I have kept using and improving my custom search engine for public domain sheet music for about a year now. It’s really useful, and all I have to do to maintain it is add new sites as I come across them. The reason this search engine is necessary is that sheet music vendors and malware sites have successfully gamed the search engines, so you can’t find free (as in freedom) sheet music unless you whitelist providers. If you know of new sites, let me know.
Sites currently in the whitelist:
- adrianoamore.it
- christmas-carol-music.org/
- cpdl.org
- digital.library.ucla.edu
- fusion.sims.berkeley.edu
- hymntime.com
- icking-music-archive.org
- indstate.edu
- libraries.mit.edu
- library.duke.edu
- mek.oszk.hu
- musopen.com/
- mutopiaproject.org
- people.ischool.berkeley.edu
- polona.pl
- ragtimepiano.ca
- thehackley.org
- thesession.org
- uploaddownloadperform.net
- worldcat.org
Sup’Greens?
You might contact the Memphis Public Library.
This is the closest I could figure, but you might be able to figure out better links:
http://www.memphislibrary.org/humanities/Literary_Resources.htm
As you know Memphis is, if not the Birthplace of Blues, most definitely the delivery room. And indisputably the Birthplace of Rock’n’Roll, in my oh’so humble pie.
Anyay, this library is Loaded with Memphis music history. I am not schooled in sheet music, but their record collections are unrivaled. No lie. I’m talking big circles with little holes.
But you might contact them personally. Also you might try WEVL FM 90, the community radio station. They have been around a while, but I feel went sorta whitebread back in the 90s but that’s jus’me.
Do give them a call. They can probably connect you with a good source of sheets.
http://www.wevl.org/
And there is Dave Evans. This fellow is wonderful, and has a doctorate in ethnomusicology… but he did all that before hanging with the She Wolf Jesse Mae Hemphill hehehe. I like him a whole lot.
http://www.myspace.com/uncledavidevans
Hope that helps. We hung you today.
Thanks youz,
Editilla~New Orleans Ladder
Thanks man! I’ve been digging around in those sites and haven’t found the sheet music yet, but I’m pretty sure it’s there. The Memphis site has a tip on how to search for sheet music, but you have to know the title of the piece to use that method and I haven’t yet figured out how to find any old sheet music.
Hope being hung wasn’t too painful. Let me know!
P.S. Have you heard of the New Orleans riots around the turn of the century and a guy named Aaron Harris? I found a couple talking recordings about it and wasn’t sure if they’re old news to other people.
Loving the Dave Evans. Thanks man.