Music Collection
name: label: Collection Artist
content: Smith, Art, 1917-1982
setName: label: See more items in
content: Art Smith Archive
unitdate: label: Date
content: circa 1946-1949
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: National Museum of African American History and Culture
objectType: label: Type
content: Archival materials
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents
content: The Music Collection series (1946-1949, undated) primarily contains shellac and vinyl records   from Arthur Smith's personal jazz collection. An avid jazz enthusiast, Arthur collected records from some of his favorite performers including Duke Ellington, the Al Hall Quintet, Jimmy Jones, and others throughout his life. A significant portion of this series is made up of thirty-two 10-inch shellac 78 rpm records from the Wax Records recording company founded by Al Hall in 1946. These records include only two songs, one on side A and another on side B of the record itself. The Wax Records company operated from 1946-1948 before it was purchased by Atlantic Records in 1949. This series includes several duplicate copies of several Wax Records. One of the Wax Records is broken, and the small fragments are housed with the remaining records.  The series also includes the original records sleeves with hand-written notes, and one loose undated note written by Charles Russell   about Arthur's collection of Wax Records.