American Epic: The Best of Blues is a compilation of early blues songs recorded between 1927 and 1936 and released to accompany the American Epic films in 2017. The album was released as a 17-track download and a 13-track vinyl LP. The album was praised by critics as the definitive pre-war blues compilation. Background During the pre-production of the American Epic documentary films, director Bernard MacMahon and producers and co-writers Allison McGourty and Duke Erikson decided to create a series of compilation album releases to expand on the music and performers featured in the documentaries. Contributing to this decision was a new technology in use for transferring and restoring old shellac 78rpm discs for the film's soundtrack. The blues compilation was prepared along with a country compilation, five individual artist compilations and a 5-CD box set, American Epic: The Collection. Compilation The album concentrates on the first electrically recorded blues discs made in North America between 1927 and 1931. It covers a broad range of blues music, from Mississippi Delta artists such as, Charley Patton, Son House and Skip James to Memphis songsters like Frank Stokes and jug bands including the Memphis Jug Band and Cannon's Jug Stompers, Piedmont blues players like Blind Willie McTell and Texas gospel blues evangelist Blind Willie Johnson. The compilation also featured female country blues musicians like Geeshie Wiley and Mattie Delaney who were quite unusual at the time. The album opened with its sole later recording from 1936 - Robert Johnson's "Cross Road Blues" which was itself inspired by the earlier recordings on the set and would become the conduit for later generations into rediscovering these hugely influential late 20s and early 30s blues recordings. Restoration New transfer and sound restoration techniques developed for the American Epic documentary films were utilized to restore the 17 songs on the album. The 78rpm disc transfers were made by audio engineer Nicholas Bergh using 'reverse engineering' techniques garnered from working with the original 1920s recording equipment on The American Epic Sessions along with meticulous sound restoration undertaken by Peter Henderson and Joel Tefteller to reveal greater fidelity, presence and clarity to these 1920s and 1930s recordings than had been heard before. Nicholas Bergh commented "the recordings in this set are special since they utilize the earliest and simplest type of electric recording equipment used for commercial studio work. As a result, they have an unrivaled immediacy to