The Record Collection

Treasures From the Gold Mine

Treasures From the Gold Mine provides a sampling of vintage recordings contained in our large photographed and digitized record collection. Click on any of the five buttons below to listen to sample recordings:

POPULAR
COUNTRY
R&B
BLACK GOSPEL
WHITE GOSPEL

About Our Record Collection

We collected a wide variety of music, focusing on music of a positive nature, from both the classical and popular/folk genres, including jazz, gospel, country, R&B and world music. We accumulated over a ten-year period, thousands of CDs, cassette tapes and records. We participated in online auctions and visited record shows, flea markets and the homes of collectors, some in other states.

For one year, 2007, we initiated a scanning and photographing project, hiring two employees and renting a space. While Don was at home digitizing cds and cassettes, records were digitized by Wave Baker using two digitally connected turntables at a time.

In 2022, we donated the popular music in our record collection to the Center for Popular Music, to help support their efforts and to provide a future home for our large, and valuable collection.

The Center for Popular Music

A Wonderful Home for Our Records

The Center for Popular Music, located on the campus of Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, is a research center devoted to the study and scholarship of popular music in America. Its mission is to promote research in American vernacular music, and to foster an understanding and appreciation of America’s diverse musical culture. The Center maintains an archive of research materials stretching from the early eighteenth century to the present and develops and sponsors programs in vernacular music. Anyone is welcome to use the Center’s collections and services for research and scholarly pursuits.

Photos of Our Digitizing Project

In 2007 we rented a facility and for a year transferred our collect to digital media, both sound and image:

Mary Ellen Bickford checks out a rare RCA Victor 45rpm Children's album, with records pressed in yellow vinyl.
Part of our collection consisted of rare 78rpm record albums. 78rpm records were phased out in the early 1950s.
The shelves had begun clearing by the time this photo of our CDs was taken.
Don Robertson inspects a rare 1949 RCA 45 demonstration set containing color-coded examples from each of genre.
This is our friend Wave Baker, who left his home in California for a year to help us digitize the collection.
Wave kept two turntables going at the same time, because there were so many records to digitize.
Our friend Heidi is helping Mary Ellen Bickford prepare recordings for storage, after Wave had completed recording them.
78rpm records are very breakable and needed careful packing.
We had thousands of cassettes that Don and Wave digitized. Here are some cassettes from India being prepared for storage.

Treasures From the Gold Mine

Listen to select items from our record collection:

POPULAR
COUNTRY
R&B
BLACK GOSPEL
WHITE GOSPEL