This collection offers a rich sampling of the catalog of a woman considered by many to have been the greatest blues songstress of all time. Listen to over 80 tracks originally recorded during one of the most turbulent decades of the Jim Crow era.

Record collector Joe Bussard, in an effort to tell the tale of early American blues music, has compiled this collection featuring rare records by lesser known recording artists, like Papa Harvey Hull and Long "Cleve" Reed, as well as tracks by iconic singer-songwriters, including Robert Johnson, Charley Patton, and Blind Willie Johnson.

This collection, featuring pioneering African-American recording artists and musicians (as well as Booker T. Washington's Atlanta Exposition Speech), showcases the distinctive styles of post-Civil War music and offers a powerful perspective on the early recording industry.

This compilation offers both entertaining ditties and sobering reminders of the harsh racism that characterized early-20th-century America, such as white comic Arthur Collins' performance of "All Coons Look Alike to Me" and Polk Miller's "Watermelon Party."

Robert Johnson was born and raised in Mississippi Delta during the height of the Jim Crow era, when legal segregation and the threat of violence controlled the lives of all Southern Blacks. His haunting lyrics and eerie guitar riffs, recorded in the 1930s, reflect these experiences and offer listeners a rare window into the soul of a man who both suffered and endured.