This week on Blues Before Sunrise, we take a long, grateful look back at one of the most important forces in the preservation of pre-war blues: the Yazoo label. Long before the CD era, before Document Records began its massive chronological reissue program, before the internet made rare 78s accessible with a few keystrokes, there was Yazoo—an independent, stubbornly devoted operation run by Nick Perls, a young collector with deep pockets, deeper curiosity, and a collector’s ferocity for tracking down the rarest and most elusive blues records ever pressed.

Beginning in the mid-1960s, Perls drew on his own formidable 78 collection and a network of similarly obsessed East Coast collectors to create LP releases that were nothing short of revelations. The Yazoo albums didn’t just reissue old sides; they gave the music new life. They became the way an entire generation of blues fans—musicians, scholars, and future collectors—first heard Skip James, Charlie Patton, Blind Willie McTell, Jaybird Coleman, Leroy Carr, and dozens more. Yazoo’s releases set a standard for sound quality that many labels still struggle to match today. Their careful transfers, minimal filtering, and emphasis on preserving the natural punch and texture of the original discs made their LPs both historically important and deeply listenable.

This week’s show pays tribute to that legacy, and in Hour #3 we devote the full hour to a Yazoo-style overview, sampling some of the essential artists whose recordings shaped the foundation of country blues, Delta blues, and early ragtime-inflected guitar styles. The line runs from Skip James’ ghostly minor-key “Special Rider Blues,” to Tom Dickson’s shadow-soaked “Death Bell Blues,” to the stomp-and-shuffle brilliance of Charlie McCoy, Bo Carter, and William Moore. These sides weren’t just rescued from obscurity; they were reorganized, anthologized, and framed in such a way that the broader outlines of pre-war blues suddenly came into focus for listeners who might otherwise never have encountered them.

But that’s only part of the ride this week. Hour #1 opens the show in a smooth, urbane post-war groove, built around the King Cole Trio, Ella Johnson, Una Mae Carlisle, and the Inkspots—artists who bridged jazz, pop, and blues with an effortless shine. Bert Williams closes the hour with the wry humor he perfected decades before microphones entered the studio.

Hour #2 leans into jump blues, jukebox rompers, and early R&B. The Treniers, Larry Darnell, Roy Hawkins, Lil Green, Ethel Waters, and the Golden Gate Quartet give the hour a broad sweep across styles—from hard-swinging party records to gospel harmony and deep club blues. It’s a map of post-war Black popular music as it evolved toward rock ’n’ roll.

Then the Yazoo hour hits—Hour #3—a deep dive into the pre-war era and the heart of the show’s theme.

Hour #4 returns to the electric, gritty West Coast and Gulf Coast blues scenes: Big Mama Thornton in full voice; the tough, underrated Ray Agee; the laconic, powerful K.C. Douglas; standout sides from Mercy Dee, James Reed, Little Caesar, Frank Motley, and Johnny Fuller. It’s an hour of barroom realism and big-city bite.

Finally, Hour #5 closes the night in a relaxed late-show glide, with the Mills Brothers, Sonny Stitt, Ella Fitzgerald, Lou Donaldson, and Annie Laurie easing us toward dawn—before Fleetwood Mac’s Peter Green era takes over the last stretch, a mini-set of British blues that reflects how deeply the Yazoo-era rediscoveries influenced later generations.

It’s a full-circle night: from post-war elegance, through R&B heat, back to the deep roots, and finally forward again to the modern revivalists who never stopped listening to the pioneers. All of it—only on Blues Before Sunrise.