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The Alan Lomax Archive is proud to announce Rounder Records reissue of the historic Blues in the Mississippi Night. A pivotal document of pre-civil rights America, this is the story of the blues from the mouths of three legendary bluesmen - Big Bill Broonzy, Memphis Slim, and Sonny Boy Williamson. Their songs and stories pinpoint the music's origins in the blood, sweat, and tears of the African-Americans who inhabited the Mississippi Delta world of Jim Crow exploitation and anomie. They take us into the savage levee camps and prison farms, where forced labor from sunup to sundown was the order of the day, and where the pistol and race prejudice ruled. Alan Lomax had visited the three bluesmen in Chicago and asked them to come perform in New York at Town Hall as part of his Midnight Special concert series. The day following that concert, March 2, 1947, he took them to Decca Studios, asked them to play a few songs and to discuss the blues. Lomax encouraged them to speak frankly about the inequities of black life in America. The result, Blues in the Mississippi Night, was so candid a portrait of the brutal racism African-Americans suffered in the South that Big Bill, Sonny Boy, and Memphis were given assumed names in the original liner notes to protect themselves and their families. In fact, the album was so controversial that its release was delayed 13 years, finally released by United Artists in 1959. Out of print for over a decade, this CD includes the highly collectable original album, mastered to 24-bit digital, and includes extensive new liner notes and a previously unreleased version of Bill Broonzy's famous 'Black, Brown, and White Blues.'