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Jan 2026: Streaming Server, Digital Organization, and Gospel Mixtape

Posted on by Frank The Drifter

Dollar Country ended 2025 with a lot of work that is invisible to the outside world, although it’s work that is incredibly important. I’ve taken on the task of organizing DC’s digital files. This got kicked off by my project to host a small streaming service for myself.

Dollar Country Streaming Server
I found myself without a streaming service last month and after thinking about what I wanted to do and trying a few things I decided not to pay for one at all. They’ve always felt unfortunate to me anyway, so this way I don’t have to feel like I’m supporting a system that is generally exploitative of the artists who make it possible. Multiple people had suggested I try self hosting my own music so I could listen to my collection via streaming instead of paying for a service. It seemed like a lot of work at first but after consideration I thought it made a lot of sense.

Plex is a streaming service that allows you to host your own media server. Many people use it for TV shows and movies, but it also works with music. Considering that the vast majority of music in the Dollar Country archive isn’t on any streaming service then this would allow me to actually be able to hear this stuff outside of putting the records on. I love putting on a record, but now I can listen to obscure country gospel LPs while I’m driving or out of the house. Ideally this streaming server would be available to many others, but I’m not entirely sure how that would work from a logistics and legal standpoint.

Digital Organization
Starting the Plex server made me realize that my digital files needed to be organized. In the last 9 years I’ve taken pictures of thousands of records and created tends of thousands of photos. According to windows I’ve got 27,709 label pictures that take up 33.5 gigabytes of space. This work is largely invisible to the outside world but I’ve found it to be very important to the work of archiving. If my folders are all mixed up and only I know how they are set up then that only helps me, when I standardize their organization it can be helpful to anyone who looks at it.

Over the years I’ve accumulated hundreds of newspaper clippings, thousands of pictures, and thousands of audio files that are all located in different folders. By the end of 2026 I aim to have all of this digital information organized so that when you click on the Eddie Noack folder you have folders for clippings, pictures of records, and audio instead of them being in three different places. From there I hope to be able to have audio digitized of large swaths of the collection to share. This information is great to have, but my goal is to have it available to people that aren’t me, so that’s where I’m trying to shift my focus this year. This is going to require a tremendous amount of work, if you’d like to help with data entry on the database then drop me a line at host@dollarcountry.org.

Gospel Mixtape
The biggest change that’s happened with having a streaming server is that I’ve gotten to spend much more time with the country gospel LPs in the archive. I love putting on a record and giving it a listen, but the huge volume of records in the archive prohibit me from actually doing that. When I have time to listen to the records I prioritize digitizing new ones and adding them to the stacks, so relistening rarely happens. Now that I can listen in the car I’ve been spending some serious time with these records and putting certain songs away for a mixtape I’d like to release. Gospel music spends a lot of time singing about getting to the other side. Death or what happens after. Having grown up non-religious, I find this very interesting and after asking people about this I’ve found that it is generally of interest to a lot of people.

So by following this thread of cancelling a streaming service we arrive at a large scale digital reorganization and a new DC mixtape. It’s interesting how following these paths can lead to places you never thought of at first.

See you next time,
Frank The Drifter

Database Update: Browse By Location

Posted on by Frank The Drifter

I’ve been doing a TON of backend changes to the database in the previous months, but the nature of stuff like that is you often might not notice it as a database browser. Zach, a patron and now volunteer, has been writing code to help the database be more customizable and essentially making it more like the vision I’ve had for it. Without Zach’s help this stuff wouldn’t be happening. Thanks Zach!

The major change is that now I can link items with each other. Before, if I had a record that was released from Lawrence KS, I could write Lawrence KS in the data field but it was just text, now it will actually link to the Lawrence KS page and the and that page will have this record listed on it under Releases. That has allowed me to make much better State pages.

Long story short is that you can click on a State’s page and see a list of cities that have releases in the database. Then you can click on a city and see the releases from that city. I plan on adding Labels, Artists, and other things to the location pages too when I get the chance.

Check it out and browse around!

State Browsing Page

Let me know if you have any suggestions for browsability upgrades.

Cheers
Franklin

April 2025 Record Roundup

Posted on by Frank The Drifter

This month I put a power play on the database. The goal was to see how many records I could submit with fresh pictures and audio, and I managed to put up 105 records, many of them with audio. Below are some of the ones I think stand out.

