disc one: The big bang. The Carter Family ; Field recordings ; The Bristol sessions ; The Carter Family legacy ; Beale Street ; The Memphis Jug Band ; A feeling of the past --

Blood and soil. Elder Burch ; The triumph church ; Dizzy Gillespie ; Music from the coal mines ; Charley Patton and Dockery Farms ; Patton's thumbprint --

Out of the many, the one. The deepest roots of American music ; Joseph Kekuku and the steel guitar ; The first Tejano superstar [Lydia Mendoza] ; A musical jambalaya ; Mississippi John Hurt ; Lost and found ; The sounds of earth.

disc two: The American epic sessions. Matrimonial intentions (Jack White) ; If the river was whiskey (Frank Fairfield) ; On the road again (Nas) ; Killer diller (Alabama Shakes) ; El cascabel (Los Lobos) ; Two fingers of whiskey (Elton John) ; Jubilee (Ashley Monroe and the Americans) ; High water everywhere (Taj Mahal) ; St. Louis blues (Pokey LaFarge) ; The cuckoo (Steve Martin & Edie Brickell) ; Candy man (Jerron "Blind Boy" Paxton) ; Tomi tomi (the Hawaiians and Bobby Ingano) ; Tain't nobody's business (Bettye LaVette) ; Just a closer walk with thee (the Avett Brothers) ; Mal hombre (Ana Gabriel) ; Fourteen rivers fourteen floods (Beck) ; One hour mama (Rhiannon Giddens) ; Allons à Lafayette (Lost Bayou Ramblers) ; Stealin' stealin' (Raphael Saadiq) ; the final session (Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard) / writers, Bernard MacMahon, Allison McGourty, Duke Erikson.