Southwest Collection

The Southwest Collection at Texas Tech University acquires, describes, preserves, and makes accessible to scholars and the general public archival collections of regional, national, and international significance.

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Part 2

#SouthwestCollection #music

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In the early 1990s, it was expensive to set up and record a digital music studio. Alesis introduced the Alesis Digital Audio Tape, or ADAT, which could record up to eight simultaneous tracks of digital audio on to Super VHS (S-VHS) tapes.

These were a cheaper (but still expensive) alternative for musicians and producers. It represented the transition from renting studio time and buying expensive studio equipment to the development of the home studio. Whereas older formats would require separate audio cables for each track, ADAT allowed for the transmission of eight channels of audio along a single fiber-optic cable. This cable would connect an ADAT transmitter and an ADAT receiver.

The most common tape used was an Ampex 289 S-VHS, which can be found in the Southwest Music Archive. In the current age of nonlinear editing and digital multi-tracks, the VHS transport system feels clunky. These tapes are also susceptible to magnetic decay, the loss of magnetic charge of the magnetic particles on the tape. This leads to data loss and degradation of the recorded audio signal.

Our A/V Audio Technician, Brad Bogle, walks us through the process of playing these S-VHS tapes on an ADAT player. First, the physical tape, containing digital audio information, is put into the ADAT machine, where we can see a visual display of the tracks. This then connects to an Audio Switch via a fiber-optic cable. This is then run through the Focusrite, which converts to USB, and then finally goes into the computer. This setup is used to digitize these tapes onto hard drives and cloud storage, ensuring long-term audio preservation.

Lanny Fiel Papers, 1939-2009, Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas

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#ADAT

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Want to know more about the Southwest Collection? Visit our LibGuide at https://guides.library.ttu.edu/swc for information on searching for resources, accessing archival collections, the digital repository, and some collection highlights!

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Jerry Jeff Walker was a country singer whose career spanned around 55 years. Over this period, he released 36 albums and released songs like “Mr. Bojangles”, which has been recorded by Bob Dylan and Sammy Davis Jr. It eventually reached number 77 on the U.S Billboard Hot 100. In the 1970s, he left his home in New York and traveled across the country before ending up in Austin, Texas. A Texan by choice, not birth, he exemplified the Texas outlaw country scene and became one of the foremost figures in the singer-songwriter community. His work was both lyrically impressive and rowdy, presented with a plain-spoken vocal style.

The Southwest Music Archive collects the Jerry Jeff Walker master recordings, restored as Council on Library and Information (CLIR) Recordings. This collection contains recordings from all his albums but one. There are unreleased Jerry Jeff recordings, including covers of "Jake (Quit Kickin' My Dog Around)" and Hank Williams’ "Lovesick Blues". The first image shows a 1/4-inch audio tape on a 10-inch reel of a master recorded at Electric Ladyland Studios. The second image shows a 2-inch audio tape on a 10-inch reel of a live performance, during which Walker played “London Homesick Blues” and “Mr. Bojangles”.

Jerry Jeff Walker Master Tape Collection, 1972-1988, Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas

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Happy Friday! Today we're featuring this image of David Gracy, Ruth Horn Andrews and Mabel Erwin looking at a scrapbook taken on November 7, 1968. The accompanying press tucked behind the photograph release states: "THEY REMEMBER WHEN -- Ruth Horn Andrews (right), daughter of Texas Tech's first president, and Prof. Emeritus Mabel Erwin take a trip down memory lane for a tape recorded interview with David Gracy, archivist for Tech's Southwest Collection."

Courtesy U 100.11 Information Services Photo Collection from The University Archives at Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library.

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Matador Ranch opens historic headquarters to the public under new family ownership

The headquarters division of the historic Matador Ranch is now open to the public, offering visitors a look at artifacts, photographs and th

Here's a great news segment on the Matador Ranch and new exhibit! Did you know the Southwest Collection has an extensive Matador Ranch Collection? Visit the following links for a look at the resources:

Collection Finding Aid - https://txarchives.org/ttusw/finding_aids/00082.xml

Matador Ranch Land Maps - https://hdl.handle.net/10605/62559

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Before vinyl and cassette tapes, there were other media for the transcription of sound. Thomas Edison, looking for a way to transcribe telephone calls and other sounds, experimented with different media. He first looked at paraffin paper that could be indented with an embossing point. He found that the speaking vibrations could make indentations in the paper. In 1877, Edison fashioned a metal cylinder, wrapped in tin foil. This used two “diaphragm-and-needle units”, for both recording and playback. The recording needle would translate the sound vibrations from a mouthpiece into indentations on the cylinder vertically. This could then be played back to the user. However, tin foil was not a practical medium due to its fragility and short lifespan. Edison improved his design by covering these hollow cylinders in wax. They functioned in a similar fashion, by recording a dictation through indentations on the wax.

Initially used as a dictating machine for offices, wax cylinders became a popular form of entertainment. Songs could be recorded and played back, within the comfort of one’s own home. However, wax cylinders lasted for only 100 uses, before the grooves became worn down. In 1896, Edison created a patent and released prerecorded cylinders for his Edison Home Phonograph. This medium, however, was short lived due to the rise of the disc recording system in the 1910s.

