American Epic: The Collection

The American Epic collection was conceived by director Bernard MacMahon during the ten years of research preparing the American Epic documentary series.[11] “When we set out to make this set”, MacMahon explained “the first task was culling a representative sample of 100 tracks from that vast body of [1920s and 1930s] recordings. We wanted to display the phenomenal breadth of styles that were preserved and touch on the most influential artists—but, most of all, we wanted to convey the excitement and power of the music, to provide an experience that would capture the attention of other modern listeners as it did ours.”[2] The box set was intended to be a definitive portrait of the roots recording boom of the late 20s and early 30s.[4] It was seen by the production as an important supplementary feature to the documentary films for appreciating the breadth of the music recorded at the time and drawing attention to important artists who could not be featured in the films.[2]

The compilation spans from 1926 to 1936 with two pre-electric recordings – the 1922 Eck Robertson recording of “Sallie Gooden” and 1916 Don Richardson recording of “Arkansas Traveler” – which the liner notes posit as being the first commercial country recording.[2] MacMahon commented that his intention was to “to display the phenomenal breadth of styles that were preserved and touch on the most influential artists” adding that “when conflicts arose between our passion and our mission, we chose to follow our passion. We wanted to present music that was beyond time or classification, that sounded as if it could have been recorded last week, and that would startle and excite both unfamiliar and expert listeners.”[2] The album covers a very broad range of rural and vernacular American styles; Cajun, country, blues, folk, Hawaiian, Hispanic, Mexican, Native American, Puerto Rican, Tex-Mex.[4] MacMahon spent years listening to the catalogues of hundreds of artists from the era to whittle down the 100 songs. He made many trips to the homes of record collectors like Michael Kieffer, John Tefteller and Richard Nevins to hear very rare records that had never been reissued.[1]

The box set was organized by the location of the recording sessions with each of the five discs documenting a different region;[12] The Southeast, Atlanta, New York, The Midwest, and The Deep South & The West.[2] The album liner notes explained that the methodology “mirrors the process by which this music came to us: Robert Johnson was from Mississippi, but he traveled over much of the United States and made his recordings in Dallas and San Antonio.”[2] The notes added that “historians often emphasize the travels of the record scouts who fanned out across the South in search of unique artists, but while recognizing and documenting those efforts, we wanted to recall that it was most often the artists themselves who traveled, sometimes thousands of miles—and that is why we know them today.”[2]

New sound restoration techniques developed for the American Epic film production were utilized to restore the 100 songs on the album.[13] The 78rpm disc transfers were made by sound engineer Nicholas Bergh using ‘reverse engineering’ techniques garnered from working with the original 1920s recording equipment on The American Epic Sessions[14] along with meticulous sound restoration undertaken by Peter Henderson and Joel Tefteller to reveal greater fidelity, presence and clarity to these early Western Electric recordings than had been heard before.[3][8][9][14][15] Nicholas Bergh commented “the recordings in this set are special since they utilize the earliest and simplest type of electric recording equipment used for commercial studio work. As a result, they have an unrivaled immediacy to the sound.”[16]

Some of the recordings were repressed from the original metal parts, which the production located whilst researching the films.[17] Peter Henderson explained “in some cases we were lucky enough to get some metal parts – that’s the originals where they were cut to wax and the metal was put into the grooves and the discs were printed from those back in the ‘20s. Some of those still exist – Sony had some of them in their vaults – [but it only amounted to] 15-20 discs out of the whole.”[15]

The album was housed in a black leatherette 100-page book embossed with seven red stripes representing the seven red stripes of the American flag and embossed with the image of a small wind-up Victor gramophone representing the workingman's record player. The book opened with an essay outlining the new historical information about the American Epic recordings unearthed in the film production. The book was split into five chapters with each chapter opening with a photograph of the site of a recording studio from the region the disc was profiling.[2] Each of the 100 songs were accompanied by a portrait of the artist or promotional artwork, lyrics and a quote from either the artist or someone who knew them personally. The album featured many previously unpublished photos and images of performers who had not been seen before. It was the first time many of the lyrics had been transcribed and some of the quotes unearthed commented on performers about whom nothing had been previously known.[4]

The album was released on May 12, 2017, a month prior to the broadcast of the American Epic documentary films.[1]

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
Country Music	[18]
Rolling Stone	Reissue of the year[19]
PopMatters	[20]
Vice (Expert Witness)	A[21]
Tom Hull	A[22]

The album received widespread critical acclaim for the song selection, the breadth of musical styles covered, and the sound restoration.[3][4][5][8][7] David Fricke in Rolling Stone voted the album as a “Reissue of the Year” and wrote that it was a “must-hear story of aspiring native, immigrant and underclass voices given permanence for the first time. This soundtrack expands the film to a truly national chorale: Appalachian singers, Cajun dance bands, blues genies and Native American chanters and more. Want to hear America be great again? Drop the needle.”[23] Greil Marcus in The Village Voice described it as “a magnificent 100-track compendium, paralleling Harry Smith’s 1952 Anthology of American Folk Music but expanding on it, with a remastering I can only call profound. Performances you might think you knew sound as if you’ve never heard them before.”[3] Robert Christgau in Noisey gave the album an A grade[5] and in his annual Dean's List named it his #16 album of 2017 calling it “important and indeed brilliant.”[24] Ian Anderson in fRoots commented “you haven’t really heard these tracks at all. Not like this. The ‘reverse engineering’ transfers by Nicholas Bergh and subsequent restorations are so startlingly better, practically everything you will ever have experienced from this era can be discounted. The clarity will have you on the edge of your seat. Suddenly, legendary artists are in the room with you.”[9] Randy Lewis in the Los Angeles Times observed that the album had achieved an “unprecedented audio fidelity.”[8] Robert Baird in Stereophile described the album as “spectacular” and added that “what's most interesting for audiophiles is the huge improvement in the quality of the sound coming from these 78 transfers, both in the film and especially in the 5-CD boxed set of the same name.”[16] Ed Whitelock in PopMatters wrote “album compiler and editor Bernard MacMahon has done a superb job of curating a collection that truly captures the breadth of American rural music of the 1920s (more so, even, than Smith did with his famous Anthology). American Epic: The Collection claims a comprehensiveness of representation unmatched by any other anthology of this music. For those interested in a one-stop experience of the wonder and variety that is American rural music from the 1920s, American Epic: The Collection provides an adventurous, satisfying, and ultimately definitive collection.”[7] Blair Jackson in Acoustic Guitar summarized “this comprehensive five-disc, 100-song treasury is one of the most important compilations of its kind ever released—perhaps since Harry Smith’s seminal Anthology of American Folk Music in 1952. It’s a marvelous history lesson, but even more, it’s a glimpse into the very heart of America, as emotionally relevant today as it was nearly a century ago.”[4]

• Official American Epic website