Barrelhouse Blues: Location Recording and the Early Traditions of the Blues

In the 1920s, Southern record companies ventured to cities like Dallas, Atlanta, and New Orleans, where they set up primitive recording equipment in makeshift studios. They brought in street singers, medicine show performers, pianists from the juke joints and barrelhouses. The music that circulated through Southern work camps, prison farms, and vaudeville shows would be lost to us if it hadn't't been captured on location by these performers and recorders.

Eminent blues historian Paul Oliver...