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No one could pound out that incessant bass with the left and still lead the way with a thunderous right like Slim. This 1959 LP features one stunning solo after another by one of the most exciting... more

This album features big-voiced blues pianist and singer Memphis Slim and legendary bassist Willie Dixon, who is credited with having helped create the Chicago blues sound. Several tracks from this... more

Piedmont blues singer and guitarist Brownie McGhee's voice rings clear over his strumming about love, cheating, and remembering his friend Big Bill Broonzy. Liner notes include song lyrics and brief... more

This is volume 2 of a projected 3-volume set of Lead Belly's performances recorded by Moses Asch during the 1940s. The original masters now reside in the Folkways Archive at the Smithsonian... more

Pink Anderson (1900-1974) spent most of his life working as a roving entertainer in the small medicine shows that traveled throughout the South. His stage repertoire included blues, comedic songs,... more

The classic 1957 release from one of the greats of gospel blues, a rough diamond of hard, pure country gospel expression, at odds with the earthly concerns of the blues and yet entwined with the... more

I've never had the blues, says Brownie McGhee in an interview with famed oral historian, Studs Terkel, "the blues has always had me." the trio of legendary bluesmen played, talked, and traded stories... more

This album presents the distinctive blues born from the hardships of life-especially African-American life-in northern Mississippi. In addition to their music, this collection includes the men's... more

Singing and begging are about the only two ways a blind man can make a living in farm country. Several years after Blind Willie Johnson's death in 1949, Samuel B. Charters tries to get to know the... more

Best known for his blues harmonica recordings, Sonny Terry joins friends Brownie McGhee and J.C. Burris to explore the range of the jawharp (also known as Jew's harp or mouth harp) in blues and... more

For a detailed portrait of this blues-harmonica hero's life and times, consult the liner notes here. To have your soul stirred and spine tingled, just listen to Alcoholic Blues; Locomotive Blues; Bad... more

Of Brownie McGhee's expressive thumb-and-forefinger guitar style Charles Edward Smith writes, "[it] sings and rings and whangs and talks to you." Indeed it does, and his versatile voice molds each... more

Moses Asch purchased the "race records" heard on this album in 1941 for 15 cents each. Demonstrating some of the musical styles characteristic of the American South that proved influential in shaping... more

This collection of rock and roll from Louisiana and Mississippi features music by Al White and the Hi-Liters, as well as from other regional acts who recorded for New Orleans-based Lynn's Productions... more

This compilation brings together recordings produced by Henry Hines and Al White for Lynn's Productions, and provides a musical snapshot of some of the bands popular in clubs, fraternities, and... more

Tony "Little Sun" Glover (b. 1939) is a Minneapolis-born harmonica player and singer, most notably associated with guitarists "Spider" John Koerner and Dave "Snaker" Ray during the folk revival in... more

When George "Daddy Hotcakes" Montgomery sings "Mustard Greens," his rich, rugged voice shifts from a call-and-response conversation about eating cornbread and mustard greens to lyrics about growing... more

From the early blues of Son House, Willie Brown, and Charley Patton to the assertive music of the Depression, the Mississippi delta has produced songs and singers with a fierce honesty that has... more

As the Depression's early days brought Southern musicians to Northern cities, the Chicago blues scene absorbed and incorporated these new arrivals. Ensembles grew, the blues became more popular, and... more

Recorded by Folkways in 1973, this lively album by Arbee Stidham recaptures his classic Southern Blues roots. Stidham says: "In doing this session, I thought back to my boyhood days when I was... more

This album presents a variety of blues, and in Brownie McGhee's singing are echoes of work and dance songs, as well as spirituals. Brownie himself once said, "I want to make music the way I know is... more

Charles Edward Smith, author of the album's notes, writes, "Few singers evoke as forcefully as Brownie the many-sidedness of heritage... sentiment and sex, humor and the solar plexus shots of bitter... more

This album presents what seem to be the two sides of singer Cat-Iron's repertoire: that of the blues musician and that of the converted Christian. As Frederic Ramsey, Jr.. writes, "Cat-Iron might be... more

In the Blues in St. Louis, Volume 3, electric guitarist Henry Townsend plays familiar blues songs, accompanied by Tommy Bankhead on electric bass. Samuel Charters, who recorded the session in 1961,... more