But much of this suffering and faith is the poetic invention of lesser-known men and women, white and black, who intimately knew heavy labor and poverty. On Disc One, bluesman Blind Lemon Jefferson and J. E. Mainer's Mountaineers, a white string band from North Carolina, both sing of life after death with the heated urgency of men for whom life on earth held few rewards.
In 1930s "Memphis Flu,about influenza" Elder Curry and his Mississippi congregation turn local news--into a galloping lesson on the democracy of God's wrath. The spoken intro to "Down on the Old Camp Ground"--[a] coon shout by the Dinwiddle Colored Quintet--shows, however, that in 1902 there was equality under God but none in the record business.