Work Songs: Best Sellers

Eddie James House Jr., known as Son House, purchased his first guitar for $1.50 in the late 1920s and although it was all broken-up with only five strings instead of the usual six, it didn't deter him from becoming recognized as one of the most influential Mississippi delta blues singers in...

Originally released on LP on the Folk-Lyric label, Angola Prison Spirituals was recorded in the late '50s by the renowned folklorist and song collector Dr. Harry Oster. The first 13 cuts come from that glorious album, and for the CD reissue, Chris Strachwitz has added nine more tracks --...

In the late '40s, ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax went to Parchman Farm in Mississippi to record African-American prisoners. This penitentiary was renowned for its anachronistically harsh conditions, and it's something of a miracle that Lomax was allowed in to document the music in the...

Angola Prison Worksongs is a harrowing disc to listen to, not so much for the music as because of the circumstances of the recording. These field recordings from Angola prison, circa 1959, are more valuable as a social-historical document than for purely musical value. These work songs are sung...

JSP's Legends of Country Blues compiles five CDs of performances by Son House, Skip James, Bukka White, Tommy Johnson, and Ishman Bracey. These historic prewar recordings have been remastered, and according to the packaging, feature "unprecedented listening quality." While that...

A collection of field recordings from Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and Kentucky made between 1924 and 1939, this disc has a sort of odds and ends feel, since nearly half the tracks are by unknown lues singers, and it's a shame that the archivists who made these...

King of the Delta Blues is a single-disc set that collects Son House's Library of Congress sessions for Alan Lomax in 1940 and 1941, and House's huge rasping voice and vibrant slide guitar style are everywhere here, both on the solo selections and on a handful of African-American...

This fine concept recording by Alan Lomax compares an American and a Senegalese (Africa) holler. It also includes elements of work songs, Black string bands, church music, and other styles that fed into the blues before moving on to early blues styles themselves. The rarity of most of the cuts...

These were recorded during the same field trips to Parchman Farm that yielded the material heard on Rounder's Prison Songs Vol. 1. Unlike that set, everything here is previously unreleased; what's more, most of the singers on this collection were not heard on the other volume....

Rock Me Shake Me Field Recordings, Vol. 15: Mississippi is made up of field recordings of black musicians recorded by Alan Lomax for the Library Of Congress Folk Archives back in the early 1940s in Coahoma County, Mississippi. Most of the tracks here are unaccompanied spirituals, highlighted by...

Document Records has nearly 900 titles in its catalog and is easily the largest purveyor of American vernacular music, with titles featuring vintage American lues, jazz, oogie-woogie, gospel, old-timey, and country, all drawn from commercially released 78s and rare field recordings. If You...

Another volume in Document Records' field recording series, this one kicks off with a stomping gospel declaration called "No Condemnation" by the congregation of the Church of God in Christ recorded by Alan Lomax in Lula, MS in 1941, and continues on with an odd and interesting...

In the '50s, Harry Oster made several recordings of African-American inmates at the penitentiary in Angola, Louisiana. These sessions are primarily remembered for the discovery of Robert Pete Williams, but Oster also found several other acoustic blues performers of merit. Several of them...