On September 27, 1974, the Music Division of the Library of Congress recreated a typical concert of brass-band and vocal music from mid-nineteenth-century America. Old Memories is one of those songs recorded. These recordings are the result of several years of research by Jon Newsom of the Music Division and many more years of experience and study by Frederick Fennell, founder and former director of the Eastman Wind Ensemble and professor of music at the University of Miami, and Robert E. Sheldon, then of the Smithsonian Institution's Division of Musical Instruments and presently Curator of Musical Instruments in the Music Division, Library of Congress. Because the purpose of these recordings is to demonstrate the style and quality of the popular music of the era, the musicians use instruments appropriate to the period. Band concerts of the mid-nineteenth century frequently included vocal music, which as a genre was inseparable from the band music of the same era.