Rounder, 1999

African American song has permeated the southern air for centuries. From earliest times, whites marveled at the skill with which slaves combined rhythm and work. By 1943 when this recording was originally issued, that centuries-old worksong tradition was slowly dying out. This CD preserves the vestiges of African American musical creativity designed to ease the tremendous burdens of manual labor. Songs to accompany cotton picking, plowing, laying railroad rails, sounding calls to measure depths along the Mississippi River, or tunes that helped pass the time in prison work gangs all demonstrate the breadth of circumstances in which African American laborers used music. Altogether, with good liner notes and many pictures from the 1940s, this CD recaptures a time when the human voice on the job was not drowned out by mechanical devices.