The Country Blues

The Country Blues
Compilation album by various artists
Released	1959
Recorded	1920s–1930s
Genre	Country blues
Length	41:18
Label	Folkways Records
Producer	Samuel Charters

The Country Blues is a seminal album released on Folkways Records in 1959, catalogue RF 1. Compiled from 78 recordings by Samuel Charters, it accompanied his book of the same name to provide examples of the music discussed. Both the book and this compilation were key documents in the American folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s, and many of its songs would either be incorporated into new compositions by later musicians, or covered outright.

Recordings of the music known as country blues derived from the mid-1920s to the early 1930s, commencing after the proven commercial appeal of classic female blues and ending when the Great Depression greatly curtailed the market for the record industry. These recordings had all been collected on 78s, and with the exceptions of top-sellers like Lonnie Johnson and Blind Lemon Jefferson, pressings rarely exceeded approximately 5000 or so. At the time of the issue of this record, the catalogue of country blues music on long-playing album was fairly small. The jazz label Riverside Records and Folkways had made contemporary recordings of artists such as Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, Big Bill Broonzy, Reverend Gary Davis, and Lead Belly. Reissue compilations of 78s had also been undertaken by both Riverside and Folkways, but they were few, and indeed Charters complained in 1959 that companies owning various country blues masters were interfering with any attempts to bring the music back on the market. The most famous reissue, and the most easily accessible to the burgeoning Greenwich Village folk revivalists, was the Harry Smith anthology released in 1952.

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