Music Archives

Over 25 years ago, I saw a Sunday Morning special on how they were archiving railroad workers songs.
This special was based upon mainly black railroad crews who used to manually straighten the rail lines, they were being replaced by a mechanical device. To work together as a team and pull the rail at the same time they used to sing songs to time their pulls.
Someone started a project to record these songs and to archive them, it was an American project.
I was wondering, does anyone know if these are available through the internet, or can the Archive be accessed and listened to? I am assuming that there must be hundreds of thousands of old recordings from our past, and from older forms of recordings. That have been recorded in a more stable form, I just am assuming that someone has made these digital and available.

Any clues where to look, I tried musical archives, but that was a bust…

Archive.org has a large audio section. Have you tried there?

I have not, but am doing so now.
Thanks Pike!

The Smithsonian Institution, the national American museum, has similar project.

Here’s a link to its music collections:

http://americanhistory.si.edu/archives/d-5.htm

And here’s a link to its record label:

http://www.folkways.si.edu/?leadsource=BrandedSFW&gclid=CLvM8oGoxKgCFYEUKgodUUoZvw