Germany’s Bear Family Records deserves plaudits for compiling and releasing exhaustive box sets from some of the best-known figures in early country and rock music. But the reissue label warrants at least as much praise for unearthing and taking a chance on superlative material that most listeners have never even heard of, much less heard.
A perfect example of this is the new Rich-R-Tone Folk Star Story, which fills 12 CDs and has a playing time of more than 14 hours. It collects records released between 1946 and 1954 by Rich-R-Tone, a small, independent Johnson City, Tennessee, label, and its Folk Star subsidiary. The box comes with a coffee table–sized, 144-page hardcover…

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