It's an overstatement to say that every style of American music can be traced back to the South. But take a map and draw a line from Bristol to New Orleans to Lubbock, and you have our musical fertile crescent, a region almost absurdly over-represented in terms of musical contributions. For the fourth year in a row, the Southern culture and literature magazine Oxford American has dedicated an issue to covering Southern music, an event that's well worth anticipating. Packaged with a CD designed to accompany the articles, Oxford American turns its typically strong writing to a nearly inexhaustible subject. This year's issue features interviews with Sam Phillips and a frank Tom Petty; short tributes to Randy Newman's "Louisiana 1927," Ronnie Milsap's pre-crossover career, the always-overlooked Judybats, and singing governor Jimmie Davis; and longer features on Asie Payton and Doc Watson. Other notable articles include a piece by Peter Guralnick on turning a love of blues music into a career as a writer, the real story of doomed engineer Casey Jones, an explanation of the origins of Buddy Holly's "Peggy Sue" (by Peggy Sue Gerron herself), and a piece on the proprietor of a soul-food restaurant who regularly fed the hungry Allman Brothers both before and after the group could pay for its own meals. The articles alone would make the issue valuable, but the CD (whose greatest rarity is a previously unreleased track by Wilco) seals the deal. A solid concept excellently executed, the 2000 issue is not, however, without its oversights: A piece on zydeco musician Keith Frank freely acknowledges his hip-hop influences, but that's the closest you'll find to hip-hop here. And while soul and blues are afforded their share of space alongside traditionally white styles, it's not quite a fair share, particularly when it comes to currently active artists. But even with an unfair ratio of living country singers to dead bluesmen, this is essential reading for lovers of Southern music. Which, when you think about it, should be just about everyone.