Product Description

(3-CD foldout digipac + 140 page booklet; 80 tracks totalling 257:28) In the one hundred years that folk music has been recorded in the United States, the tradition has embraced ballads - mostly new, but some transplanted from Europe, political statements, personal introspection, and much more. Now the story is here from the 1920s to the 1970s and beyond in four exclusive 3-CD sets. Through this music, we feel it all from the isolation of early twentieth century Appalachia through the economic and political upheavals of the Depression, War, and Civil Rights eras to contemporary west coast singer-songwriters looking within for inspiration. The story is here: original artists and original versions in stunning sound with detailed notes from folk scholar Dave Samuelson.The first 3-CD set (available separately) covers the period from the 1920s through to 1957. All the names you'd expect are here: the Carter Family, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, the Weavers, Lead Belly, Cisco Houston, and many, many more. Here are the original versions of songs that have become classics and rallying cries: , , , , , , , , , and many, many more.The second 3-CD set (available separately) begins with the folk revival that started in the wake of the Kingston Trio's and continues through the dawn of the singer-songwriter era. It includes early folk revival classics like , , and . The second set also includes Bob Dylan's game-changing classics, , , , , , and . It was the Civil Rights era and the Vietnam era, so the music took on contemporary issues. In Dylan's wake came Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, Tim Hardin, Fred Neil, Dave Van Ronk, and many others, all of them represented by their finest work.The third 3-CD set (available separately) features those who married new, political folk songs with ancient ballads: Pete Seeger (, , and more), Joan Baez (including the greatest-ever version of ), Buffy St. Marie (, ), and others from the turbulent 1960s. Dylan's contemporaries and his followers are here, all of them staking out a unique slant on the issues of the day. The set also includes pioneering folk rock artists, like Arlo Guthrie, the Lovin' Spoonful, Tim Rose, Jim Croce, Melanie, and Harry Chapin. All the classics you'd expect from late 1960s to early 1970s are side-by-side with side-trips into the jug band revival and hippie era classics, like , , and .This fourth and final of the 3-CD volumes is even more eclectic, featuring America's best-selling poet, Rod McKuen, as well as old school folkies like Malvina Reynolds (), country rock pioneers like the Byrds (), John Stewart, Nilsson, John Denver (, ), as well as John Hartford's original - the song that changed country music, Townes Van Zandt's original , and Kris Kristofferson's game-changing compositions, and . This set also includes John Prine, Steve Goodman, Gordon Lightfoot, and Joni Mitchell, artists who have helped to bring the folk tradition into the twenty-first century.