Material including footage of legendary jams in smoke filled clubs and personal letters of the jazz greats, is now available online thanks to the work of a Loughton based museum.

The National Jazz Archive in Traps Hill, Loughton, received a £311,000 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund three years ago to start the digitisation of thousands of artefacts of jazz history. 

They have now released their collection of jazz recordings, books, posters, letters and memorabilia online, preserving and providing easy access to the collections for students and jazz afficionados worldwide.

Among the other projects is a website of music and rare recordings from the archive, a jazz history website featuring British jazz greats discussing their music and a number of educational projects and exhibitions.

A series of seven fundraising concerts were organised in 2014, featuring the Gresty-White Ragtimers, Kenny Ball Jazzmen led by Keith Ball, Paul Jones and Digby Fairweather to allow the archive to keep working.

The project team was managed by Angela Davies, and had archivists Fiona Cormack and Jo Blyghton working with outreach officer Sam Fieldhouse.

Lesley Walker, project monitor for the Heritage Lottery Fund, said: “Over the past three years I have watched the National Jazz Archive develop into an active and lively organisation with properly catalogued and managed collections, reaching out to a much wider audience including their local communities.

"There is now a greater awareness within and beyond the jazz community of the Archive and its activities and ‘The Story of British Jazz’ makes the collection accessible to people everywhere.”

The archive is available here.