And it's a delight and a wonder that material unheard outside of the collector's purview for nearly half a century should continue to surface. Everything here, then, is as rare as the proverbial hen's teeth. Too few groups which fall into this category have ever been recorded. Like Campbell's aggregation, the Strugglers' line up was fluid from gig to gig. One wonders, however, how players from Mobile and Montgomery, over a hundred miles distant, came together to form a viable band.
Most tracks feature twin fiddles which weave majestically in and out of one another.
When one of these fiddlers, James Fields, is singing lead vocal on Memphis Blues , the second continues playing the harmony line, which provides a clear opportunity to examine some of the creative processes governing seconding. This man, Charles Jones, plays with a clean tone and long bow strokes, compared to his shuffle-bowed cohort at any rate, and proves himself to be a fairly adventurous player on occasion. Some of his high contrapuntal lines, on Don't Bring Lulu in particular, don't quite stay within the key boundaries. Far from sounding excruciating, however, this actually heightens the excitement. Cornfed Indiana Gal stylistically has much in common with the extensively recorded Mississippi Sheiks.