Stax Museum debuts new website showcasing vast soul music archive of Chicago collector and DJ Bob Abrahamian
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- The Stax Museum of American Soul Music launched a website dedicated to the Bob Abrahamian collection.
- The collection includes rare recordings, interviews and radio shows from the late Chicago DJ and music historian.
The vast collection of music and interviews by noted Chicago record collector, disc jockey and oral historian Bob Abrahamian is now available digitally, via the Stax Museum of American Soul Music.
On May 14, the Stax Museum announced the launch of its new online initiative, The Bob Abrahamian Collection Website, a “groundbreaking online archive that pays tribute to the late Chicago radio host, collector, and soul music historian whose passionate work helped preserve the deep soul sounds of a generation.”
The life’s work of the late Abrahamian — who died in 2014 at the age of 35 — the site (bobacollection.staxmuseum.org) features rare recordings, oral history interviews and full-length episodes of his legendary “Sitting in the Park” radio show, which originally aired on WHPK 88.5 FM in Chicago. The site will offer access to previously unreleased digitally restored radio broadcasts, exclusive artist interviews and searchable transcripts from the Abrahamian collection.
The Stax Museum first acquired the collection in 2021. In total, some 35,000 45 RPM singles and LPs along with related materials — high school yearbooks, photographs, scrapbooks and other artifacts — were donated by Abrahamian’s family to the Stax Museum after several years of discussions with the organization. The Abrahamian collection had previously been on loan to Chicago’s Black Music Research Center at Columbia College until its closure in 2019.
The new digital home for the Abrahamian collection on the Stax Museum site will also offer curated playlists and upload fresh content every two weeks.
“Bob’s dedication to preserving the cultural memory of American soul music was unmatched,” said Abrahamian collection curator and former Stax Museum executive director, Jeff Kollath. “This new website brings his work to the public in a way that’s accessible, immersive, and historically essential.”
Abrahamian began amassing his collection in the mid-1990s while attending the University of Chicago and working as a DJ at the school’s radio station WHPK. A hip-hop fan, Abrahamian was initially searching for funk 45s to sample. Those efforts evolved into a passion for the soul music scene of 1960s Chicago — an era populated with many artists and labels that never achieved commercial success and ultimately slipped into obscurity.
As part of his mission and commitment to those artists, Abrahamian not only began collecting their work but also painstakingly documenting their stories in a series of oral history interviews on his show “Sitting in the Park.”
To celebrate the launch of the new site, the Stax Museum will hold an event at Central Station at 7 p.m. May 14 with a special DJ set by Kollath and Central Station’s Cadillac Zac featuring records from the Abrahamian Collection.
For more information, go to StaxMuseum.org.
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