I have used the Mudcat search engine on the Home Page to search for Field Recorders' Collective after a serendipitous search took me there. There seems to be mentions of where this is mentioned in other threads but no thread devoted to it.

It looks to be a treasure chest of really important recordings of mainly white, mainly Old Time, mainly fiddle and/or banjo songs and tunes though there are is also cajun, early bluegrass and other aspects of American musical heritage from home or concert recordings - and the 101 albums on the site seem to be freely available to listen to.
Many of the names do not resonate with me on this side of the Atlantic but others do - Wade Ward, Dewey Balfa, Ola Belle Reed, Dock Boggs, Nathan Abshire, Tommy Jarrell, Buddy Thomas and some others.

I decided to make my first listening to be a song and a singer that I did not recognise and random choice took me to an old lady called Maggie Parker singing Wicked Polly. If the collection is half as good as this recording, I am set for many, many hours of fascinating listening.

This is the first part of what they have to say about themselves at https://fieldrecorder.org/about-frc/

The music can be listened to at https://fieldrecorder.bandcamp.com/

About the FRC
The Field Recorders’ Collective is an IRS-recognized nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation and distribution of noncommercial recordings of traditional American music,   material that is unavailable to the general public. Although some recordings in the collection have been shared privately and informally among collectors, they have never before been made readily available to the entire old time and traditional music community. Many of the source recordings used by the FRC come from private collections belonging to the individuals who made them. Although a number of source recordings are available through specialized music archives, gaining access to the archives (which may be thousands of miles away) and to the recordings that they maintain isn’t always simple. Sometimes, archival recordings can only be heard by visiting the archive. And even when an archive is willing to provide a copy, the cost can be prohibitive.

What does the FRC do? Among other things, your purchase of FRC products enables us to:

* track down important collections of traditional music;
* audition source recordings and selects the best examples for inclusion on our albums;
* digitally edit these recordings to trim out what isn’t relevant;
* apply suitable EQ and filters to create a high quality listening and learning experience; and
* solicit written background material and photographs for context, available via the FRC website.

Has anyone here ant experince of buying from/contacting/supporting this organisation?