American epic the companion book to the PBS series
(Book - Regular Print)

Title from container.

Compact discs.

Read by Mike Chamberlain.

In the 1920s and 1930s, as radio took over the pop music business, record companies were forced to leave their studios in major cities in search of new styles and markets. Ranging the mountains, prairies, rural villages, and urban ghettos of America, they discovered a wealth of unexpected talent; farmers, laborers, and ethnic minorities playing styles that blended the intertwining strands of Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Fortunately, thanks to the continuing efforts of cultural detectives and record devotees, the stories of America's earliest musicians can finally be told. Bernard MacMahon and Allison McGourty spent years traveling around the US in search of recollections of those musical pioneers.