It is a collection of traditional songs from his home of Muhlenberg County, Kentucky, including original compositions evoking working life on the railroads and in the coal mines.

At the time, Capitol A & R man and producer Lee Gillette was looking for a way to enter the rising market for traditional American folk music created by singers and musicians such as John Jacob Niles, Burl Ives, Josh White, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, and the Golden Gate Quartet.

The recordings that resulted, taking place at two dates in August 1946,[3] led to the eight tracks that appeared on Folk Songs of the Hills, one of the earliest examples of a concept album.

Though a commercial flop at the time, the album was widely admired by musicians, and Travis was invited to preserve some of his performances in a series of Snader Transcriptions, an early form of music video, which can be viewed today on several internet sites and DVDs.

As the American folk music revival gathered steam in the 1950s, the album was incorporated into an LP entitled Back Home (Capitol Records T-891, 1957), adding four more tracks from electrical transcriptions made earlier by Travis in the same style for radio broadcast.