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Lost & Found Sound NPR's Lost & Found Sound series explores newly discovered audio and music sessions, home audio, and listener submitted sounds and interviews. Subscribe to the RSS feed of never before played audio and sounds.

Lost & Found Sound

Twentieth Century Wars on Tape

Over 37 million men and women have served in the armed forces and fought in the major wars this century. They bequeathed us a legacy of recorded sound that captures the breadth of experience of war, as Quest for Sound Curator Jay Allison demonstrates.

Twentieth Century Wars on Tape

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Vermont's Archive of Folk Songs

Helen Hartness Flanders spent 35 years preserving Vermont's vanishing folk songs. She eventually collected more than 4,000 songs by carrying sound equipment to remote corners of the state -- and by charming residents into singing for her.

Vermont's Archive of Folk Songs

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West Virginia Steam Trains

Trains with steam engines have vanished in most parts of the country, replaced by diesel. But in parts of West Virginia, sounds of steam locomotive whistles can still be heard. In this edition of Lost and Found Sound, NPR’s Noah Adams said those sounds echo across the landscape like the sound of a century passing.

West Virginia Steam Trains

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Aimee Semple McPherson -- An Oral Mystery

Aimee Semple McPherson - Sister Aimee - was the first modern evangelist to use broadcast media to get out her message. She used radio to reach hundreds of thousands of people. She had a huge influece, and a rapid downful largely caused by a mysterious scandal.

Aimee Semple McPherson -- An Oral Mystery

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Pan American Blues

One of the first letters sent to Lost and Found Sound came from a listener who told us that no series about the sounds of the 20th century would be complete without the sound of the Pan American Train passing the WSM Radio tower in Nashville. The 10,000 watt station broadcast the sound live each day at 5:08pm - Nashvillians and listeners from all across the South and Midwest set their clocks by the sound.

Pan American Blues

Only Available in Archive Formats.

The Man Who Loves Sound

Starting in 1935, Don Hunter made a sonic scrapbook of the Pacific northwest. The 85-year-old Hunter still works out of his basement studio in Eugene, Oregon, where he keeps his discs and tapes as trophies. He shares some of those prize recordings with us.

The Man Who Loves Sound

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San Francisco's Chinatown Funeral Band

Lost and Found Sound looks at the Green Street Mortuary Band from San Francisco's Chinatown. More than 300 Chinese families a year hire the band to give their loved ones a proper and musical send-off through the streets of Chinatown. For more than 50 years, this amateur band performed for its community at nearly every big event.

San Francisco's Chinatown Funeral Band

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Sam Phillips' Memphis Recording Service

We present the first of our Lost & Found Sound Memphis trilogy with this portrait of the early years of Sam Phillips and his legendary Memphis Recording Service. This was before he recorded Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash. Interviews with Sam, his family, Ike Turner and others are interwoven with the remote recordings he made of talent shows, funerals and proms to support his passion for recording the raw unrecorded music of the 1950s South.

Sam Phillips' Memphis Recording Service

Only Available in Archive Formats.
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