Don Fleming

Supercollector Don Fleming of the Association for Cultural Equity joins us to talk about history’s ultimate supercollector, the late ethnomusicologist and folk historian Alan Lomax. Plus, Fleming talks about his own collection, which includes 15,000 albums, 10,000 45-rpm singles, laserdiscs, Edison discs, Betamax video tapes ... and more eight-track tapes than you'd expect.

After yesterday's Supercollectors segment about digital audio storage, our listener Matt emailed us to ask us a question of a very analog nature. 

Twenty years ago American folklorist and ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax designed "The Global Jukebox," a database that used descriptive tools to identify and link archival music and dance footage. The Global Jukebox was essentially Pandora — but conceived long before technology that could realize it existed. Ten years after his death, Lomax's dream may finally be realized: all of his recordings have been put online, but it will take at least another year to get his collection of dance film into the database.