Harry Smiths's Anthology of American Folk Music

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Some gorgeous, haunting stuff (and novelty tunes of varying mileage) on this compilation:
http://www.amazon.com/Classic-Ragtime-Offshoots-Various-Artists/dp/B000007QGR/

dem white folks in that top picture up dere is in a church not a field!

is sounds of south lp tracks the same as the cd series? i think there is some stuff on those thats on the anthology as well iirc..

jug one is a favourite - my flatmate had once and i tried unsuccessfully to lift it. it's great party music too!

i thought the anthology was made entirely of commercial recordings, the lomax recordings being a separate entity altogether.

maybe its just that moby track fucking with my brain... will pull lp and have a look later... i get confused kinda easily with alot of these comps

i thought the anthology was made entirely of commercial recordings, the lomax recordings being a separate entity altogether.
this is correct -- lomax released field recordings of people singing on their porches etc. shirley assisted!

(hey, who's "if you can believe your eyes and ears"? ya sent me a webmail about american pop, but i can't seem to find you here to reply back ... )

Do any of you know anything about this album?

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51elAE0O-nL._SL500_AA280_.jpg

I found it while hunting down Clarence Ashley / Gwen Foster songs I don't have and it looks really really cool.

Also, I started looking for any collections thematically arranged around prohibition. This is the only thing I could find tho,

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/519YY8NMF6L._SL500_AA300_.jpg

And tbh, the tracklist for that is kinda weak. I mean, great songs, but I was hoping for something more than a bunch of Duke Ellington + Louis Armstrong songs I've already heard. Do any of you know anything that's kinda thematically like this but better? (There was this great New Yorker piece a few years ago about Jake Walk + the Blues: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/09/15/030915fa_fact_baum)

The known jake leg songs: http://www.ibiblio.org/moonshine/drink/jakesongs.html

I wish this was available as a compilation somewhere.

Have we talked about making an early American music thread yet?

xxpost The New Lost City Ramblers did an album of prohibition & moonshine songs. Not quite real old-time, but old-timey enough.

I began before Christmas an attempt at getting ILXors to cover songs from the Anthology in whatever manner they chose. I got a few submissions, but would love it if we could really work that out. So please do it, send me an mp3 of yourself singing.

― ian

I didn't see this one...

I have that People Take Warning set, and it's... ok.
The tracks are mostly on topical subjects, commentaries on recent news events and suchlike - they were cash-in discs at the time so weren't generally amazing examples of music even when new. I haven't spent loads of time with the set, so there may be some gems in there for all I know, but what I've heard has mostly been underwhelming. The selections are more of historical and cultural interest rather than musical for the most part.

I don't think the Goodbye Babylon set has been mentioned, but man alive, there's some astounding music in that collection, and the packaging is beautiful.

hey, who's "if you can believe your eyes and ears"? ya sent me a webmail about american pop, but i can't seem to find you here to reply back ... )
hey - tachikawa66atyahoodotyaddayadda

ah, sweet - will email you shortly.
and yeah, people take warning is super interesting but there is some really BAD stuff on it. i liked listening to it, but it's not as strong musically as a lot of the sets mentioned in this thread.

IIRC even the sleeve notes of that People Take Warning are vaguely apologetic about the quality.

yeah i don't think they were making any grand claims for a lot of it -- some of it is pretty horrifying how it exploits tragedy with the most mawkish, manipulative drivel.

Snrub, after American Pop (A.A.P. = you life will never be the same again),

You ain't a-kiddin'.

That's What I Call Sweet Music: Not really sure this belongs in the thread, but this is a collection of "dance orchestras" of the 1920s. Sort of the opposite of what was going on in pop music at the time to the Anthology. This is music made purely to have a good time, tales of falling in love at 11:30 on a Saturday night and being "as happy as I can be 'cause the one that I love loves me." The 1920s wasn't all hard times in the country, y'know.

