The Rough Guide to the Blues Songsters

The African-American songster tradition was for many years regarded as a poor relation of the Delta blues: its repertoire of popular ballads, minstrel songs, folk tunes, jigs, rags and spirituals was regarded as somehow less authentic than the mysterious, deep sound of Blind Lemon Jefferson, Robert Johnson and their ilk. The truth was that performing the popular songs of the day was an economic necessity for impoverished guitar and banjo players trying to scrape a living on southern street corners, at rural dances and in travelling medicine shows.

In recent years the tradition has been rehabilitated by the likes of the Carolina Chocolate Drops and Jerron ‘Blind Boy’ Paxton and so this collection of 24 songs, recorded between 1926 and 1935, is both welcome and timely. White performers such as Frank Hutchison and Dick Justice sit alongside black singers Mississippi John Hurt, Rabbit Brown, Lead Belly and Henry Thomas on a wide selection of songs about legendary working-class heroes and villains. There's plenty of showmanship and a fair bit of hokum but some wonderfully evocative music, too. A fascinating glimpse into a lost world.