Ragtime

If you're a Scott Joplin fan, this site will be invaluable. It has 50-60 pieces of Joplin sheet music, assembled from various digital collections.

The site also has links to several collections of digitised sheet music, with an emphasis on ragtime and ragtime-era music. How about the E. Azalia Hackley (you couldn't make it up) collection of 19th and 20th Century Sheet Music of Negro Themes, in the Detroit Public Library? It even has an index by subject, so you can quickly browse for (say) "Overweight Women -- Songs and Music" and come up with this little gem, You've Got To Love Me a Lot.


"Miss Susannah Jackson,
was a great attraction,
weighed about four hundred pounds,
Coffee coloured beauty,
and they called her cuty,
a hunk of love that knew no bounds,
Loved a midget nigger,
and he was no bigger
Than a measly black and tan" etc etc

Prudently, the site has a disclaimer:
"The Detroit Public Library presents these documents as part of the record of the past. These primary historical documents reflect the attitudes, perspectives, and beliefs of different times. The Detroit Public Library and DALNET do not endorse the views expressed in these collections, which may contain materials offensive to some readers."