Lead Kindly Light: Pre-War Music & Photo

By Peter Honig and Sarah Bryan

A portrait of the rural American South between the dawn of the 20th century and the Second World War, Lead Kindly Light brings together two CDs of traditional music from early phonograph records and a handsome clothbound volume of never-before-published vernacular photography from the region. North Carolina collectors Peter Honig and Sarah Bryan, a husband-and-wife team, have spent years combing the backroads, from deep in the Appalachian Mountains to the cotton and tobacco lowlands, in search of the evocative music and images of the pre-War South.
The music of Lead Kindly Light (which borrows its name from a 1927 recording by the Loveless Twins Quartet) presents outstanding lesser-known recordings by early stars of recorded country music, as well as rarely and never-reissued treasures by obscure country, blues and gospel artists--46 recordings in all, recorded between 1924 and 1939, from the 78 RPM collection of Peter Honig. The images from Sarah Bryan's vernacular photography collection, mainly pictures of the rural and small-town South found in the Carolinas, Virginia and Tennessee, are richly textured depictions of family life, work and leisure, and fine exemplars of the often accidental beauty of the vernacular snapshot.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 098173426X
• ISBN13: 9780981734262
• Release Date: September 2015
• Publisher: Dust to Digital
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 1.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.8" x 8.7"