This superb anthology of old ballads and other folk-song types comprises pre-war commercial and field recordings made in the rural Southeast, the part of the United States that most closely met the textbook definition of a "folk culture," in which culture was relatively homogeneous and customs were shared across class and ethnic lines. For this reason, this album focuses on the rural Southeast as a rich source of American folk life, ranging roughly from Virginia and Kentucky south to Alabama and west to Texas. 

These songs are the "varied carols" of Walt Whitman's singing America, and the recordings enable us to hear a population of Americans, some born in the nineteenth century, who developed their repertoires and performing artistry before the era of films, phonograph records, radio, and television. "I am large," said Whitman in his role of American Everyman, "I contain multitudes." So sing the country people we hear on this record. They introduce us to songs that have been, in the words of the old hymn, "a long time traveling away from home." Here, on a new stage, the songs portray the old dramas, conflicts, and celebrations of the American character. This classic reissue from the Recorded Anthology of American Music contains a 48-page booklet with lyrics and the customary scholarly liner notes.

Chick-A-Li-Lee-Lo (Almeda Riddle); King William Was King George's Son (Mr. and Mrs. Crockett Ward); Sweet William (Fields Ward); The Lexington Murder (Wesley Hargis, vocal and guitar); Lily Schull (Mrs. Lena Bare Turbyfill and Mrs. Lloyd Bare Hagie); The Farmer Is the Man That Feeds Them All (Fiddlin' John Carson, vocal and fiddle); Come All You Coal Miners (Sarah Ogan); Cotton Mill Blues (Daddy John Love, vocal and guitar); Whoopee-Ti-Yi-Yo (John I. White, vocal; Roy Smeck, guitar and harmonica); Mon Chérie Bébé Créole (Dennis McGee, vocal and fiddle; S. D. Courville, fiddle); Oh My Little Darling (Thaddeus C. Willingham, vocal and banjo); Been on the Job Too Long (Wilmer Watts and the Lonely Eagles); Dr. Ginger Blue (Arthur Tanner and His Blue Ridge Cornshuckers); Crawling and Creeping (Asa Martin, vocal and lead guitar; James Roberts, guitar); Haunted Road Blues (Tom Clarence Ashley, vocal and guitar; Guinn Foster, harmonica and guitar); The Village School (Nelstone's Hawaiians: Hubert Nelson and James Touchstone, vocals and guitars); The Poor Drunkard's Dream (Wade Mainer and Sons of the Mountaineers); If the Light Has Gone Out in Your Soul (Ernest Phipps and His Holiness Singers); I'm a Long Time Traveling Away From Home (J. T. Allison's Sacred Harp Singers)