Contemporary roots singer-songwriter Chris Vallillo honors his fellow Illinois-ian as well as his state's deep musical traditions with this masterpiece of slide guitar twang and mesmerizing vocals.

Check out a rich sampling of rare recordings by some of the 19th-century stars of the blackface minstrelsy scene.

The Library of Congress Archive of Folk Culture presents this collection of field recordings collected by John and Alan Lomax during their travels through the American South in the 1930s. It's a treasure of early American music history that hints at the sounds that may have been heard on the tenant farms and in the Black churches of the Reconstruction era.

Although this title implies that these tracks were heard only in Confederate camps, some of the selections here were familiar to soldiers in both the North and the South. In fact, the Second South Carolina String Band performs songs, such as "Boatman's Dance," "Zip Coon," and "Palmetto Quickstep," that were known to people throughout the country during the Civil War years as well as in the tumultuous time leading up to the war and the era immediately following.