Popular music in America seldom gives space to the kind of working men who left the textile mill of Gaston County, North Carolina, between 1927 and 1931 to record the kind of laughter made to keep them from crying over too little pay and too much work. This kind of humor—supported with guitars and banjos played with a light touch—was for them a necessary precursor to the labor struggles that reached a peak in the years following the Crash.
Old Hat has done more than get clear sound from those thick vinyl slabs. The music’s restoration gives us some well-tested ways to subvert the masters of our own hard times.
