If you have ever found yourself humming that one-hit wonder Jimmy Soul (who struck radio gold when he released the classic If You Wanna Be Happy in 1963), the All But Forgotten Oldies site may be just what you are looking for. The site consists of a searchable database of links to sound clips for over 4000 songs from 1960 to 1975, which can be browsed by either performing artist or song title. The...

BMG Entertainment provides this portal to three avenues of modern music: country (Twang This), alternative (BUGjuice), and urban (Peeps Republic). Each site contains news, star information, upcoming concerts, and of course, video and or audio clips (RealPlayer or QuickTime). The design of each site, as well as the content, should appeal to the fans of that music. Note that sites open in their own...

Originally broadcast from July 2003 to September 2003, this rather engaging radio program explored the origins and development of America's popular music tradition in the first five decades of the 20th century. Hosted by NPR's Paul Brown, this website is designed to complement this fine series, and allow the musically curious visitor to listen to each of the eleven segments in the series. The...

Mountain Stage, a famous Charleston, West Virginia, venue where folk musicians play, is broadcast on National Public Radio, and can be heard on the NPR website, simply by clicking on "Listen", next to the artist's picture and brief bio. Visitors wishing to read more about the artist's musical history can click on the name of the artist next to their picture. Included in the history is their set...

The online collections and exhibits prepared by the Library of Congress are generally considered authoritative and of excellent quality, and this new archive prepared by the Music Division within the Library of Congress is no exception. Containing over 62,500 pieces of historical sheet music, this archive is searchable by author, subject, and song title. Clicking on a particular work will allow...

Earlier this week, the Polyphonic HMI company announced that their new software program, Hit Song Science, may have the ability to pick out which songs might be chart-toppers before they are even released to the record-buying public. The program identifies certain characteristics, such as melody, harmony, tempo, and pitch, that frequently result in songs that become immensely popular. Apparently,...

Hosted by Nate Sloan, a music professor at Fordham University, and musician and songwriter Charlie Harding, Switched on Pop is a podcast dedicated to "the making and meaning of popular music." Each episode of this podcast is dedicated to a single contemporary song and, occasionally, a pop song from yesterday. To do so, they often invite a guest musician on the show to discuss the song's lyrics,...

Forgotten the third verse of "Eyes of the World?" Wondering just what Jerry mumbled after "Eight sided whispering hallelujah hatrack" on your copy of "The Eleven?" from Las Vegas in 1968? Or would you like to know what Robert Hunter meant by the "the transitive nightfall of diamonds?" Look no further than this site, created and maintained by David Dodd, Branch Manager of the Civic Center Branch of...

The advent of the high fidelity turntable and the launch of Sputnik may seem to be wholly unrelated events, but in terms of recorded music, they blended together to create a world-wide fascination with what later would be termed "space-age pop." The site itself covers many aspects of space age pop (and its related musical cousins such as exotica and lounge music) with great attention to detail....

Whether you are a music historian looking to examine the role of popular song in the United States in the 20th century or just looking for a few songs to sing around the piano, the Digital Archive of Popular American Music at UCLA will definitely pique the interest of even the most casual visitors. From their massive collection of close to 450,000 pieces of sheet music, the specialists at the UCLA...