160 gram 2LP in deluxe gatefold jacket with extensive notes by Nathan Salsburg of the Lomax Archive. Cover art by Joe Light.

Stunning double LP collection of music documented during Alan Lomax’s final American field recording sessions from 1978 to 1983. A completely overlooked and underrepresented period in American folk and blues history, this album includes performances by RL Burnside, Napoleon Strickland, Boyd Rivers, Tommy Jarrell, and many more never before released on vinyl.

From 1978 to 1983, Alan Lomax and a video-crew travelled through the American South and Southwest, documenting its traditional music — miners, moonshiners, and Primitive Baptists in Kentucky; flat-footers, string bands, and Piedmont blues in North Carolina; Cajun cowboys, fiddlers, and zydeco stompers in French-speaking Louisiana; and fife-and-drum ensembles, gospel quartets, former railroad track-liners, levee-camp muleskinners, and players on the pre-war blues circuit in Mississippi.

This set brings together some of the standout recordings Lomax made in his attempt to document the last vestiges of the “local surround” in Mississippi, Appalachia, and Louisiana.