In Awe of Ford Porter

Ford Porter died in 1998 after decades of collecting records. He amassed a huge collection which his family donated to the UW last year. The collection has 14,806 LPs, 41,975 78s, and 8,981 45s with much of it being polka and folk music of the Upper Midwest generally.

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.

Holy fuck! And I thought I had quite a task before me in pillaging the Rounder Records catalog.