A major jazz discovery will finally be commercially accessible to the public, courtesy of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem and Apple Music, which have partnered to release “The Savory Collection” in digital form. A series of archival recordings from the 1930s and early ’40s, from radio broadcasts taped by the pioneering sound engineer Bill Savory, it’s a revelatory body of music that had been cloaked in myth and obscurity for many years.

The National Jazz Museum in Harlem announced its acquisition of the Savory Collection — hundreds of hours of music on nearly 1,000 discs — in 2010. Loren Schoenberg, a jazz musician and historian who serves as the founding director and senior scholar at the museum, had spent more than 30 years attempting to track down the collection. The quest led him to Mr. Savory’s son, Eugene Desavouret, who agreed to sell the material to the museum.

What followed was an intensive restoration and digitization effort, along with the process of cataloging the music. One obvious prize — “the pièce de résistance,” said Mr. Schoenberg and others — is a live recording of “Body and Soul” by the tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins. It will be the centerpiece of “The Savory Collection, Volume 1 — Body and Soul: Coleman Hawkins and Friends,” available on iTunes and from Apple Music on Oct. 14.