Sounds Of The South - A Musical Journey From The Georgia Sea Islands To The Mississippi Delta Recorded In The Field By Alan Lomax. CD

Includes Alan Lomax's updated liner notes as well as an essay by blues expert Robert Palmer.

All tracks have been digitally remastered from the original master tapes.

In 1959, Atlantic sent noted ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax into the American South with a stereo tape recorder to do a series of field recordings of the traditional local music. This box set is a document of that journey.

Alan Lomax was one of America's great musical historians. He traveled the world in search of the folk music of various cultures, recording it on the fly with modest technology, but like Harry Smith with the ANTHOLOGY OF AMERICAN FOLK MUSIC, Lomax made the greatest impact with his chronicles of American rural music. The four-disc set SOUNDS OF THE SOUTH contains Lomax's field recordings from a 1959 sojourn, originally released in the early '60s as a six-LP collection.

Digitally enhanced and decked out with additional liner notes, it's broken up into sections by category, such as mountain music, spirituals, etc. Taken as a whole, it encompasses a dizzying array of traditional American sounds: bluegrass pickers, country blues guitarists, gospel choirs, folk singers, chain gangs, and more. The artists represented range from the familiar (Mississippi Fred McDowell) to the obscure (Miles & Bob Pratcher), but they all offer up a captivating portrait of American musical traditions. Think of SOUNDS OF THE SOUTH as a singing history book.

Full title: Sounds Of The South - A Musical Journey From The Georgia Sea Islands To The Mississippi Delta Recorded In The Field By Alan Lomax.

Reissue producer: Yves Beauvais.Rolling Stone (12/9/93, p.70) - 4.5 Stars - Excellent Plus - "...8 hours of bluegrass, mountain ballads, spirituals and children's songs - some of the finest music of its kind ever documented - all now repackaged on four CDs with the detail and respect that our fragile, eroding heritage deserves...."
Musician (12/93, p.94) - "...The material, repackaged here on four CD's, originally appeared in 1960 on six Atlantic albums...[but] modern ears are friendlier to "world music," and perhaps better prepared to hear these strange and mysterious sounds of American singing...."