In the late 1970s Alan Lomax went to the American South with a television crew to document regional folklore with deep historical roots, which he felt he understood much better after his research on world music and his fieldwork abroad.

This catalog represents 500 hours of raw footage taken over the course of five years, from 1979 through 1983, in preparation for making a series of programs for PBS. Represented are former levee and railroad workers, farm women, bluesmen, and young tall tale rhymers from the Mississippi Delta; New Orleans jazz parades; Cajun cowboys; Sea Island game songs; Yaqui Indian dancers and Norteno musicians from Arizona; Sacred Harp singers from Alabama; miners, black fiddlers, and storytellers from Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee; bootleggers, tobacco workers, and front porch flatfoot dancers from North Carolina; cloggers and bluegrass geniuses from Georgia; disco dancers from Pennsylvania; Italian and Italian American folk musicians at the Giglio Festival in Brooklyn, New York; and folk artists over the country at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, D.C. There are in-depth interviews with Alan Lomax, filmed for use in the series.

The five completed documentaries in the American Patchwork series were aired on PBS in the 1980s, published on video in 1990, and reissued in 1998. Jazz Parades, Appalachian Journey, Land Where the Blues Began (with John Bishop and Worth Long), Dreams and Songs of the Noble Old, and Cajun Country are available through Rounder Records.