I recently bought this CD, and while it is very good, there are other Foster LPs and CDs which are truer and more inclusive. As to Foster's so-called mid-career epiphany about the music, I believe Ken Emerson, the author of the CD notes, indulges in a bit of revisionist history. He cites the last song in dialect as being Don't Bet on the Shanghai, 1861...Foster died Jan '64. I suspect that Foster was a faithful recorder of the poor Negro's dialect of his time, just as Joel Chandler Harris was for the Uncle Remus stories. Of course, to our 21st century sensibilities these sound racist, and are off-putting.