While most American record companies seem content to let languish in their vaults countless classic performances from even the most well-known country legends, the British label Krazy Kat has once again dug up some long-buried musical treasures and compiled them on a couple of fascinating new collections.

Jitterbug Jive features western swing recordings made for Bluebird Records in the early ’40s. It’s a wonderful document of that era’s evolving swing sound, as the music began to shift from an eclectic stew of jazz and pop covers to a greater emphasis on original material and a more country-oriented dance sound.

Western swing authority Kevin Coffey does an excellent job of sorting out the complicated histories of the featured bands in his liner notes, rigorously detailing their ever-shifting personnel. Although many of the bands should be familiar to western swing aficionados, the Bluebird recordings of this era have rarely been anthologized, and not a single song on this compilation is to be found in the current catalogs of U.S. record companies.

Western swing legends pop up all over the place. Electric steel pioneer Bob Dunn is featured on 11 of the 25 cuts, and some of the other more famous musicians here include Moon Mullican, Cliff Bruner, Jerry Irby, Tiny Moore, Shelley Lee Alley and even a young Leon Payne, who joined Bill Boyd and a pickup band of Cowboy Ramblers in the studio for the rambunctious title song of this collection.

Considering Bluebird’s reputation as a notorious cost-cutter (which included dubious policies of usually allowing just one take per song and limiting recording bands to five musicians), the overall quality of the performances is remarkably good. Special mention should be made of a few, including “Mean Mama Blues” by Charles Mitchell and his Orchestra (actually Jimmie Davis’ Shreveport radio band at the time, minus Davis), which features a swaggering vocal from Mullican and hot musicianship all around.

Irby, best-known as the author of the honky-tonk standard “Drivin’ Nails In My Coffin”, contributes sharp vocalizing to two songs, fronting the Bar-X Cowboys on “I Don’t Worry”, and joining a studio version of the Modern Mountaineers on “Mary Jane” (which also features some knockout steel work from Dunn). A slightly earlier, studio-only version of the Modern Mountaineers barrels through the raucous Mullican instrumental “Rackin’ It Back”, led by Moon’s own pumping piano. The Dixie Ramblers’ lascivious “He’s An Army Man” undoubtedly left an even bolder impression than its author presumably intended: The song was supposed to be sung by a woman, but Ramblers fiddler Jimmy Thomason ended up singing the risqué lyrics about the earthy attractions of military men.

While the quality is consistently good and sometimes much more than that, it’s puzzling to see Coffey’s notes extol the virtues of other recordings from these sessions that aren’t included here. For example, he identifies as “classics” the Mitchell recordings of “I Dreamed Of An Old Love Affair” and “If It’s Wrong To Love You”, both of which featured the great Leon Huff on lead vocals. If they’re truly that good, it seems some room should’ve been found for them here.

Krazy Kat’s other new reissue compiles 27 recordings from legendary Houston indie Freedom Records (not to be confused with the modern alt-country Texas label of the same name). Independent labels sprouted up all around the country in the postwar era, and Freedom joined Macy’s, Blue Bonnet and many others in farming the fertile Texas musical soil.

Owned by Solomon Kahal and his wife Gladys Gupton, Freedom Records lasted a little over three years. After starting up in the fall of 1948, Kahal began recording country acts in late 1949. The label ended up releasing 42 singles in its hillbilly series before shutting down in early 1952. Many of them were among the finest indie-country recordings of that era.

Kahal had the good fortune of being able to use steel guitar legend Herb Remington as a session man on a number of the Freedom recordings. Remington had spent three years playing steel with the Texas Playboys and a short time with Hank Penny’s band before moving to Houston in 1950. While he wasn’t the only steel guitarist to be used by Freedom, Remington’s steel wizardry is featured on many of the recordings included here.

Although this compilation isn’t as consistently strong as Jitterbug Jive, it’s still a delightful mix of free-spirited western swing, honky-tonk and country boogie. With a few exceptions (western swing vocalists Cotton Thompson and Laura Lee, future pop singer Tommy Sands), most of the featured performers are obscure even to fans of classic country, and this collection contains a number of inspired performances that up till now have only been available to collectors of 78s.

Thompson, best-known for his recordings with Johnnie Lee Wills, provides typically bluesy vocals and fiddle work on the jazz standard “Jelly Roll Blues.” Former Irby sideman Benny Leaders formed his own fine Houston band in the late ’40s, and they’re featured on five of the songs here (two released under Dickie Jones’ name). Both sides of Little Tommy Sands’ hard-country Freedom single (recorded when he was just 13) are also included, and the Austin-based Hub Sutter contributes a wonderfully sardonic answer song to Floyd Tillman’s “I Gotta Have My Baby Back”, titled “I Don’t Want My Baby Back.”

Coffey and Andrew Brown did an admirable job of digging up a fair amount of information about the recordings, and their authoritative notes often provide a more solid identity to the obscure names here. Sound quality is generally good on both sets, but occasionally Krazy Kat was forced to use 78s, with some noticeable surface noise.

While neither collection features any songs generally acknowledged to be country classics, they still contain more truly essential music than the great bulk of country albums that will be released this year, “alternative” or otherwise.