There was a double LP set of German field recordings from Wisconsin that came out in 1986. It's not available on CD, but the LPs are still available from the Folklore Program at the University of Wisconsin.

I got this information last year from Jim Leary, Professor of Folklore and Scandinavian Studies and Director of the Folklore Program when I inquired about whether it was available on CD:   "When the old Wisconsin Folklife Center/Wisconsin Folk Museum went out of existence, the Folklore Program at the University of WI bought the rights to all sound recordings productions, including ACH YA! We still have lots of the LPs and hope eventually to reissue the whole business on CD but haven't gotten to it yet. There will, however, be a book/CD project on German American music coming out in the next year, published by the Max Kade Institute for German American Studies at the University of Wisconsin (www.mki.wisc.edu). It's title will be LAND WITHOUT NIGHTENGALES, ed. by Philip Bohlman and Otto Holzapfel. Both Phil and I worked on the old ACH YA! project and we both have essays in the book, which will be distributed by the University of Wisconsin Press."

Here's the information on the LPs:

© 1985, Folklore Village Farm, Inc.
Producer: Philip Martin
Liner Notes: Philip Martin & James Leary
Project Researchers: James Leary Philip Martin, Philip Bohlman & Lewis Koch

Collected & Compiled by the Wisconsin Folklife Center with the support of the Max Cade Institute for German-American Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Documentary fieldwork and record production made possible with support from National endowment for the Arts, The Kohler Foundation, M&I Banks, Wisconsin Arts Board, etc.

To order (the records were $14.00 postpaid, believe it or not):
Wisconsin Folklife Center, Folklore Village, Route 3, Dodgeville, Wisconsin 53533 [1986 info; this no longer exists]

Intro:

Ach Ya! Folk Songs and Dance Melodies
Traditional German-American Music from Wisconsin

"It should come as no surprise to find considerable diversity in the Wisconsin German folk music tradition. The field recordings and reissues from 78s and LPs which appear on this record reveal a number of dialects of language and musical style. This diversity is in part a reflection of the ethnic backgrounds of the German settlers who came to Wisconsin beginning in the 1840s. these immagrant families came not from a single unified country but from what was (until the latter part of the 19th century) aloose confederation of many proivinces, principalities, duchies and city-states. The speech and customs of a North German from one of the Baltic Sea states of Pommerania, Prussia, Mecklenburg or Holstein contrasted sharply with the dialect of language, song and dance style of a South German from the Alpine regions of Austria or Bavaria. Add to that a mix of German-speaking immagrants from the Volga River in Russia, from Moravia and Sudentenland in Czechoslovakia, from Switzerland, and from other German-speaking areas of Europe -- not to mention the historic split between German Catholics and German Lutherans -- and it is reasonable to expect a rich variety in German folk music in Wisconsin.

Despite the many differences, however, in America the Germans found themselves grouped together by non-Germans and German-American institutions alike. Ther German-American churches, schools, and newspapers especially served as vehicles to unite the separate ethnic groups into a common awareness of _Deutschtum_ or "German-ness." Folk singing was seen as an expression of the 19th century Romantic national spirit and was part of an active movement to set an overlay of pan-German culture (in the written language of _Hochdeutsch_) on top of the splintered regional backgrounds. Song books for singing societies, church congregations, and home use (like the popular _Liederperlen_, Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis, MO) spread a combination of religious hymns, secular songs, children's ditties, and american popular tunes throughout the German-american communities."

I hope this helps you!

Linn