This program celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the Museum’s acquisition of record collector Bob Pinson’s matchless collection of country music recordings. In the program, Nathan D. Gibson, folklorist and University of Wisconsin-Madison’s audio-visual preservation archivist; Bill Ivey, folklorist and former Museum director, who negotiated the collection’s acquisition; and Tony Russell, scholar and discographer, with whom Pinson worked to research and produce the definitive Country Music Records: A Discography, 1921-1942, discuss the history and importance of the Bob Pinson Recorded Sound Collection—from its initial purchase from Bob Pinson to the current state of the collection, which now encompasses more than 250,000 country music recordings. The program, hosted by the Museum’s Patrick Huber, was recorded on March 2, 2023.

Acquired in 1972, Pinson’s collection, which contained more than 14,000 rare phonograph records and radio transcription discs, doubled the size of the Museum’s recorded-sound holdings at the time and set the institution on its path to becoming the premier archive and research center it is today. Following the panel discussion, the Museum’s longtime curator of recorded-sound collections, Alan Stoker, led a listening session of selected records from the collection, including Hank Williams’s first recording, “Calling You,” recorded in 1946.

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