"Blues as performed on the professional stage and, later, folk blues from the South have been extensively discussed by many writers," notes Cambridge University Press on the back cover of the book. "Paul Oliver shows that this emphasis has drawn attention away from the other vocal traditions also available on Race records." Oliver devotes lengthy chapters to each of these previously neglected traditions (dance songs, ragtime numbers, the repertoire of songsters who worked the minstrel and medicine show circuits, the vast body of religious Race recordings from the Baptist and Sanctified churches to nonprofessional "jack-leg" preachers, and finally narrative ballads), producing a study that anyone armed with a little prior knowledge of this music will find fascinating. Naturally these traditions overlapped with the blues, and Oliver discusses a number of major figures (Peg Leg Howell, Henry Thomas, Frank Stokes, Furry Lewis and Charley Patton among them) who today are considered to have been exclusively blues artists, but who actually performed a much wider range of material. A fine scholarly work, profusely illustrated. ( )