Bluegrass

Foggy Blues is basically a blues song but the flip is a great banjo driven instrumental. Klub was based out of the Carolinas and had plenty of good bluegrass and country on it. Shack Creek Bluegrass Boys and Olabelle & Alex are both great bluegrass singles. The Rimrock, out of Arkansas, is instrumental. The New River is their own label out of Pennsylvania.

Country

I was very happy with this Carson Brothers single, I want to find another copy! It’s crudely recorded country tunes about a truck accident. Maco Light is about a North Carolina legend of a light that’s explained in the song.

The Don West is one of the few records I have from New Hampshire, it’s just two really great honky tonk songs. The Hayseeds I bought many years ago in Kansas City and for some reason I suspect it’s an all female country band but I’m not sure if it’s a hunch or I read something. Either way the Mule Skinner Blues version on that one is one of my favorites.

Gospel

I entered a few LPs this year and this is one of them. Who doesn’t like a girl with big hair? Great accordion and solid gospel LP all the way through. The Harmony Twins were based in Ohio and this is the second of their singles I’ve found. Holmes Family Gospel Singers is on Loyal, a fairly well known gospel label from Alabama. Good stuff.

Here’s the full list of everything added this month to the database

New Editions to the Database 4/27/25

Posted on by Frank The Drifter

This past month I’ve been focusing on trying to input a few things every day to the database. It takes a while because my process keeps getting more complicated. At first it was just the record and pics, and then it was the record with *all* the information on it (runout etchings, pressing plants, publishers…), and now it’s the record with all the info with pictures *and* audio. It takes a while, but I think it’s worth it to be able to browse the database, find a cool record, and listen to it right there!

First up is a great double instrumental single out of Concord Arkansas on Rimrock Records. As far as I can tell the Shack Creek Bluegrass Boys didn’t release anything else. There’s another version of this 45 with a black label and picture sleeve, but the same music.

Listen to it here: https://dollarcountry.org/items/show/28075

Next I have three singles from sister and brother Olabelle Reed and Alex Campbell featuring Deacon Brumfield and the New River Boys. Olabelle and Alex released a ton of material together on their own label as well as two LPs on Starday and some other things on random labels. They were based in Oxford PA where they played regularly and released a ton of music together. I labelled it as bluegrass but I’d really call it either old time music or appalachian music.

Check those out here: Aloha / White Flower, Deacons Boogie / Uncloud Day, When My Time Comes / Just Over In The Glory Land

Last but not least is this odd instrumental from David Beeler. It’s not straight country, more like classical or flamenco inspired country instrumentals. I’m not sure if I could really describe it any better, I’d suggest you just give it a listen.

Do that here: https://dollarcountry.org/items/show/28076

Cheers
Franklin

LPs on the Database

Posted on by Frank The Drifter

When Dollar Country started I only collected 45s, it seemed easier and cleaner. Two songs per disc is nice. No picture sleeves, a nice big hole in the middle that helps you hold onto a stack while you flip through. Life was easy back then.

People used to mention how I didn’t collect LPs, I had to turn down so many, but at that point they just didn’t interest me. There’s probably a reason I told people but really I just wasn’t interested in them for whatever reason. At some point that changed because I realized there were a lot of great things on big records and the genres represented were different. In country you’ll always have more than enough 45s. Gospel and Bluegrass are much more LP centered. If you’re gonna spread the word of god you may as well do 30 minutes instead of 6.

So, anyway, things are different now. I’m still picky about country LPs because it’s not really worth collecting stuff unless it’s rare, you can find non-rare stuff in other people’s collections. But with Country Gospel you just have so many options on LP that never made it to a single.

Another thing 45s have going for them is that they’re easy to input to a database, LPs on the other hand have significantly more information. Not just more songs, but more songwriting credits, more publishing credits, more, more more. Personally I also have a check in system for my 45s. Clean them, sleeve them, stamp them with a date, ID number, and source number from where I got it, and now it’s in the collection. LPs take longer to listen to, take longer to log, and take up more space. Now multiply that by a few thousand.

