Bernard MacMahon, Allison McGourty, Elijah Wald - American Epic - The First Time America Heard Itself

"The companion book to the groundbreaking PBS and BBC documentary series celebrating the pioneers and artists of American roots music—blues, gospel, folk, Cajun, Appalachian, Hawaiian, Native American—without which there would be no jazz, rock, country R&B, or hip hop today.

Jack White, T. Bone Burnett, and Robert Redford have teamed up to executive produce American Epic, a historical music project exploring the pivotal recording journeys of the early twentieth century, which for the first time captured the breadth of American music and made it available to the world. It was, in a very real way, the first time America truly heard herself.

In the 1920s and 1930s, 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—farmers, laborers, and ethnic minorities playing styles that blended the intertwining strands of Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas. These recordings form the bedrock for modern music as we know it, but during the Depression many record companies went out of business and more than ninety percent of the fragile 78 rpm discs were destroyed. Fortunately, thanks to the continuing efforts of cultural detectives and record devotees, the stories of America’s earliest musicians can finally be told.

Bernard MacMahon and Allison McGourty, who directed and produced the documentary with American musician Duke Erikson, spent years traveling around the US in search of recollections of those musical pioneers. Their fascinating account, written with the assistance of prize-winning author Elijah Wald, continues the journey of the series and features additional stories, never-before-seen photographs, and unearthed artwork. It also contains contributions from many of the musicians who participated including Taj Mahal, Nas, Willie Nelson, and Steve Martin, plus a behind-the-scenes look at the incredible journey across America.

American Epic is an extraordinary testament to our country’s musical roots, the transformation of our culture, and the artists who gave us modern popular music." ( http://www.simonandschuster.com.au/books/American-Epic/Bernard-MacMahon/9781501135606 )

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"AMERICAN EPIC: The Collection gathers 100 of these original recordings from the 1920s and 1930s in one five-disc set, restored to unprecedented levels of sonic fidelity. For these releases, compiled by Director Bernard MacMahon, engineer Nicholas Bergh refined a transfer process using a mix of both modern and vintage equipment in order to extract the remarkable resolution from the records that is often missed. This ‘reverse engineering’ approach to the transfer process enabled the restoration team of Grammy Award-winning engineer Peter Henderson, Duke Erikson and Joel Tefteller to get the resulting audio closer to the original performance than ever before.

This is not “remastering,” in the normal sense, but something closer to fine art restoration. The intent is not for people to marvel at the antiquity of these discs, but rather to experience them as vital, immediate performances that speak to us as directly as they did on the day they were recorded—not simply great art for their time, but great art for all times. It includes a 100-page book filled with stunning unpublished photographs, quotes from the artists, their friends and families, lyrics for every song, essays and recording notes. Among the artists included are Mississippi John Hurt, The Carter Family, Charley Patton, Jimmie Rodgers, Lydia Mendoza, Nelstone’s Hawaiians, Big Chief Henry’s String Band, Robert Johnson and many others." ( http://www.legacyrecordings.com/2017/04/28/american-epic-collection-american-epic-soundtrack-may-12th/ )

Elijah Wald - Vom Mississippi zum Mainstream: Robert Johnson und die Erfindung des Blues

Elijah Wald and John Junkerman - River of Song - A Musical Journey Down The Mississippi

This companion volume to an upcoming PBS series on the southern roots of American music, drafted by a writer for the show (Wald) and its director (Junkerman), is a particularly varied and moving example of its genre. This probably has to do with the subject: it’s hard to be dull when you’re describing the lives, memories, and music (country, blues, rock ‘n’ roll, gospel, and zydeco, among others) of several hundred performers, and even harder when you rely, as the book does, largely on the frank and salty words of those performers. Following the Mississippi downstream turns out to be a particularly useful conceit: because the river touches so much of the American heartland, almost every kind of popular music is being performed along its length. Many unique musical forms, of course, including jazz and the blues, have a history intimately entwined with the river. Ranging from profiles of little-known but durable musicians to those with a regional or national profile (John Hartford, Fontella Bass, Rufus Thomas, Little Milton, Irma Thomas), the book offers both an engaging overview of modern American music as it is being created and performed in small Southern towns and cities, and a fascinating glimpse of the ways in which American music continues to reflect and to shape American life. (color and b&w photos, not seen)

Elijah Wald - Josh White - Society Blues

Elijah Wald - Escaping The Delta - Robert Johnson and the Invention of the Blues

Elijah Wald - The Blues - A Short Introduction