American Epic Blues

Jack White and Third Man Records have detailed their soundtracks for American Epic, a documentary co-produced by the rocker that focuses on music of the 1920s, the "Big Bang" of popular music. Four days before American Epic premieres on PBS on May 16th, a pair of soundtracks for the film, American Epic: The Soundtrack and American Epic: The Collection will be released physically and digitally on May 12th. The Soundtrack boasts a 15-song anthology from the documentary, featuring "restored" songs from Memphis Jug Band, The Carter Family, Charley Patton and more. The Collection packs 100 songs from the era onto a five-disc set, with each track "restored to unprecedented levels of sonic fidelity."

AMERICAN EPIC, a film series produced by Allison McGourty, Duke Erikson and Director Bernard MacMahon, explores the pivotal recording journeys at the height of the Roaring Twenties, when music scouts armed with cutting-edge recording technology captured the breadth of American music and discovered the artists that would shape our world. The recordings they made of all the ethnic groups of America democratized the nation and gave a voice to everyone. Country singers in the Appalachians, Blues guitarists in the Mississippi Delta, Gospel preachers across the south, Cajun fiddlers in Louisiana, Tejano groups from the Texas Mexico border, Native American drummers in Arizona, and Hawaiian musicians were all recorded. It was the first time America heard itself.

"American Epic" compilation series is a collection of releases of music associated with the film series "The American Epic", a historical documentaries are a journey back in time to the "Big Bang" of modern popular music. In the 1920s, as radio took over the pop music business, record companies were forced to leave their studios in major cities in search of new styles and markets. Ranging the mountains, prairies, rural villages, and urban ghettos of America, they discovered a wealth of unexpected talent. The recordings they made of all the ethnic groups of America democratized the nation and gave a voice to everyone. Country singers in the Appalachians, Blues guitarists in the Mississippi Delta, Gospel preachers across the south, Cajun fiddlers in Louisiana, Tejano groups from the Texas Mexico border, Native American drummers in Arizona, and Hawaiian musicians were all recorded. For the first time, a woman picking cotton in Mississippi, a coalminer in Virginia or a tobacco farmer in Tennessee could have their thoughts and feelings heard on records played in living rooms across the country. It was the first time America heard itself.

Blues fingerpicking guitarist, singer and sharecropper Mississippi John Hurt was born in the heart of Mississippi Hill Country, along the veiny tributaries of the great American river. His moving renditions of “Frankie” and “Spike Driver Blues” were included in Harry Smith’s American Anthology of Folk Music in 1952 and were vitally influential on the Greenwich Village folk music revival of the 1960s as well as John Fahey’s development of the American Primitive Guitar genre.