"This book documents the wide variety of musical styles of the American South, including church music, country music, dance music, traditional blues, electric blues, work songs, western swing, bluegrass, ballads, and story songs.".

"These black-and-white photographs - which cover a one-hundred-year span from the 1850s to the 1950s - were selected from a range of photo archives, including the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution, as well as prominent private collections. The wide selection includes images from such well-known Farm Security Administration photographers as Russell Lee and Ben Shahn.

Each of the seventy-five photographs is accompanied by an extensive caption that relays a relevant (and often amusing) anecdote, or otherwise gives historical context to the photo."--BOOK JACKET.