Earning Their White Stripes. "But what I'm listening to most of the time at present is an album called Good For What Ails You, which is an album of songs that people used to listen to at medicine shows all over the States. It's quite an interesting album and I think that people would be well advised to pick it up." Jack White - Sunday Mail (Australia) Dec 18, 2005
Five Stars. Groundbreaking. "Fans of Nick Tosches' Where Dead Voices Gather will lap up this extraordinary snapshot of an America that is still shrouded in shadow. Good For What Ails You supplants the Harry Smith collections by surveying the people's music of the day, some of which sounds like nothing you have heard before." Jon Savage - MOJO Dec 2005
Before motion pictures, before radio, before television, the traveling Medicine Shows brought entertainment to America! Flamboyant pitch doctors roamed the land, hawking their tonics, elixirs, and miracle cures, and with them came a host of singers, dancers, comedians, banjo pickers, blues shouters, jug blowers, string ticklers, and minstrel men. The shows died out by mid-20th century, but not before a handful of seasoned veterans left their musical legacy on phonograph records. Here are classic performances by such colorful names as Pink Anderson, Daddy Stovepipe, Gid Tanner, Blind Sammie, Bogus Ben Covington, Fiddlin' John Carson, Banjo Joe, Shorty Godwin, Beans Hambone, Emmett Miller & His Georgia Crackers, the Three Tobacco Tags, and many more!
Two-CD Set / 48 Songs Digitally Remastered / Over 2 Hours of Music / Six-Panel Digipak with 72-page Full Color Booklet
A Profusely Illustrated History of the Medicine Shows, many Rare Photographs and Firsthand Accounts never before published, plus full discography and song descriptions.
