Victor in Atlanta, 1928

In the 1920s, northern record companies discover an audience in the South that no one had served. Instead of bringing musicians to New York, they send engineers south with portable equipment. Atlanta, with good rail links and a powerful radio station, becomes one of their main stops.

It begins in 1923, when Ralph Peer of the OKeh label records fiddler Fiddlin' John Carson in Atlanta. Peer thinks the recording is awful, but it sells so well that it launches a new genre. From then on, record companies set up temporary studios in the city every year.

White and Black musicians pass through the same studio, but they never appear in the same catalog. White artists are sold as hillbilly records, for a rural white audience. Black artists, as race records. In Atlanta's streets the music mixes; on record, segregation is complete.

Blind Willie McTell first records for Victor in October 1927 and comes back a year later to cut Statesboro Blues. He is paid a flat fee per song, and that's all. The publishing rights, where the long-term money lies, often end up with the producers. Peer, by then working for Victor, built one of the century's great music publishing companies on that model.

McTell kept recording for years for various labels, often under different names, but he never made a living from music. The records from those sessions, on the other hand, are now worth a fortune to collectors.