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This book explores the role played by the devil figure within an evolving blues tradition. It pays particular attention to the lyrics of recorded blues songs, but it also seeks to tell a story about blues-invested southern lives. The first four chapters investigate, in sequence, the origins and meaning of the phrase "the devil's music" within black southern communities; the devil as a figure who empowers and haunts migrant black blueswomen in the urban North of the Jazz Age; the devil as a symbol of white maleficence and an icon for black southern bluesmen entrapped in the "hell" of the Jim Crow system; and the devil as shape-shifting troublemaker within blues songs lamenting failed romantic relationships. The fifth chapter is an extended meditation on the figure of Robert Johnson. It offers, in sequence, a new interpretation of Johnson's life and music under the sign of his mentor, Ike Zimmerman; a reading of Walter Hill's Crossroads (1986) that aligns the film with the racial anxieties of modern blues culture; and a narrative history detailing the way in which the townspeople of Clarksdale, Mississippi transformed a pair of unimportant side streets into "the crossroads" over a sixty-year period, rebranding their town as the devil's territory and Johnson's chosen haunt, a mecca for blues tourism in the contemporary Delta.

The role of folk music, broadly defined, during the trying years of the Great Depression in the United States, 1929–40, with a particular focus on the role of left-wing political groups and individuals. The government promoted a labor and cultural renaissance through the “alphabet stew” of federal programs, employing Charles Seeger, John and Alan Lomax, and numerous others in collecting folk music. Performers such as Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Pete Seeger, and many others connected vernacular music with commercial outlets such as concerts, record companies, and radio shows. Members of the Communist Party, in particular, used folk music to promote labor unions, civil rights, and a peace movement. Folk music remained a vital part of popular culture throughout the Depression years into World War II. There is a particular focus on the role that folk music played in the clash between capitalism and the emerging grassroots proletarian movements.

Since the nineteenth century, the distinct tones of kika kila, the Hawaiian steel guitar, have defined the island sound. Here historian and steel guitarist John W. Troutman offers the instrument's definitive history, from its discovery by a young Hawaiian royalist named Joseph Kekuku to its revolutionary influence on American and world music. During the early twentieth century, Hawaiian musicians traveled the globe, from tent shows in the Mississippi Delta, where they shaped the new sounds of country and the blues, to regal theaters and vaudeville stages in New York, Berlin, Kolkata, and beyond. In the process, Hawaiian guitarists recast the role of the guitar in modern life. But as Troutman explains, by the 1970s the instrument's embrace and adoption overseas also worked to challenge its cultural legitimacy in the eyes of a new generation of Hawaiian musicians. As a consequence, the indigenous instrument nearly disappeared in its homeland. Using rich musical and historical sources, including interviews with musicians and their descendants, Troutman provides the complete story of how this Native Hawaiian instrument transformed not only American music but the sounds of modern music throughout the world.

Contrary to popular belief, the roots of American country music do not lie solely on southern farms or in mountain hollows. Rather, much of this music recorded before World War II emerged from the bustling cities and towns of the Piedmont South. No group contributed more to the commercialization of early country music than southern factory workers. This book explores the origins and development of this music in the Piedmont's mill villages. It offers vivid portraits of a colorful cast of Piedmont millhand musicians, including Fiddlin' John Carson, Charlie Poole, Dave McCarn, and the Dixon Brothers, and considers the impact that urban living, industrial work, and mass culture had on their lives and music. Drawing on a broad range of sources, including rare 78-rpm recordings and unpublished interviews, the author reveals how the country music recorded between 1922 and 1942 was just as modern as the jazz music of the same era. The book celebrates the Piedmont millhand fiddlers, guitarists, and banjo pickers who combined the collective memories of the rural countryside with the upheavals of urban-industrial life to create a distinctive American music that spoke to the changing realities of the twentieth-century South.