I really enjoyed the first programme as well. RDH really seemed to 'get' the idea of playing music for fun and companionship rather than purely for performance, he was skilled at persuading his interviewees to open up, and he was quite prepared to leave behind his stated prejudice against the 'White South'. In fact he seemed to be pointing to common ground between poor white and poor black communities.

I was a bit worried when 'experts' tried to tell us that an old British broadside ballad was obviously the product of a specific kind of society that existed in the Appalachians, but fortunately the historian at Knoxville was able to set the record straight.