Soundtrack/various artists

Mercury Nashville

Set in the 1930s American South, this new film by the Coen Brothers (Fargo, Miller’s Crossing) is built around a serio-comic “odyssey” of three escaped convicts—George Clooney, Tim Blake Nelson and John Turturro. Ace producer T-Bone Burnett handled the music; he tapped into Southern folk, bluegrass, hymns, blues and gospel. This 19-song soundtrack has the best roots performers of the last 70 years, including Ralph Stanley, John Hartford, Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch, Norman Blake, Allison Krauss, the Whites and Chris Thomas King. Hartford’s snaky fiddling is perfect for “I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow.” Krauss and Welch do a classic rendition of the old hymn “I’ll Fly Away.” Harris, Welch and Krauss become seductive sirens on the slave-era lullaby “Didn’t Leave Nobody but the Baby.” And Ralph Stanley’s voice should be bronzed for posterity on the intensely raw, unaccompanied “O Death.”