For almost two years now, Bob Dylan has been the host of his own radio series on XM Radio, spinning songs from America's past and present and delivering commentary on each tune (not to mention IDENTIFYING each song by title and artist, a forgotten trait in modern radio). This 2-CD set, spanning fifty songs and almost twice as many years, serves as a primer for this show, and, not incidentally, for an alternate history of (primarily) American music, a history that observes the connections between the Stanley Brothers and the White Stripes, Aretha Franklin and Louis Jordan, Bo Diddley and the Sons of The Pioneers, Jack Teagarden's Chicagoans and The Clash, and on and on. While there is no "Dylan" on this set, his commentary having been excised in order to present as much music as possible, his spirit is present throughout. Indeed, what makes this collection so wonderful and moving is that the spirit of musical invention, appropriation, and re-invention hovers over the set as a unifying force, just as it does in much of Dylan's own work. Whether it be blues from Memphis Minnie or Dinah Washington (a brilliant and "dirty" "Big Long Slidin' Thing"), early rock and roll from the Donays (the original version of "Devil In My Heart'" later covered by the Beatles), the jazz of Charles Mingus, the country of Merle Haggard or Charlie Rich, or the soul thrust of Jerry Butler or Patrice Holloway, each tune, familiar or not, follows on from the previous one to give the listener the feeling of flipping the radio dial in some wished-for, alternate musical universe where all the corporate excess foisted upon the music world has been stripped away, with only the soul of the performer and the song remaining. The pull of this universe, and the seamlessness of this compilation, was so strong for this listener that, after listening to the 25 songs on disc one, I felt compelled to immediately follow it with disc two's 25 selections. And while placing Bobby Darin next to the obscure 30s country of The Cats and the Fiddle, or the gospel of Sister Rosetta Tharpe next to the ultimate jazz-blues of Billie Holiday, may not seem to be the normal way to make things flow from one passage to the next, this compilation delivers on exactly that promise.

It is true that when the final tune plays, one may not remember every title heard over the last couple of hours. But it is equally true that what does linger is the overall quality and spirit of what one has heard, a feeling that here is music created primarily out of inspiration rather than obligation. And while there are many fine re-issue companies out there rescuing early music from obscurity (e.g., Old Hat, Smithsonian Folkways, Revenant), a significant aspect of this set is how more modern songs from the likes of the Yayhoos, Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers, and the aforementioned Clash and White Stripes, fit into the larger context presented. This would not have been possible if the compilers had decided to go the "cheap" way and rely solely on tunes out of copyright and in the public domain, which would have been very easy to do given how much of this stuff Dylan incorporates into his shows. Kudos must thus be given to the Ace label (out of Britain) for spending the extra time and money to present Dylan's full picture of what "folk" music from all time periods is and how it generates its own connections to its predecessors and forebearers. Similarly, while one may miss the opportunity to hear some of Dylan's comments on these tunes as they took place during the Radio Hour shows themselves, the compilers were wise to have avoided the temptation to include these commentaries on the discs. The music and sequencing make these two discs prime material for repeated listening, and verbal commentary usually becomes rather tiresome after hearing it the initial time. To compensate, Ace has included a wonderful 48-page book containing comments on the history of each song, presented by a variety of music writers, as well as a wealth of historical photographs. In sum, this reviewer feels this is one of the finest compilations of popular music of the 20th century issued to date. And this is not just because of the variety and quality of music presented. It's because one wants to go back and hear it all again as soon as the last note fades away on song number 50 ("Roadrunner (Twice))" by the Modern Lovers. Once you enter Mr. Dylan's musical universe, you won't want to leave.