The Internet Archive is one of the greatest organizations of our time. Their purpose “is to provide Universal Access to All Knowledge.” They are champions of open access and preservation, ensuring nothing falls through the cracks of history. So clearly, they are my fucking heroes.

Part of their massive library includes vinyl rips of an insane variety of records, most of which are no longer available in any form. It’s an incredibly valuable resource. However, I see a pretty big problem and I intend to help. The problem is their download speeds are fucking abysmal. It doesn’t matter how fast your internet connection is; you’re lucky if you average 200 KBps when downloading from IA. Now if you’re anything like me and you want to download from IA in bulk, you’re going to have a bad time. But there’s good news! I had the bad time for you so you don’t have to have a bad time. I downloaded over 20,000 tracks primarily consisting of traditional folk music from around the world and anything “not music.”

Unfortunately for you, I’m not a true masochist. I only downloaded the mp3s, the cover image, and some additional contextual files which usually only totaled less than 100 MB per record. However, there’s also HD TIF scans of the artwork and discs for each release that adds at least another 1 GB to the total size. I couldn’t subject myself to the pain of downloading potentially terabytes of data from IA. Ideally, I would have downloaded all of these scans too (I did for some) but the mp3s were the priority so that’s what I got. Hypothetically, we can just go view the scans on IA if we need to.

Another problem that cropped up was their tagging wasn’t up to my standards, so everything is getting cleaned up with the usual expected stuff like song titles and track numbers but I’m also making sure everything has a date, genre, publisher, and album art, along with stuff like performer, disc title, and catalog number when deemed relevant. So needless to say, this isn’t a project that will be finished anytime soon. I figured I’ve cleaned up enough to share, though, and that’s what this batch is.

This is a selection of records released by Caedmon and Folkways. It’s mostly stuff with artist names from the beginning of the alphabet but my tagging changed some of that (like a bunch of records where Anthony Quayle reads from various authors, but I made the Album Artist name the author, the Performer the reader, and the Artist the author and reader, so depending on how you sort your shit, you might find his readings from The Iliad under “H” for Homer).

So here you go. 60+ records from Folkways and Caedmon (a pillar in the spoken word records field). The bulk of this is non-music but there’s a some early recordings from the Middle East and Africa, and other stuff sprinkled in. It’s one big 11 GB zip file; I didn’t have the time to make separate zips of each record like I did in the last OOPs batch. And since some of these aren’t listed in Discogs, I just linked to their page in IA.

Side note: I’ve always stayed away from sharing Folkways records in my OOPs posts because for the most part, those records are still available through Folkways. Not the vinyl, but they have digital versions of almost their entire back catalog. I’m not sure how or why IA is allowed to share these records. Some of the stuff on IA only has 30 second samples for each track and some have the full audio. Maybe those are just the ones that Folkways knows about and asked them to take down? If you have any insight, definitely let me know. But in the meantime, I figure if IA can share them, I can too.

Download OOPs, Batch 2: Internet Archive – Folkways & Caedmon

Here’s everything in this batch:

