Recorded on Victor and Decca in the 1920s and 30s, Sleepy John Estes was a leading exponent of the Memphis blues style. These recordings capture the distinctive sound of Yank Rachel's legato mandolin lines and Jab Jones' rhythmic piano accompaniment, as well as Estes' skill at singing the narrative blues.

RELATED LESSON PLAN "Music of 'The Seventh Continent'"

Here is a sampling of some of the most active Jazz vocalists of the 1920's, '30's and '40's: Louis Armstrong, Ivy Anderson, Ella Fitzgerald, Bing Crosby, Bessie Smith, Sonny Terry and Ma Rainey. They are backed by equally big-time instrumentalists: Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, Jimmy Dorsey, Count Basie and Bix Beiderbecke who, according to legend, threw a week's pay on the floor the first night he heard Bessie Smith, hoping her singing would never end.

This second volume continues Folkways' The Country Blues (FW00RF1) and is the result of efforts in the early 1960s to find singers who were previously known only as names on commercial recordings. Volume Two includes works by these lesser-known singers, as well as a pseudonymous recording by Blind Willie McTell, who recorded as "Georgia Bill."

During the folk revival of the 1950s and 60s, documentarians and aficionados searched for country blues singers whose music had previously only been known through old recordings. This album's music presents historic recordings of these singers from 1920-1940, while it's liner notes describe these "rediscovered" musicians' lives in the 1960s.

Willis James, former chairman of the Music Department at Spelman College, looks at how the complex musical and linguistic practices of west coast African cultures have been translated into the musical practices of African Americans. In this lecture performance, he covers spirituals, work songs, blues and jazz.

Blind harmonica player and singer Sonny Terry recorded a few records during the 1930s and 1940s, but found wider fame in the folk revival of the 1950s and 1960s. This recording features a washboard band-an ensemble that includes washboard, washtub bass (a development from the African earth bow), bones, and sometimes guitar, or as heard here, harmonica.

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 album are also included on Smithsonian Folkways' Memphis Slim: The Folkways Years (SFW40128).

Taken from unreleased recordings, previous Folkways releases, and early blues recordings, this two-disc set offers an introduction to the vocal styles, ornamentation, and instrumentation of this "highly personal, expressive idiom." Copious liner notes by Samuel B. Charters accompany the musical material.

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 now-distinguished African-American blues and spiritual vocalist/guitarist through those closest to him, including Johnson's wife Angeline. The album combines old recordings, interviews and commentary.

While recording in the South in the early 1960s, producer, writer, and music historian Samuel Charters was inspired not only by the sound of Furry Lewis's guitar, but by the patterns of movement in his hands and fingers as he played. Thus Charters decided to make a film that would document aspects of the blues that couldn't be put on a phonograph record. In the sweltering summer of 1962, Charters journeyed through St. Louis, Memphis, Louisiana, and South Carolina to shoot the film the Blues and record this soundtrack. Artists featured in addition to Lewis are J.D. Short, Baby Tate, and Sleepy John Estes. Liner notes include details of the making of the film and biographies of the artists.

These eight songs are the fruit of Lead Belly's first visit to New York in 1935, but the record company's financial downfall prevented all but two-"Pigmeat" and "Black Snake Moan"-from reaching the market. This album reverses that misfortune of unavailability, and the notes provide vignettes of the bluesman's experiences.

This album by harmonica player Sonny Terry and guitarist Brownie McGhee, with Coyal McMahan on maracas features traditional blues songs, spirituals, and originals by the three singer-instrumentalists. Each musician has his own distinctive style, and together they create a sound that is simultaneously melancholy and joyful.

From the "breathy theatricalism" of Chicago theater jazz to the "youthful enthusiasm" of Birmingham and St. Louis's bands, the 1920s and 30s were decades of experiment, change, and stylistic variation in an era when musicians played for their own local audiences. This compilation travels, making all the local stops from New Orleans to New York.

Most of the recordings on this collection were made by white Chicago high school students in the Roaring Twenties "who took Jazz for their text and, in the spirit of Jazz, improvised upon that text." the result? They dropped out of school, lost their girlfriends, had to leave home-and created a music of their own.