OMMA: Origins of Modern Music Archive

05/31/2026

Pre-teen Stevie Wonder found his Detroit neighbor’s piano and taught himself how to play by ear, then went on to learn drums and harmonica before age ten. Within two years he cut his first record with Motown's Tamla imprint with the song "I Call It Pretty Music but Old People Call It the Blues." The musical prodigy grew into a wide-ranging icon selling more than 100 million records with his unique mixture of R&B, soul, jazz, funk and gospel sounds. Learn more about Stevie Wonder's start at originsarchive.com.

05/23/2026

The Bee Gees started as The Rattlesnakes, their childhood band in Manchester before the family emigrated to Australia and set Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb toward stardom. Learn more about how the Bee Gees began at the Origins of Modern Music Archive. originsarchive.com

05/15/2026

Johnny Cash’s journey from U.S. Air Force service in Germany to rockabilly stardom was almost derailed … until he changed his religiously-themed gospel music to a song about a lovelorn man on a train. That journey earned him a Sun Records contract and famously took him to Folsom, Reno and eventually the Hall of Fame. Read more about the origins of Johnny Cash’s career at the Origins of Modern Music Archive.

04/30/2026

Congratulations to The Killers for "Mr. Brightside" and its record-breaking 500-week run on the U.K. Charts! The song, The Killers' absolute debut, was issued on London's independent Lizard King Records in 2003, with only 500 copies initially pressed on white vinyl. Read about how the Killers went from their first gig at a Las Vegas coffee shop to living on the U.K. charts and becoming a cultural phenomenon in the process on originsarchive.com

04/17/2026

Lauryn Hill started her performing career at age 13, getting booed at Amateur Night at The Apollo. She turned it around that night and within just a few years was blasting into the stratosphere, becoming a force in the world of hip-hop and R&B, breaking records as one of the greatest artists of her generation. Read more about how she got her start at the Origins of Modern Music Archive.

Amateur Night at the Apollo, 1988, and Lauryn Hill, age 13, is about to sing “Who’s Lovin’ You” by the...

04/14/2026

Frank Sinatra was on the verge of fame after winning a nationwide radio talent show, "The Major Bowes Amateur Hour," in 1935, but the resulting tour was riven by jealousy from his three bandmates. Instead, Frank landed at a New Jersey roadhouse as a singing waiter. Bandleader Harry James's wife alerted her husband to the kid who sounded good on the restaurant's live radio broadcasts. James drove to New Jersey to meet the kid and signed him to a deal, but not before Sinatra rebuffed James's attempts to rename him Frankie Satin. "I was born Sinatra and I'll die Sinatra," Frank responded, and a legend began. Read more about the start of Sinatra's career at OMMA: Origins of Modern Music Archive: https://originsarchive.com/teammember/frank-sinatra/

04/07/2026

Welcome to OMMA, the Origins of Modern Music Archive! We are the definitive archive of the very first records made by the artists who changed the musical world and a teller of the stories behind these beginnings.

These records represent the hustle and the grit of the young artists who released them. Many of these artists - from Willie Nelson to the Wu-Tang Clan - started their own obscure, homemade private record labels just so they could release their first songs. Among the stories we tell is that of Juan Atkins, a Detroit 18-year-old and brilliant musical mind who launched his own label, Deep Space Records, in 1981, and in the process created a foundational milestone in the origination of trance.

You can find his story and many others at our website, originsarchive.com. Meanwhile keep a lookout for The Origins of Modern Music Podcast, scheduled to launch in Fall 2026.