The Louisiana State Museum Jazz Collection August 7, 2009

The Louisiana State Museum has the largest collection in the world of instruments owned and played by important figures in jazz, possessing multiple examples of all the commonly used instruments: trumpet, cornet, trombone, clarinet, saxophone. The photo collection consists of around 10,000 photographs. The bulk of the photos feature the local music scene from about 1950 onward, focusing on traditional and Dixieland performers. The Jazz Collection has close to 10,000 recordings in virtually every format ever used, from piano rolls to digital tape. The bulk of the film holdings is several hundred rolls of various sizes donated in 1978 by local TV news cameraman Don Perry. The pictorial collection consists primarily of posters, plus paintings and other artworks. Many posters are from the New Orleans Jazz Club, and pertain to the concerts they have been staging since 1950. The Jazz Collection has hundreds of examples of sheet music, from late 19th-century ragtime to popular songs of the 40s and 50s.