As well as presenting a collection of first-rate piano solos from the likes of Willie "The Lion" Smith, Meade "Lux" Lewis, Art Tatum, Mary Lou Williams, Teddy Wilson, and Erroll Garner, this album stands as homage to Folkways Records founder Moses Asch, who recorded each of the tracks included here.

Recorded at four venues during Duke Ellington's first annual tour of the Pacific Northwest in 1952, these songs bring listeners to the ballrooms and armories of Oregon and Washington, where the legendary Ellington and his band had been hired to play for dancers.

In the mid-1940s, Elizabeth Cotten (1895-1987) chanced to meet composer Ruth Crawford Seeger at a department store. They began to talk, and Seeger soon hired Cotten to work in the Seeger household. It was here that Cotten became motivated to pick up the guitar again-it had been so long she had forgotten she knew how to play-and she began playing professionally in her early eighties. The material chosen for this recording includes songs and tunes from her childhood, such as "Praying Time Will Soon Be Over" and original compositions like "When I'm Gone." She accompanies herself on her guitar, strung in the usual right-handed way yet played left-handed, with the guitar upside down. This album showcases her unique style, described by Mike Seeger as "a synthesis of turn-of-the-century parlor music, blues, church songs, and a little ragtime." Liner notes include extensive selections from conversations between Cotton, Mike, and Alice Gerrard.

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 and broken, worried and lonely blues." But let Brownie's music, in all it's eloquence, speak for itself.

The life of jazz is in it's playing-in unrehearsed sessions in front of audiences or microphones, ears corporeal or mechanical that gauge the passing of time not by hands on a watch but by the birth and development of new musical ideas. Footnotes to Jazz, Volume 2 captures this process in a set of previously unreleased rehearsals by the Art Tatum Trio in 1944.

Orphaned at age 2, William Thomas Dupree grew up in the same New Orleans boys' home where Louis Armstrong first played the cornet. Continuing his music education with barrelhouse piano musicians, Dupree became known for his gritty yet soulful piano blues and boogie-woogie style. During the Depression, he started boxing for a living and earned the nickname Champion Jack, which stuck with him for the rest of his life. Here, Dupree's theme is clear: Bad women and good women. Hard times... hot hands, and hot music. Liner notes include lyrics, photos, and an introduction by Charles Edward Smith.

The piano got off to a late start in Jazz, notes Frederic Ramsey Jr., but, beginning with Jelly Roll Morton, it made up for lost time. Pianists became important in performance and composition. On this compilation, Morton, Earl Hines, Joe Sullivan, Fats Waller, Meade Lux Lewis, Mary Lou Williams and others put their blazing chops on display.

Peter Chatman Jr.., aka Memphis Slim, stomps out a "progressive boogie and blues" on the piano. Self-taught in the honky-tonk juke joints of Tennessee, he produced some of the most powerful boogie-woogie out there, with an incessant bass like you wouldn't believe.

Since his childhood as a percussionist in the Chicago Defender Boys' Band and his work with Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton's drumming and vibraphone playing have delighted audiences in person and on record. This collection includes tracks from Hamp's New Jazz Inner Circle's recording debut.

Pianist Joe Sullivan was a noted performer in Chicago, New York and San Francisco jazz circles. These rare recordings feature a string of buoyant solos, but he also joins Sidney Bechet, Pops Foster and George Wettling for an up-tempo combo and accompanies vocalist Stella Brooks in "Rabbit Foot Blues. "

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. Following the popularity of swing music in the 1930's, Boogie Woogie-with it's characteristic walking bass pattern-captivated audiences and dancers. Performed by pianists like Count Basie and Meade Lux Lewis, this exciting rhythm provides-as Basie said-"four heavy beats to a bar, and no cheating."

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 real," and the blues on this collection exemplify his honest, powerful style.