The Other Anthology of American Folk Music: Compiled by some fan on the Internet, this is four more discs of rural American folk music from about the same era. The liner notes convey the brilliance of this collection far better than I ever could: "On this collection, there is 1 train wreck, 1 sinking ship, a lot of folks leaving if they ain't already gone, 8 murder victims, 4 dead mothers, 1 dead father, 1 dead steel driver, 6 dying men, 4 premonitions of death, fortunately plenty saved souls, 9 gamblers and 6 drunks that we know of, 2 coke addicts, 6 cheaters, a lot of shots fired, 5 convicts, 1 escape, 1 ventriloquist, 1 mentally ill jug band, at least a dozen broken hearts, too many po' folks with the blues, and 1 $10,000 reward offered to a chicken."

Kentucky Mountain Music: "Now folks, we're gonna play some good dance music. If it ain't right, get right. Get ready now let's go! Hot dog!" HOW has that not been sampled by some aspiring techno DJ? Aaaanyway, this is seven CDs worth of fiddlin' string bands from Kentucky. Yes there are some gospel and ballads thrown in but mostly this is all about the fiddlin' hoedowns and the banjo tunes. This is the music of good-time feel good dances. If your favorite songs on the Anthology of American Folk Music are "Indian War Whoop" or "The Wild Wagoner" definitely check this out. Rock music existed in the 1920s and here's your proof. These mountain folks would party at the hoedowns with sweaty rural hedonistic abandon and it fucking rules.

People Take Warning: AWESOME! Yes it is horribly exploitative how the artists cashed in on tragedy, but man alive does it have some amazing songs on it. Of course y'all know "When That Great Ship Went Down" and "Kassie Jones" from the Anthology, but there is so much more. All this sad string accompaniment and lyrics like "Oh how sad to know they never can come back" and "But we can't replace those brave souls who lost their lives that day." Very exploitative, but also very fascinating. For a great article about these "event songs" (as they called them) I highly suggest you read this article from 1929. That whole book is amazing, btw. And am I a horrible evil person if I find "Ohio Prison Fire" one of the most hilarious songs ever recorded? "Oh Jimmy! JIMMY!!! It's MOTHER!!"

And I also echo everyone here re: the brilliance of Bascom Lamar Lunsford. Supposedly there're plans to release a ten-CD boxed set of every single one of his Library of Congress recordings called The Memory Collection, but Folkways is a bit hesitant due to an apparent lack of interest. I'd buy one!

After spending many years with this, I really don't find it to be an especially good compilation. There are a fair number of great songs, but there's so much material I find unmemorable. Plenty of better material in all of the genres presented. Cool packaging, cool concept, great mythology around it, but when there are so many old recordings in these genres available I rarely feel that much need to listen to it.

i kind of agree with that. to be honest in terms of anthologies of folk music i find myself listening to art rosenbaum's "art of of field recording" collection more than anything else. it's not a colelction of historic recordings or anything (most were done in the past 30 years iirc) but i find it more engaging that a lot of stuff on harry smith's collection.

that said, it's a pretty meaningful and special anthology for many reasons, some of which you already mentioned.

Yeah it's almost more like a work of conceptual art or a piece of (extremely) revisionist musicology, like a deliberate attempt to create a mythical past. I feel like I've spent a long time trying to force myself to like all the music on the anthology when like 60-70% of it does nothing for me.

it was also the only example of that type of music that was known enough to be available/at the library -- there may be "better" compilations out there, or albums, or spotify or whatever, but part of its appeal for me is that everyone knows it because it was the only thing they had a chance to hear. so there's the element, for me, of it genuinely being popular folk music known to multiple generations of people. that appeals to my sense of togetherness and humanity almost as much as the music itself appeals to me. there are other people who know that version of "the house carpenter", and that mere fact makes the anthology valuable to me.

not saying it should matter to anyone else for whatever reason, but that's one reason it matters to me.

xp This is seriously a case of 2013 goggles, guys. Maybe it's hard to imagine a time when you couldn't literally spend years only listening to Awesome Tapes from Africa, or whatever, but this box was / is a revelation. It's beyond reproach.

