The library at the University of California-Santa Barbara has archived and made available as MP3 files a collection of cylinders (wax, tinfoil, celluloid) from the early 1900's. They include vaudeville, orchestral, ragtime, spoken word, comedy, and other sorts of vintage recordings. And they're free and downloadable here:

http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/

That's a great site, thanks for the link, pE. I downloaded the Early Black Artists & Composers recordings yesterday. The search under "country" brought a hoot of a find, "Scene in a country store" from 1903. I gotta tack that one onto a cdr.

Yahoo!! Thanks a million. I'm gonna make some collages out of those.