Now that you’ve heard plenty about my feelings towards the different sizes, maybe you can understand why I haven’t put any LPs on the database yet. But I wanted to put them on there, I was just waiting to get my head right. To have the best entry point into it. I made sure the database was ready (there’s a lot of inside baseball for database and info stuff happening here), and I had all the right fields set. Yesterday I put the first full listing up with audio and everything.

This record isn’t special outside of it being the first one. I mean it’s special in the way that any bit of music is special, but I didn’t choose it just for this. I’ve also made the streaming audio into a basic video with the album covers so it’s more like youtube. People seem to like that style of video and something about just having streaming audio felt lacking to me, and maybe to others it did too.

The end goal is to have the website feel institutional in that it’s focused on the information but also not have it feel clunky in the way that many institutional websites feel. Useful in the way that the internet used to feel 10+ years ago and without the constant ads, unneeded widgets, and website features that seem to take away from the actual usefulness of the website. Has anyone else noticed this? It drives me crazy when I want the hours of a business and I have to go to a website that’s mostly scrolling pictures and I can’t just find out when they’re open.

Here it is, I hope you like it. The Byrd Sisters are as good a group as any to start it off. Three Sisters In Jesus, although in real life they’re two daughters and a mother.

Visit the entry here, and keep checking for more.

https://dollarcountry.org/items/show/27946

Browse By State or Year

Posted on by Frank The Drifter

Go here to browse: https://dollarcountry.org/browse-by

I’ve just added a page to the database where you can easily search records by their release year or state. It’s still basic, but it’s a step in making the database easier to use!

A lot of people got a hold of me when I posted the map asking what records I had from different places and so I thought this would be helpful. I just finished North Carolina last night and am going to be working on North Dakota to West Virgnia this week. After that basic data entry is done I think I’ll be able to do some really cool stuff.

Things still to do:

  • Finish adding state/location data to records
  • tie location data to artist
  • tie location data to label
  • try to have different lists for label, artist, and record location (if possible)

So basically I have a lot of data entry still to do, but I like data entry and I think that the difference between a normal database and a helpful database is users being able to easily browse and view information.

Leave a comment if there’s some sort of data you’d like to see in a map, or an improvement to the database. Also let me know if you hit a broken link.

Interactive Location Map

Posted on by Frank The Drifter

This is something I’ve been working towards for a long time, having a map like this is a big goal for me. What you have here is an interactive map on google of all the locations I have 45s from, that I know of anyway. I started keeping location data back in 2020 when I did a big project to post one record from each US state on instagram. It might not look like it, but this map is the culmination of at least 100 hours of work. I went through each record in the collection and found out where the label and/or artist was from and logged it on lists. I still have a *big* list of unknown location records that I want to figure out someday, but for now this is what I got.

This map is made up of data from the DC Archives 45 rpm collection. So there are no locations from LPs here. Also this is just one point for each location. So if I have 20 records from Cleveland and 1 record from Kenosha the map will show them equally. This is a beginning, a rough draft. Eventually I want to have a map like this on the database where you can not only see the points like this but also the amount of records from each location with data about amount of records from each state, region, etc.

The other major point for this data is that I’ve left of all major labels and most big labels. For instance, Starday isn’t included here because it’s a big country label. The big names like Decca, RCA, and Capitol are not included either. My goal is to have a map like this that shows where normal people were making and releasing records, and if we include the majors then the map will become heavily skewed to a handful of big cities.

You can browse the map here: RECORD LOCATIONS MAP

Cheers
Franklin

PS. if you see spots where I don’t have records from and have any you’d like to donate then please reach out, I’d be happy to add them to the database!

DB Update: State of Origin Lists

Posted on by Frank The Drifter

Back in 2021 I went through every record in the collection to make lists on discogs of what state they were from. Sometimes it’s the label, sometimes it’s the artist, and sometimes I couldn’t figure it out at all. Well those lists remained on discogs and I updated them whenever I put a new record into the collection over there. I’m working on a new project where I want to share records by State so I’m translating the discogs lists to my database. So far I’ve gotten Alabama through Illinois moved over, I’m working alphabetically.

Once I’m done I’m gonna have a page where you can browse by state to see records from each state. I’m pumped to get this information moved over.

Here’s a few if you wanna browse:
Alabama
Arkansas
California

Let me know if you want the state list and I can link you to it!

Cheers
Franklin