Mills Music Library

Mills Music Library

“Rosemaling Fever” by Ole & Sven

Link to Mills Music Library website

Location:
Mills Music Library
Basement, Memorial Library
University of Wisconsin-Madison
728 State Street
Madison, WI 53706

 The Mills Music Library’s special collections include the Wisconsin Music Archives (WMA), which has substantial multi-format holdings regarding folk and ethnic performers and musical traditions in Wisconsin and the Upper Midwest.  Several of the Music Library’s discrete collections within the larger WMA concern Norwegian American music, are accompanied by on-line data bases, and are listed in the Collections section of this portal (i.e. the Robert Andresen, Down Home Dairyland, Leonard Finseth, and Helene Stratman-Thomas Collections).  In addition, the WMA includes the Wisconsin Folk Museum Collection, comprised in part of field recordings, photographs, field notes, correspondence, and production information created by Phil Martin from the late 1970s through the 1980s in connection with the production of two documentary LP records, Across the Fields and Tunes from the Amerika Trunk. An earlier collection of Martin’s l978 field recordings of Norwegian fiddlers from Wisconsin is held by Wisconsin Historical Society.

The Mills Music Library’s special collections also include substantial holdings of 78 rpm recordings by Norwegian American performers, including those by several performers featured in the Artist section of this portal (Stan Boreson the Olson Sisters, Slim Jim, Thorstein Skarning), as well as by other performers like hardanger fiddler Gunleik Smedal, the Viking Accordion Band led by Skipper Berg, and the singer Carsten Woll.  An on-line data base listing these recordings is in preparation.