The Southwest Music Archive has both wax cylinders and a hand-cranked wax cylinder player. The first three pictures show an Edison Home Phonograph. It has a hand crank and a metal cylinder over which the wax cylinder is placed. The back shows the patent information. Picture 4 shows the box containing the wax cylinder canisters and the cylinders themselves. Pictures 5-6 show the empty canister for “Down in Blossom Row Medley”, distributed through Edison Gold Mould Records. Pictures 7-8 show the wax cylinder itself, with the small grooves carved around its circumference.

Echols Family Papers, 1890-2007, Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas

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It's been a while since we had an Oral History Spotlight! Here's a 2001 interview with Lubbockite and TTU grad, David Gaschen. Gaschen is an internationally acclaimed musical theater vocalist and actor, best known for his historic performances as The Phantom in Andrew Lloyd Webber's "The Phantom of the Opera."

Transcript: https://hdl.handle.net/10605/363341

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Billboard is an American entertainment and music magazine. It was first published in November of 1894 as an entertainment publication and is distinguished as being among the oldest trade magazines in the world. The magazine originally focused on bill posting and outdoor amusements before concentrating on music and related fields beginning in the Thirties.

By 1956, as shown in the above images, the magazine had become a cornerstone for music industry news. Along with news, it provided an avenue for artists to gain exposure. It contains music reviews, charts, and news.

Image five shows the Top 100 charts for the week ending November 14, 1956. At number one, is “Love Me Tender” by Elvis Presley. There are additional charts, in image six, for Best Sellers in Stores, Most Played on Juke Boxes, and Most Played by Jockeys. Images 7-10 contain ads for the big artists of this era, including The Platters, “Fats Domino, Elvis Presley, and Chuck Berry.

Billboard still remains a metric for the popularity of artists, with charts being updated each Tuesday.

The Southwest Music Archive holds issues from 1956-1957 in our Billboard Magazine collection.

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Of interest and closely related to our own Southwest Music Archive, Lubbock Heritage Society invites community members to visit the Cactus Theater for a presentation on the theater’s history and its lasting influence on downtown Lubbock’s cultural landscape.

Date: Monday, July 20, 2026

Time: 5:30 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.

Location: Cactus Theater, 1812 Buddy Holly Ave., Lubbock, TX 79401

Parking: Lot directly behind the theater

Admission: Free and open to the public

Registration: None required

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Learn about Lubbock history and researching in the Southwest Collection at this month's Lubbock County Historical Commission program, featuring SWC Archivist Weston Marshall. The event is free and open to the public.

Tuesday, July 14; 7pm - 8pm; Groves Branch Library; 5520 19th St., Lubbock, TX

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Occasionally, the Southwest Music Archive finds non-musical items. On this Weird Wednesday, we highlight Winthrop Patterson, a Leopard frog specimen found in the Dow Patterson Collection. Although there is little information on this little fella, he has achieved mascot status.

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Revisiting this neat post from 2018 which features this 12” vinyl audio recording disc from the papers of Gordon Barton McLendon, a prodigious Texas radio producer and broadcaster.

McClendon is perhaps best known for his radio recreations of major league baseball games from the 1940s through the 1960s, with some of his over 4,000 recordings being sound effects required to complete his sports re-creations. This one, however, is an episode of “The Old Scotchman’s Scrapbook” Radio Show, a program that compiled historic recordings of events or speeches for McLendon’s radio listeners to rediscover. The eleven Old Scotchman’s Scrapbook episodes (316 total segments) have been digitized, and can be listened to in-house.

More on the McLendon collection can be found on our digital repository at https://hdl.handle.net/10605/353054

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Tomorrow is Independence Day. Check out this special edition of the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal for the 1976 United States Bicentennial. The full issue can be viewed on our digital repository.

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Taken from the Jesse “Guitar” Taylor Papers, these 45 rpm records represent two pioneers in Blues and Rock-and-Roll music.

Muddy Waters (in the second image) is credited as being the “father of modern Chicago blues”. His label, Chess, was Chicago-based and run by two Jewish immigrant brothers. They signed artists, such as Chuck Berry, Howlin’ Wolf, and Bo Diddly. Due to their impressive roster, they are considered to be one of the most influential record company. The record shown in the first image was put out as a 7-inch single.

Little Richard is a highly influential rock-and-roll artist who inspired The Beatles and others. His raspy shouting style gave rock-and-roll one of its most identifiable and influential vocal sounds. He introduced several of rock music’s most characteristic music features, including its high volume, vocal style, distinctive beat, and innovative visceral rhythms. He released this single (as shown in the third image) for Specialty Records in November 1958.

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Jesse “Guitar” Taylor Papers, 1947-2009, Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas

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Here's an image from our Frank Reeves Photograph Collection. The 1940s image shows two cowboys and horses drinking water at sunset "when day is done."

In the late 1970s the Southwest Collection obtained the photographic files and other papers of Frank Reeves, the well-known livestock reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the American Hereford Journal, and the Cattleman. For more of Frank Reeves, visit https://hdl.handle.net/10605/16705.

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Wayne “Hatch” Hatchel was a sound engineer who worked most notably for the Joe Ely Band through the 1970s. While on tour, Hatchel photographed many performances and behind-the-scenes shots of various musical acts. These slides here captured performances from Joan Jett, the Joe Ely Band, and the Maines Brothers Band from the Tornado Jam held in May 1982 at Buddy Holly Park.

For more information on Hatchel’s photographs, visit the finding aid here: https://txarchives.org/ttusw/finding_aids/40087.xml