Buddy Moss was a blues singer guitarist and harmonica player from Georgia, and was one of what became known as the Piedmont school of bluesmen alongside Blind Blake, Josh White, Blind Boy Fuller and Barbecue Bob.

Born Eugene Moss in 1914 and one of 12 children of a family of sharecroppers, the bluesman began teaching himself the harmonica at a very early age, and he played at local parties around Augusta, where the family moved when he was four. By 1928, he was busking around the streets of Atlanta. “Nobody was my influence,” he told Robert Springer of his harmonica playing, in a 1975 interview. “I just kept hearing people, so I listen and I listen, and listen, and it finally come to me.” Making his first recordings in 1930, when he was 16, with Curley Weaver and Barbecue Bob in the Georgia Cotton Pickers, he was particularly active during the mid-30s before being jailed for several years - when released in 1941, he recorded again, sometimes with fellow Piedmont stars Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee,  before the wartime shellac shortages and the 1942 AFM recording ban curtailed his activities.

This 49-track collection features selected A & B sides from his releases during this era on the Columbia, Banner, Melotone, Vocalion, Perfect, ARC and Okeh labels, including recordings as a member of The Georgia Cotton Pickers and Georgia Browns, and with Pinewood Tom (aka Josh White). Performances with Curley Weaver, Barbecue Bob, Fred McMullen, Josh White, Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry are also included.

Although his style was shaped by his early exposure to local blues players, he was a highly individual performer who wrote most of his own songs, and this is collection offers an entertaining showcase for those talents.

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