http://classic.motown.com/
The site for classic Motown, the hit-making music machine of Motor City, 1959-1988, which launched superstars such as The Supremes, The Temptations, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, The Four Tops, Gladys Knight and the Pips, and many more. Read group biographies and, more importantly, listen to the singular sound that ruled popular music radio airwaves during the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, and helped define an era and a generation.
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http://silent-movies.com/Multiplex/
At the dazzling Silent Movies site, you can download early horror flick Nosferatu or a Buster Keaton comedy, examine biographies and galleries of many stars of the era, and read issues of Taylorology, a newsletter consecrated to studying the unsolved murder of Silent Era director William Desmond Taylor.
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http://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/
A television news archive at Vanderbilt
University. More than 30,000 network news
broadcasts from the 1960s to the present.
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http://www.archive.org/details/prelinger
The Prelinger Archive contains over 48,000 “advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur” films. You can search and then watch a wide assortment of these films, some of which date back to the 20’s, many of them outstanding for evoking the period in which they were shot. Some highlights include gorgeous amateur-made color film of the 1939 World’s Fair in New York, an ad featuring square dancing Lucky Strike cigarettes, and a 1947 vintage instructional film Are You Popular?, which is not as the title suggests, a corny treatise on popularity during the high school years, but is in fact a primer on dating etiquette.
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http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/fnart/fa267/contents.html
Boston College’s Digital Archive of American
Architecture. Examine the evolution of
American structures: 17th century English
wigwams to modern skyscrapers. Many
images of known and lesser-known Eastern
Seaboard and Midwest treasures are here,
but, alas, you won’t find the adobes of the
Southwest. Links to other art sites around the
web are also included.
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http://www.bluegrass-museum.org/
The International Bluegrass Museum, Owensboro, Kentucky. Be sure to check out the links section to learn more about the pioneers, of this quintessential American musical form, such as Bill Monroe and Flatt and Scruggs.
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http://www.ev1.pair.com/colorTV/
The Color Television Revolution. Look back at
the color broadcasting years of the 50’s and
60’s with sight and sound. See gorgeous
photographs of the NBC Studios in Hollywood
and read the chronicle of the “The Edsel
Show,” one of the first television programs to
be videotaped, which used some major
Hollywood talent (Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra,
Louis Armstrong) to hawk Ford’s doomed
cars. Also be sure to view the clips from “An
Evening With Fred Astaire” in glorious color.
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http://www.fillmore-east.com/
The Fillmore East Preservation Society. Who played at New York’s famed Fillmore dancehall during the late 60s? Find out here. The Fillmore helped unleash some of rock and roll’s legendary acts. And if you’re looking for psychedelic rock and roll posters, which are harder and harder to come by these days, you’ve come to the right place.
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http://www.ibdb.com/
If you prefer live theater, check out the
marvelous Broadway companion to the
Internet Movie Database, the Internet
Broadway Database.
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http://www.imdb.com
The Internet Movie Database, “the biggest,
best, most award-winning movie site on the
planet.” Features extensive cast and crew lists
for films from the silents to motion pictures
currently in production.
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http://www.nga.gov/collection/iad/history/overview.shtm
Examples of how artists of the past interpreted
the past are shown in select images from the
Index of American Design at the National
Gallery of Art. During the Roosevelt era,
watercolorists were asked to paint over
18,000 items of cultural significance
(costumes, furniture, toys, textiles) to be
collected as a “visual resource” of American
traditional design.
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http://www.pbs.org/jazz/
PBS and documentary film maker Ken Burns (Civil War, Baseball, The West) team up once again to give us Jazz, a film and companion site that covers the history of the music and its players. According to the site, “Jazz has been called the purest expression of American Democracy.” Do you agree? Check the Jazz Lounge link, learn some of the fundamentals of jazz, read biographies, listen to audio samples.
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http://www.pbs.org/theblues/
As for jazz, so the Blues rightly has its own special treatment and space on the PBS website. Martin Scorsese and Clint Eastwood directed their own odes to the blues in this film series. This site is not as comprehensive as it might be, but it does offer a good glossary to get you started. When you’re ready to hear and learn more, visit the Blue Highway at http://www.thebluehighway.com/ or the Blues Archives at Ole Miss http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/general_library/files/archives/blues/
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http://www.satchmo.net/
Louis Armstrong, legendary jazz man, was arguably the form’s best musician. Here’s the official site for “Satchmo’s” modest house and archives. The archives, boasting thousands of items of photographs, records, reel-to-reel tapes, letters, and awards, are housed at Queens College, and are open to the public.
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http://www.silentladies.com/Ladies.html
Pay homage to the first stars of the motion pictures. Did you know that Mabel Normand was our first great female comedienne in film? She produced and acted in many hit films, and with Fatty Arbuckle and Charlie Chaplin transformed the sleepy Los Angeles suburb of Glendale into California’s very first film capital.
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| Images: Art, Still Photos, Motion Pictures (13 Links) |
| Books, Newspapers, Maps, Publications (16 Links) |
| American Music (22 Links) |
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