Miscellany: Running a "Call of Cthulhu" campaign, part 7

As in the past, I'm experimenting with various atmospheric tricks to make my "Call of Cthulhu" sessions more compelling. For example, last game, I instituted a stopwatch that ticked down every hour, requiring Sanity rolls every time it hit zero (the investigators were infected with a disease that caused various hallucinations). And I've already talked about creating sham 1920s documents.

For this next session, I thought some period music might enhance the mood, especially since the investigators will be making their way through the deep South of the 1920s, including a potentially lethal stopover in a Georgia prison. Obviously, this kind of music isn't exactly on sale at your local Wally World, so it takes some work and ingenuity to track it down.

My first stop was the local library. You'd be surprised at the amount of folk, bluegrass, and traditional CDs you can find if you search long enough. Unfortunately, most of today's R&B and country is overproduced for my purposes, but I did get some interesting tracks (especially from Ralph Stanley, who had a stunning vocal on the "O Brother Where Art Thou?" soundtrack).

A more comprehensive (and probably more accurate) option is the Internet Archive, under "Open Source Audio" in particular. Cross-reference it with popular 1920s performers and bingo, you've got songs like this.