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.

As it did with blues and jazz, the early recording industry missed the beginnings of ragtime. Luckily, the burgeoning player piano industry produced ragtime tunes on paper rolls, and these rolls augment the recordings we have. This collection presents ragtime played on piano rolls as well as on instruments like the banjo, which were suitable for early recording processes.

This compilation traces the genre's early days in the recording studio. It includes a reissue of the Victor Talking Machine Company's first piano ragtime disc in 1916, as well as several performances of English ragtime. These sides portray the piano in an era when recording technology struggled to capture the instrument's full range.

These kings of stride have got rhythm! The immortal Fats Waller and his Rhythm get together with Louis Armstrong and Jack Teagarden in a radio broadcast recorded live at Martin Block's Make Believe Ballroom in October 1938, while father of the stride piano and Waller's teacher James P. Johnson brings Omer Simeon and Pops Foster in to play with his trio.

Radio broadcasts of 1939 are the source of this extraordinary collection of tunes played by the Chick Webb Orchestra. One of the most respected bandleaders and drummers of swing, Webb is credited with an undefeated record in his Battles of the Bands at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem (including a victory over Benny Goodman in 1937) and with having discovered Ella Fitzgerald, who positively shimmers on ballads like "That Was My Heart" and "Deep in a Dream."

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.

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.

There is no single kind of music that led to the creation of Jazz. Instead, the genre evolved, and continues to evolve, from diverse musical avenues. In his liner notes to the final volume of Folkways' first Jazz series, Frederic Ramsey Jr.. writes, "[this album] includes fourteen notable performances arranged so as to touch lightly but firmly on as many highlights of Jazz development; it is a sort of a reprise... of all that has gone into the preceding ten volumes."

At one point during it's heyday between 1900 and 1930, American factories produced player pianos six times faster than the country's population increased! This masterpiece of engineering performed a wide repertoire of classical and popular music, and the Piano Roll presents a range of tunes typically played by the standard home model.

In a profession dominated by men, a few women pianists found employment playing and arranging music for piano rolls from 1890 until the 1920s. The women represented on this album were exceptional-not just as members of a barely-visible minority, but as virtuoso performers, arrangers, and vaudevillians.

Legendary contralto Marian Anderson repeatedly broke the race barrier in classical art music, most notably when she performed on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1939 after being refused a concert spot at Constitution Hall. But she also loved her cat. This is Snoopycat's story, written by Frida Sarsen-Bucky and narrated and sung by Anderson.

This is the extraordinary life of W.E.B. Dubois in his own words. The autobiographical account begins at age seventeen as DuBois left Massachusetts to attend Fisk University in 1885, and ends in the 1940s as DuBois describes his struggles with the NAACP. Each experience that DuBois shares is marked by his perception of the racial environment that encompassed it and he portrays how his identity and reactions were affected. A full transcription of DuBois' inspirational account, complete with photographs, is included in the liner notes.

A controversial (though influential) figure in African American history, Booker T. Washington's image is sanctified here as poet and author, Roy L. Hill, combines forces with Washington's daughter, Portia Washington-Pittman. Pittman reflects on her father's life and attempts to counteract the negative perceptions about her father with her own thoughtful understanding of Washington's disposition. The compilation includes a recording of a speech delivered by Booker T. Washington at the opening of the Atlanta Cotton States in 1895.

Originally released in 1959, The Country Blues features a range of styles and a collection of recordings not included in other Folkways compilations. This selection-mostly recorded between 1927 and 1931-includes such gems as a test pressing of Robert Johnson's "Preaching Blues" and local releases from the 1920s.

This recording of Gil Noble's WABC-TV program, "Like It is" features an exclusive interview with Angela Davis done by her lawyer, Margaret Burnham, while she was jailed in NY and awaiting trial on the case of the Soledad Brothers in 1971. The interview was arranged by the leading black newspaper at the time, Mohammed Speaks, and the questions were drawn from a poll conducted on what the average Harlem resident would ask Davis if given the chance. To these questions Davis is unapologetic and unwavering in her beliefs a "... There is nothing, absolutely nothing which could deter me from continuing to fight with all my energies for the freedom of my people."

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 what is now called Jazz, the selections range from folk songs to urban blues to boogie-woogie piano; artists include Dock Reese, Lead Belly, Scrapper Blackwell, Bessie Tucker and Champion Jack Dupree.

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 Institution. Completely remastered from the best sources in our collections, this recording contains the highest sound quality possible. The liner notes contain extensive annotation and reflections on Lead Belly's music as you've never heard it before. Compiled and annotated by Jeff Place. "The soul expressed is full-fledged and sublime." -New England Folk Almanac.

Jericho-Jim Crow by Langston Hughes is a musical production that focuses on themes from the civil rights movement and features music significant to the same period. Performers include former cast members of the original Broadway production of Porgy and Bess as well as gospel singers who made a living touring and performing around the US. Together, the cast of Jericho-Jim Crow gives a powerful performance of passionate acting and stirring gospel singing.

Son of an impoverished violinist, Englishman Billy Mayerl grew up playing piano for silent movies and became one of the most famous novelty rag performers in the world. This album presents sixteen of his complex yet playful compositions, including several pieces from his celebrated piano suites.