Consumer Guide Album

Good for What Ails You: Music of the Medicine Shows--1926-1937 [Old Hat, 2005]
Forty-eight lovingly documented songs, most generic even when also distinguished, many uncomfortably laissez-faire about minstrel stereotyping (Walter Cole, "Mama Keep Your Yes Ma'am Clean"; Jim Jackson, "I Heard the Voice of a Porkchop"; Beans Hambone & El Morrow, "Beans"). ***