Browsing American Roots
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174-200: When Sun Played The Blues
Before Sun Records was the label of Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis, it was the label of The Prisonaires, Rufus Thomas Jr., and Willie Nix. This is a selection of Sun's first 26 singles, when "Sun" meant blues.
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Back Porch Revival
Early 20th century Appalachian music was a fusion of anglo-celtic folk ballads and slave hollers; the songs, often sung by women, spoke of domestic abuse, escape and revenge. Contemporary artists put a modern spin on this back porch music, and have revived the genre.
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Country + Soul
What does David Allan Coe, the "Longhaired Redneck," have to do with soul legends like Ray Charles and Solomon Burke? A shared Southern heritage for one, plus a penchant for sad songs. This Set explores the deep links between the undeniably "white" sounds of country,...
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Early Evangelists
Through the crackling of acetate, hope in a fractured time can still be heard. These songs are bigger than the church walls they are housed in; these are songs as much about joy as they are about God.
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Folk Music And McCarthyism
Folk music questions authority. McCarthyism questioned anybody who questions authority. For a brief period in the 1940s and '50s the two crossed paths.
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Introduction to Newgrass
Progressive Bluegrass (a.k.a. "newgrass") is the counterculture-inspired approach to traditional bluegrass instruments and songs that brought folk, rock, blues, and jazz techniques and songs to the party. This Set introduces the artists that pushed Bluegrass to new and...
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Murder Ballads
Murder ballads have served to inform as much as entertain since their earliest recording. However, what makes these songs so lasting is their malleability; each of these twelve songs are passed down and told through different lips, changing every time.
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Origins Of British Blues-Rock
English rock groups like Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones and Cream are icons of popular music, but they drew heavily from the pioneering American blues artists of the Mississippi Delta and amplified Chicago scene. This is the music that inspired the biggest rock bands of the 1960s.
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Pre-war Jug
Since the 1890s, resourceful musicians had used whiskey jugs to approximate the sound of tubas. In Louisville and Memphis in the 1920s and '30s, these jugs became the foundation of a new blues genre that fused jazz, ragtime and country.
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Prison Worksongs
Recorded in the 1940s and 1950s these songs display the rich call-and-response tradition of black laborers and prisoners. Were it not for the field recordings of ethnomusicologists such as John and Alan Lomax the worksong tradition may have been lost to history.
American Roots
American Roots is all about country music, literally. These Sets are comprised of music originating in rural parts of the US and its antecedents, and includes early rock & roll, blues, traditional country, folk, Tex-Mex, Cajun, Zydeco, Rockabilly, Honky-Tonk, early r&b, Bluegrass, early Gospel, field recordings, Western Swing, Americana, and more.
