Ah the life of a retired government worker, would that I could join the tribe and do some serious reading. On to the list.

Every time I look up something in the Frank C Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore I find that I am learning something new about that song that I didn't know before.

"The Ballad Of America" by John Anthony Scott includes a couple of background paragraphs on most of the songs in the volume.

Railrods, it's hard to beat "Long Steel Rail" by Norm Cohen

Cowboy and western material seems fairly abundant in the USA. Some with background material along with the songs are: "He Was Singin' This Song" by Jim Bob Tinsley; "The Hell-bound Train" by Glenn Ohrlin; "The Whorehouse Bells Were Ringing" by Guy Logsdon; "Songs of the Great American West" by Irwin Silber; the annotated version of "Songs of the Cowboys" by N Howard "Jack" Thorp with variants, commentary, notes and lexicon by Austin e & Alta S Fife.

Northwoods I like "Ballads & Songs of the Shanty-Boy" by Franz Rickaby, and "Lumbering Songs from the North Woods" by Edith Fowke.

For a very narrow focus, i.e. a book about one song look for "Hold the Fort! The Story of a Song from the Sawdust Trail to the Picket Line" by Paul Scheips (Smithsonian Studies in History & Technology #9, 1971) it's only 57 pages.

rich r