I can't imagine my life or anyone else’s without music. It's like a light in the darkness that never goes out.

The blues takes you back to the place where it first came to life. There is an old African saying that the roots of a tree cast no shadow. That's how deep the blues goes. When you really listen to the music, you understand this is the one thing they could never take away from black people.

You are listening to songs that were recorded for the Library of Congress in the 1930s. John Lomax who worked for the library called himself a ballad hunter. He and his son Alan drove all across America and made literally thousands of recordings. They were doing one of the most important things anyone can do. They were preserving the past before it disappeared forever.

It was John Lomax who first recorded Lead Belly in 1933 in a Louisiana prison. After Lead Belly was released, he went to Philadelphia with the Lomaxes and he gave a series of concerts.

Northern audiences responded to Lead Belly and they loved the songs he performed. As Lead Belly became famous around the world, a different kind of musician was reworking the blues down in the Mississippi Delta in a way that would eventually reach an even wider audience.