information is: they contribute to understanding the topic at hand. Who use this site will never be impeded by an intrusive advertisement selling a false toe fungus cure stuck exactly where you're reading (clue: mint). Your device will never freeze because I'm sucking as much data (memory) out of it as I can. There aren't 57 Heinz varieties of cookies from which to choose here, zero pop-ups, no cosmic mysteries requiring subscriptions, and the only notifications anyone is ever going to get are what's already here: you're reading it, your email address not requisite. There's nothing in your face here except the subject at hand as clear as I can make it. Among scholastic sources I list not a few vendors because it's usually a mixed bag. I point to what commercial vendors that I do, not because such contributes squat to my mansion with pool and a billiards table, but because they do the work in some manner of clarifying or contributing to music history. If I list such as recording catalogs, for instance, it's to make it easier for the reader to find something. If it's listed in the HMR Project it's because it's a good source or better than others as I try to cover the spectrum. I've no agenda here beyond what is a responsibility to itself, being a directly objective history of music and modern recording. Nor do these pages exist to persuade anyone of any particular way to go ideologically, philosophically, politically, religiously or otherwise. In the meantime, were I Google I'd be reducing the page rank on numberless websites which pretend to offer content buried somewhere, if you can find one single sentence of it amidst a swarming intrusion of advertising. Yeah, it's called irrelevant spam. But it looks to me like the more of it there is on a webpage the higher Google ranks it.

For various perspectives on this or that like humor or news I visit a small spectrum of social media sites from Bluesky (highly popular leftist whirlpool) to Truth Social (President Trump's clearly conservative website) once per week while making drops. I've never been drawn to Facebook, thus neither Instagram nor Threads. I didn't begin using social media until 2022 toward sharing these music histories. More than ten years ago, about the time that I started these histories, it didn't look like I could accomplish a lot at Facebook, nor with social media in general, and never got back for lack of time. (Indeed, I've been "blocked for going too fast" from Facebook as I've researched these histories. No notion why.) Nor do I contribute to Quora (all the terrible things that people do to each other) or Reddit (a lot of good art) where "my" account, which I cannot delete, is hacked. (Not sure at this later date, but I never try to log in to see). Prior to that they were moderators not overly knowledgeable about either music or the internet which made them unable to receive. Youngsters I'm supposing. TikTok can be interesting for moments few, but I don't drop there. Nor do I drop at Gab, though think that one should visit now and then to know what's happening there amid the wide range of social cultures and movements on the internet. When it comes to social media, here's a word from King Crimson. Otherwise, I share this journey through music history at:

Gettr (conservative where Steve Bannon hangs out)

Mastodon (no longer, having been banned for distinguishing between legal and illegal immigration)

Pinterest Classical & Modern Recording (2021 launch only)

Trust Cafe (Wikipedia's obviously leftist social website which is having trouble acquiring and retaining visitors)

Tumblr Classical

Twitter now X Modern Recording (where conservative Musk hangs out, if you can tell him from impersonators)

YouTube Playlists (2021 launch only)

The HMR Project avatar or icon used at all the above destinations is from Man Ray's Le Violon d’Ingres of 1924 for reason that HMR is hosted at Viola Fair, which website got its name above twenty years ago inspired by that photograph. I mention this here across my lady's back.

So where is this humbly trumpeted HMR Project?