Our local library actually bought this book after I requested it through inter-library loan, bless them. Anyway, as noted above, it's a scholarly exercise and dense. I started out with the intention of reading it straight through, but it's tough going and my patience for academic analysis of vernacular music is limited.
However...a tremendous amount of effort has gone into this by the authors and compilers, and thanks to that, Mack McCormick's research is available to us. And boy, was it a lot of research. The amount of field work Mr. McCormick did is pretty astounding, and done at a time when many of the early musicians and their contemporaries were still around. The really interesting part of this book for me is the very detailed context he provides for the environment in which this music developed, and the wonderful stories from the musicians themselves and their friends.
