A sociological and musical study gathers work songs collected from Black laborers in the American South and presents them as evidence of everyday life and expression. The collection catalogs and transcribes blues, road and jamboree tunes, bad-man ballads, jail and chain‑gang pieces, construction and camp songs, male and female love songs, religious numbers, and extended workingman epics, accompanied by musical notations and phono‑photographic records. The authors supply social context and analysis, favoring spontaneous, semi‑folk variants over polished anthology pieces, and organize typologies and melodies to highlight labor relations, communal rhythms, vocal style, and the functional role of song in work and movement.