Roots

It may be expensive, and two CDs of their work may seem like overkill, but this double-disc set is the one to get. Not only does it contain every hit and each single, and every B-side, from 1965's "Where Were You When I Needed You" through 1975's glorious "Mamacita," but the sound is extraordinary, far better than on any of the other hits compilations, and provides several revelations about the quality of their work…

The set Roots N' Blues features many hours worth of early blues, folk/country and gospel recordings from a variety of American artists.

The phenomenal success of the 1977 ABC miniseries Roots all but demanded a sequel to writer Alex Haley's epic story of his African and African-American forebears. Debuting February 18, 1979, Roots: The Next Generations picked up where its predecessor left off, with Haley's slave ancestors winning their freedom in the aftermath of the Civil War. Even so, life for black Americans was wrought with hardship and oppression thanks to the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, the staunch refusal of the white power structure to pass anti-lynching laws, and the formation of the dreaded Jim Crow laws which legalized racial segregation in the South (and much of the North). Covering the period from 1882 to the mid-1970s, the miniseries first focuses on blacksmith Tom Harvey (Georg Stanford Brown), great-grandson of Kunta Kinte (the protagonist of the original Roots), and his family.