This recording captures two musical legends at their creative peaks. Bessie Smith’s version of W.C. Handy’s “St. Louis Blues”—featuring Louis Armstrong on cornet—was a perfect fusion of singer, song, and music. The arrangement of this 12-bar blues (with a unique 16-bar bridge) was sparse, highlighting the interplay between Smith’s aching vocals and Armstrong’s horn. The “Empress of the Blues” was riding high in 1925, just two years after her first recordings—including “Down Hearted Blues” and “Tain’t Nobody’s Biz-ness if I Do”—became worldwide sensations. But the 24-year-old Armstrong was just a rising star at this point, a musician’s musician known within the jazz community but far from the household name he would become.

Two iconic songs with Georgia in the title are now free of copyright. The 1930 composition “Georgia on My Mind” by Hoagy Carmichael (pictured below) built on the young songwriter’s success with “Riverboat Shuffle” and “Stardust.” Carmichael co-wrote “Georgia on My Mind” with his roommate Stuart Gorrell while living in New York City—even though the two men were born and raised in Indiana, and had no personal ties to Georgia. Today the song is best known for the 1960 version by Ray Charles, which was adopted as the official state song of Georgia. Another song joining the public domain today is the first recording of “Sweet Georgia Brown” made by Ben Bernie and His Hotel Roosevelt Orchestra in 1925. Today, the tune, co-written by Bernie, is perhaps best known as the official anthem of the Harlem Globetrotters.