This double-CD set is a little misleading. It is definitive, but only in terms of
McTell's Columbia and Okeh sides -- you won't find "Statesboro Blues" or his other earliest sides here, because they were done for Victor. But the material that is here is all worthwhile, and this is the best single source for
McTell's work for those labels (done under a variety of names) from the mid-'30s, very nicely remastered and thoroughly annotated, although producer
Lawrence Cohn concedes that even Sony Legacy was unable to locate sources on a handful of songs that
McTell is known to have recorded. ~ Bruce Eder