The big bang: At the height of the Roaring Twenties, music scouts armed with cutting-edge recording technology set out across America to capture the unsung voices of everyday folk. Blood and soil: America's poor--cotton field slaves, mine workers, sharecroppers--find freedom through music, creating gospel, protest songs, and Delta blues. Out of the many, the one: Exotic cultures spanning America are captured on record for the first time, inventing...

"Comprehensive introduction to recorded blues ever assembled, drawing styles, record labels, and eras together with the efficiency of a spider#x92;s web. These five discs--tied to the hit-and-miss PBS film series Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues--embrace field hollers, early queens Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, the music#x92;s first composer W.C. Handy, Delta slide guitarists, string bands, piano barrelhousers, jazz geniuses Count Basie and Lionel...