During its first 25 years, the Monterey Jazz Festival accumulated recordings that featured the most significant jazz musicians of their time. In 1984, the Festival considered placing the recordings in the care of an established archive where they would be preserved in a secure and climate-controlled environment and made available for reference and research. Two years later, in 1986, archivist Barbara Sawka accepted the collection for Stanford, and over subsequent years, the Festival has continued to add each year's performances.

The collection documents one of the premiere jazz institutions in the world, comprising over 1,500 sound and moving image recordings of live performances and interviews.  With funding from the GRAMMY Foundation, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, and Save America's Treasures, the collection has been digitized and cataloged, enabling unprecedented access to this rich vein in the history of jazz.