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A Treasure Trove of Upper Midwestern Music:
The Ford Porter Collection

By Ron Wiecki

Since mid spring work has been underway unpacking the Ford Porter Collection, a very large collection of recordings gathered over many years by Porter in the Milwaukee area, where he lived, and throughout Wisconsin and adjacent states. What makes this collection unique is that it consists mainly of ethnic recordings and concentrates on music in the Upper Midwest. Encompassing over 11,000 LPs, 25,000 78s, and 8,500 45s (probably very conservative estimates, we don’t know the actual numbers yet!), once cataloged it will be an invaluable resource for those interested in the music of this area. The collection also includes a small amount of sheet music and other publications, and it all came to the library through the generosity of Porter's wife and son.

Porter was born in Blair, Wisconsin (about twenty miles west of Black River Falls), in 1921. During the 1930s his family listened avidly to the radio, able to pick up stations from Ames, Iowa, Milwaukee, Madison, St. Paul and occasionally farther, depending on the atmospheric conditions. Among the music that he heard was the music of the Germans, Scandinavians, Bohemians, and other central European groups who settled throughout the upper Midwest. A group called the Viking Accordion Band from Albert Lea, Minnesota caught his ear in particular, providing the impetus for the beginning of his record collecting in the years after 1945. The Viking Accordion Band recorded twenty-three sides for various labels between 1933 and 1941 and Porter made it his goal to find a copy of all of them. The project took him twenty-four years and eight months. Along the way and up until his death in 1998, he accumulated what is likely one of the premier collections of recorded ethnic music ever brought together.

Much of the music that Porter collected is now known under the generic name of polka. As research over the past two decades has increasingly made clear, by the time the earliest recordings were made in the late 1920s this music, while originally based in musical traditions brought from Europe, had developed into new styles that incorporated aspects of American popular music. Like the southern vernacular musical traditions that Bill Monroe synthesized into bluegrass, the music of the upper Midwest emerged in the 1930s and 40s as a successful synthesis of these diverse elements and for several decades was broadly popular. Also like bluegrass, polka music never emerged into wider cultural acceptance as did blues and jazz, and later rock.

The process of organizing the collection began by pulling out the 45s and setting them aside. Classical 78s, most of which would duplicate items already in the collection, were to be withdrawn. The LPs would be arranged by record label and gradually incorporated into the library's existing LP collection. I began the process of unpacking in March and it quickly became clear the number of LPs far exceeded the original estimate. Later, David Newman, Claire Schmidt and Jeff Arkenberg joined the sorting team. As of now, about two-thirds of the LPs are unboxed and sorted.

The unpacking process has shown that the recordings were sorted by Porter into broad stylistic categories. He stored LPs in 13-inch-square boxes that originally held four gallon cans of paint, about 40 LPs per box. The 78s are mostly in nail boxes that are of a sturdy enough construction to withstand the weight of stacked boxes full of the heavy shellac, although a not insignificant number are still in 78 albums. About a dozen or so boxes were found to be water damaged, and although the records were usually salvageable the covers were discarded.

While many of the LPs have regional affiliation, in particular Wisconsin recording companies and groups, there are several distinct subcategories: a number of polka labels based throughout the upper Midwest are represented by what is probably a significant portion of their output; country music, generally of the late 1950s through the 1960s; soundtracks and musicals; recordings from the ragtime revival of the 1950s. Compilations and reissues are fairly prevalent. Not surprisingly, the “easy listening” genre of the period from the 1950s through the 1970s is also well represented. Finally, there are some imported recordings of “folk” music from Central and Eastern Europe , perhaps showing that Porter had an interest in tracing the roots of Midwestern musical traditions.

As I write, new shelving is being installed at the back of the library's cage to accommodate this vast collection. However, many boxes of LPs and 78s remained to be unpacked, and volunteers to help are appreciated!