Maybe it didn't bring about the social and economic equality that it strove for, but the American Left of the 1930s and 1940s did leave one lasting legacy: the urban folk song revival. The energetic, politically daring music of the Almanac Singers and its predecessors, contemporaries and successors continue to resonate through today's singer-songwriters.

Spanning the years 1926 to 1953, 'Songs for Political Action: Folk Music Topical Songs and the American Left' features nearly 300 extremely rare recordings on ten compact discs. It offers a comprehensive overview of this enduring music, focusing on its genesis among progressive urban intellectuals of the 1920s, the labor choruses and New York's socially conscious theatrical scene of the 1930s, to the Almanac Singers' influential, ground-breaking recordings. It continues through the war years and the postwar idealism of People's Songs and Henry Wallace's 1948 Presidential bid. These unifying high points were quickly eroded by the disturbing anti-communist hysteria that bitterly divided and silenced many of these talented, dedicated performers.

This set includes a hardcover book documenting the era and the recordings it produced.

CD-1 The Leftist Roots of the Folk Revival

Carl Sandburg, John Allison, Charles and Ruth Crawford Seeger, Aunt Molly Jackson, Sara Ogan Gunning, Tilman Cadle, John Handcox, Bob Miller, The New Singers and The Manhattan Chorus.

CD-2 Theater and Cabaret Performers 1936-1941

Mordecai Bauman, Earl Robinson, Paul Robeson, Tony Kraber, Saul Aaron, Harrison Dowd and Josh White.

CD-3 The Almanac Singers March - July 1941

Songs for John Doe, Talking Union, Sod Buster Ballads, and Deep Sea Chanteys.

CD-4 Fighting the Fascists 1942-1944

The Almanac Singers, The Priority Ramblers, Songs of the Lincoln Brigade and The Union Boys.

CD-5 World War II and the Folk Revival

Earl Robinson, Dooley Wilson, Sir Lancelot, Vern Partlow, Woody Guthrie and Cisco Houston, and Citizen C.I.O.

CD-6 The People's Songs Era 1945-1949

Josh White, Lee Hays, Bob Claiborne, Bernie Asbel, Lord Invader, Brownie McGhee, Sis Cunningham, Malvina Reynolds, Bill Oliver, The Berries, Mario Casetta, Vern Partlow, Dick Blakeslee and others.

CD-7 Pete Seeger 1946-1948

With Ronnie Gilbert, Lee Hays, Hally Wood and others.

CD-8 Charter Records 1946-1949

Sir Lancelot, Goodson and Vale, People's Songs Chorus, The Berries, Pete Seeger, Mario Casetta, Betty Sanders, The Weavers and The Peekskill Story.

CD-9 Campaign Songs 1944-1949

1944 Roosevelt campaign: Earl Robinson, Josh White and Bill Oliver. 1946 F.T.A./Cannery Workers campaign: Vern Partlow and Mara Alexander. 1948 Henry Wallace/Glen Taylor Presidential campaign: Richard Huey, Royal Harmonaires, Abigail Alvarez, Paul Robeson, Michael Loring, Sis Cunningham, Bill Oliver, Malvina Reynolds, Sir Lancelot, Alan Lomax, and others. 1949 Mayoral campaigns: The Weavers, Hope Foye, Laura Duncan, and others.

CD-10 An Era Closes 1949-1953

Camp Unity's Freedom Theater, Gerald Gallant, Fred Hellerman, The Weavers, Ernie Lieberman, Hope Foye, Laura Duncan, Betty Sanders, Osborne Smith, Jewish Young Folksingers, Joe Glazer, Bill Friedland and Woody Guthrie.