Caedmon
Adrien Stoutenburg read by Ed Begley – American Tall Tales, Volume 3: Mike Fink / Stormalong (IA)
Aesop read by Boris Karloff – Aesop’s Fables (IA)
Alexandre Dumas Fils directed by Edward King – Camille (IA)
Alfred Edward Housman read by James Mason – A Shropshire Lad And Other Poetry (IA)
Alfred Lord Tennyson read by Anthony Quayle – Idylls Of The King – Geraint And Enid (IA)
Amabel Williams-Ellis read by Anthony Quayle – Aladdin And His Lamp (A Tale From The Arabian Nights) (IA)
Amabel Williams-Ellis read by Anthony Quayle – Ali Baba And The Forty Thieves (IA)
Amabel Williams-Ellis read by Anthony Quayle – Sinbad The Sailor (IA)
Anonymous [The Wakefield Master] directed by Howard Sackler – The Second Shepherds’ Play (IA)
Anton Chekhov directed by Howard Sackler – Three Sisters (IA)
Anton Chekhov directed by Marshall Jameson – The Cherry Orchard (IA)
Archibald Macleish – Archibald Macleish Reads His Poetry (IA)
Aristophanes directed by Howard Sackler – Lysistrata (IA)
Arthur Conan Doyle read by Basil Rathbone – Stories Of Sherlock Holmes, Volume 1 (IA)
Arthur Conan Doyle read by Basil Rathbone – Stories Of Sherlock Holmes, Volume 2: The Redheaded League (IA)
Arthur Conan Doyle read by Basil Rathbone – Stories Of Sherlock Holmes, Volume 3: A Scandal In Bohemia (IA)
Arthur Conan Doyle read by Basil Rathbone – Stories Of Sherlock Holmes, Volume 4: Silver Blaze (IA)
Arthur Miller directed by Ulu Grosbard – A View From The Bridge (IA)
Arthur Miller directed by Ulu Grosbard – Death Of A Salesman (IA)
Benjamin Spock – Dr. Spock Talks With New Mothers (IA)
Boris Karloff – The Three Little Pigs, The Three Bears, Henny Penny, And Other Fairy Tales Read By Boris Karloff (IA)
Bourvil & Pierrette Bruno – Le Roman De Renard (IA)
Dwight D. Eisenhower narrated by Bob Considine – Eisenhower (IA)
Hans Christian Andersen read by Boris Karloff – Reads The Ugly Duckling And Other Tales By Hans Christian Andersen (IA)
Homer read by Anthony Quayle – Homer The Iliad (IA)
Jean-Paul Sartre directed by Howard Sackler – No Exit (IA)
J. R. R. Tolkien – Poems And Songs Of Middle Earth (IA)
Nathaniel Hawthorne read by Anthony Quayle – The Story of Theseus – Nathaniel Hawthorne Tanglewood Tales (IA)
Omar Khayyam & Matthew Arnold read by Alfred Drake – The Rubaiyat And Sohrab And Rustum (IA)
Rudyard Kipling read by Boris Karloff – Just So Stories And Other Tales (IA)
Rudyard Kipling read by Boris Karloff – Toomai Of The Elephants (A Story from The Jungle Books) (IA)
W. W. Jacobs read by Anthony Quayle – The Monkey’s Paw And The Interruption (IA)
 
Folkways
Al Capp interviewed by Howard Langer – Interview With Al Capp (IA)
Alfred Wolfsohn – Vox Humana: Alfred Wolfsohn’s Experiments In Extension Of Human Vocal Range (IA)
Anton Chekhov read by Karp Korolenko – Anton Pawlowitsch Chekhov Read In Russian By Karp Korolenko (IA)
Armand Bégué – The Bible In French – Excerpts From: The Psalms, The Proverbs, The Ecclesiastes (IA)
Armand Bégué & Louise Bégué – Speak And Read French, Part 1 – Basic And Intermediate (IA)
Armand Bégué & Louise Bégué – Speak And Read French, Part 3 – French Literature (IA)
Armand Bégué & Louise Bégué – Speak And Read French: Basic (IA)
Arthur M. Greenhall, Nicholas Collias – Sounds Of Animals: Audible Communication Of Zoo And Farm Animals (IA)
Barbara Moncure & Harry Siemsen – Folksongs Of The Catskills (IA)
Bell Telephone Laboratories – The Science Of Sound (IA)
Bertolt Brecht – Before The Committee On Un-American Activities (IA)
Bertolt Brecht – Bertolt Brecht’s The Exception And The Rule (IA)
Big Bill Broonzy – His Story – Big Bill Broonzy Interviewed By Studs Terkel (IA)
Brendan Behan – On Joyce (IA)
Dikmen Gürün / Erdal – Turkish Folktales (IA)
Guy de Maupassant, Paul-Louis Courier, & Voltaire read by Armand Bégué, Louise Bégué, & Pierre Capritz – French Short Stories, Volume 1 (IA)
Michael Siegel – The Sounds Of The Junk Yard (IA)
The Armenian National Choral Society Of Boston, Siranoush Der-Manuelian – Armenian Choral Music (IA)
Unknown artists – Music Of The Plains Apache (IA)
Unknown artists – Folk Songs And Dances Of Iran (IA)
Unknown artists – Folk Music Of The Western Congo (IA)
Unknown artists – Music Of South Arabia (IA)
Unknown artists – Religious Music Of The Falashas (IA)
Unknown artists – Prayer For Absolution / Prayer “Adonai” For Weekdays (IA)
Unknown artists – Prayer For Passover / Prayer “Adonai” For Saturday (IA)
Unknown artists – Prayer For Passover / Prayer For New Year (IA)
Unknown artists – Responsive Reading (IA)
Unknown artists – Hungarian Folk Songs (IA)
Unknown Western Australian Desert artists – Songs Of The Western Australian Desert Aborigines (IA)
Voltaire, Prosper Merimme, & Guy de Maupassant read by Armand Bégué, Louise Bégué, & Pierre Capritz – French Short Stories, Volume 2 (IA)