Speckled Red (Rufus Perryman, 1892-1973) was one of the most irrepressible and enthusiastic proponents of barrel-house piano, a style born of rowdy roadhouses and closely associated with boogie-woogie but louder and more raucous. Red-born in Georgia and well traveled-was a self-taught player, never letting the finer points of the correct chord interfere with his own enthusiasm for the music. This collection of originals, Red's only collection on Folkways, showcases his singing and rhythmic approach to the keyboard. Red provides introductions to most of his tunes, offering further insight into the artist. The liner notes further explain the nuances of barrel-house piano.

Walter E. "Furry" Lewis (1893-1981), was a Mississippi-born, Memphis-bred guitarist and singer whose early fame was based on his 1927 recordings for the Victor label. When the Depression ended most of the recording in the South, Furry took a job as a laborer for the city of Memphis. He lived in musical obscurity until he was "re-discovered" by producer Sam Charters in the late 1950s. Lewis's version of "John Henry" is a powerful example of early southern blues. This collection also includes Lewis's oral history of his early days as a bluesman, as well as the story of his musical education in several styles of blues guitar. The liner notes include a discography of Lewis's early recordings.

This fascinating album of storytelling and music includes some of minstrel, composer, businessman, and bluesman Perry Bradford's best-known works, including "That Thing Called Love," the first song ever recorded by Mamie Smith for Okeh Records in 1920. Singer Noble Sissle's interview with Bradford provides narration for this selection of songs.

An influential figure in the growth of the Southern blues tradition, William "Jazz" Gillum (1904-1966) had the kind of life from which the blues spring. Orphaned, starved, threatened, shot at, beaten, and discriminated against, Gillum's style, as heard throughout this recording-and as described in the liner notes-is unsurprisingly "sometimes harsh, sometimes poetic, with it's expressive delayed beat and strong rhythm, and it's bitterness tinged with nostalgia." He is joined on this album by Arbee Stidham (vocals and guitar) and Memphis Slim (organ and piano), associates from his early professional jobs in Chicago in the 1930s. Liner notes include song lyrics and a biography of Gillum, who lived and sang the blues his whole life.

At the time his music was recorded in 1952, highly-respected trumpet player Kid Clayton was somewhat elusive, playing with pick-up marching bands but with no steady ensemble. After some effort, composer and jazz aficionado Alden Ashforth arranged a recording session, which features Clayton's buoyant trumpet playing alongside a host of skilled musicians, including Joe "Kid" Avery on trombone.

This double set brings together thirty-five sides recorded by Mary Lou Williams for Moses Asch between 1944 and 1947. Twenty-eight of these songs were previously only released on 78 rpm, and this collection includes solo and trio performances, as well as small-group and big band recordings.

This fascinating album follows jazz drummer Baby Dodd's as he demonstrates the sonic elements of his famous solos and discusses these component parts with the attentive audience. From a discussion of drumming in the 1920s to a tom-tom "workout," Dodd's' album is as entertaining as it is educational.

This compilation remembers the early days of jazz, when Buddy Bolden's band started playing it's iconoclastic arrangements of new songs. Recorded interviews join instrumental rags and cabaret music in this sonic snapshot of New Orleans history.

So versatile that she was able to sustain a professional career for more than thirty years, jazz pianist, composer and arranger Mary Lou Williams ran the gamut from Dixieland to swing, bop and avant-garde. This album is among her 1960s avant-garde works, with intimate piano combos and vocal jazz choruses; it includes her well-known cantata, The Black Christ of the Andes (also available remastered and reissued on SFW40816 as a CD, complete with extensive liner notes and historic photos).

The list of musicians trumpet player Bunny Berigan and trombonist Jack Teagarden played with in the 1930s includes a vast array of jazz performers, from Tommy Dorsey to Louis Armstrong. Both musicians were equally at home with large and small ensembles, and this fine recording reflects their flexibility and musicianship.

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."

After rediscovering a tin box full of acetate recordings of jazz rehearsal sessions, Folkways founder Moe Asch pieced together a sequence that shows the on-the-spot creative energy musicians produce in the studio. This disc features Mary Lou Williams and her hand-picked group of session musicians, all innovators from the clubs of New York.