Polk Miller & His Old South Quartette – s/t (Tompkins Square)

When was the last time you saw a new CD that comes with a supporting quote from Mark Twain? "I think that Polk Miller and his wonderful four, is about the only thing the country can furnish that is originally and utterly American. Possibly it can furnish something more enjoyable, but I must doubt it until I forget that musical earthquake, 'The Watermelon Party.'"

If any album needs an affirmative plug from a noted anti-racist to provide context, it's this historically valuable reissue fraught with discomfiting sociological baggage. Former Confederate soldier Polk Miller (1844-1913) was the son of a Virginia plantation owner; His Old South Quartette consisted of four black singers. They toured the country’s most exclusive clubs and concert halls, supporting Miller’s lecture "Old Times in the South." The glorification of the days of slavery that Miller delivered in his lecture would undoubtedly nauseate most of us nowadays, but the music – aside from "The Bonnie Blue Flag," the Confederate battle anthem – is free of such material.

In 1909 Miller and the quartet recorded on Edison cylinders (the first seven tracks here); in 1928 the quartet reappeared and rerecorded two of those tracks, including "The Watermelon Party." It is the quartet, with its lusty barbershop harmonies, that is the main attraction, and even on the tracks with Miller it is often a quartet member who takes the lead. Accompaniment is banjo and/or guitar. Their seven 1928 tracks also include a setting of Paul Laurence Dunbar’s dialect poem "When De Corn Pone’s Hot." The sound quality is quite listenable considering the age and rarity of the source material. - Steve Holtje

Mr. Holtje is a Brooklyn-based poet and composer who splits his time between editing Culturecatch.com, working at the Williamsburg record store Sound Fix, and editing cognitive neuroscience books for Oxford University Press. No prizes for guessing which pays best.