That said, interesting that this topic came up today, because last night I watched the Harry Smith documentary that's tagged on as a 'bonus' feature of that dreadful LA concert DVD with Elvis Costello, Steve Earle, Lou Reed, etc, and WOOF - awful. The worst sort of talking-head style documentary combined with clips from that abysmal concert. Cut from Allen Ginsberg or Greil Marcus talking about how 'magical' the music of the anthology is to Petra fucking Hayden or Beth Orton or Gavin Friday performing some shitty version of one of the songs. Talk about cognitive dissonance. Also, no mention of Fahey (not to even mention his Grammy-winning liner notes), one small mention of Lomax, and a serious dearth of archival footage. What a waste of time.

Oh it's definitely 2013 goggles, I'm not denying that.

And all those obligatory, reverent covers of Anthology songs are exactly another reason I've come to like the Anthology a bit less. Also I don't really like Greil Marcus and his "Old Weird America" concept.

you guys do have a good point on the direness of snooty reverence, but that doesn't have anything to do with the music. it's just an unfortunate byproduct and what we have to suffer through if we want to have folk music. right? surely there are other folk musics where the interpretation (or the interpretation of the interpretation) is godawful but the song is still good? and even then, some people like it. just not us.

The Anthology is really not as good as it could be because, in the end, it was just the best parts of some guy's record collection. There are loads of great songs he could've included but he just didn't know about them.

i dunno guys, it's a pretty great collection of music. not sure i can speak for its ultimate importance or w/e, but wow, the songs on there. and smith's write ups are hilarious/fun. only thing that i hated about it was that sticker that was on the front of the CD reissue that said "this is gangsta folk!"

How come another coat on the coat rack where my coat oughta be?

I love that one! "Oh crazy...silly...can't you plainly see?" - HA! "Drunkard's Special," right?

yeah, that song is one of my favorites. And Old Dog Blue. Like I said, there are a fair number of great songs, but there's also a ton of skippable material.

although when I think about it, a lot of the skippable stuff for me is concentrated in Vol 2

How come another coat on the coat rack where my coat oughta be?

― Trip Maker, Friday, July 26, 2013 10:52 AM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark

ha see immediately after reading this my brain heard "can't you plainly see?"
the head of cabbage is the funniest part

I just really like the way that he enunciates COAT on the COAT RACK.
This collection has more than a few immortal tracks on it.

a lot of the skippable stuff for me is concentrated in Vol 2

madness

imo much of the powerful spell these records cast is due to the sequencing, which is flawless.

The importance of the Anthology of American Folk Music realllllly cannot be overstated. A lot of people first became aware of this music because of Smith's collection -- there was not another way to hear this music in 1958 -- that was it, or find the original 78s, which even then -- only thirty years or so after they were pop music -- were just totally lost from the public consciousness. Outside of a small (VERY small) group of record collectors people were largely unaware of this stuff. It exposed a whole new generation of people to music that otherwise might never have entered their ears. And it continues to do that still, which I think is awesome.

Snrub's point is also accurate -- after listening to thousands of old records, these were Smith's favorites, or things he found that fit into his mythology -- but even though he listened to thousands of records, there's no way he could have heard everything, nor possessed everything, nor had copies of the records in good enough shape to warrant reissuing.

Personally I find the quality of the material to be incredibly high. I've been listening to the Anthology a lot lately, actually, because it's one of the few CDs/sets I keep in the car. Yesterday particularly I was seized by Prince Albert Hunt's "Wake Up Jacob" which, for some reason, never made much of an impact on me before. I thought that while it was good, it was not the match of Brilliancy Medley or Sail Away Ladies (or a dozen other fiddle performances not on the Anthology.) Yesterday it hit me that it was in fact one of the greatest things I've ever heard! it's beautiful, the tone of the fiddle is marvelous, the dynamics and changes in tempo are thrilling. I could listen to it all day. While I suppose relistening is key to getting a firmer grip on some of the material -- there's just too much for anyone to digest with just a few runs through.

Some of the absolute finest records made in the 20s & 30s found their way onto the Anthology -- "Willie Moore" ; "Peg & Awl" ; "Frankie" ; "Drunkard's Special"* ; both of the Sacred Harp Recordings, which may not be your favorite, are to me, incredible. ; "Shine On Me" ; "Fifty Miles of Elbow Room" ; "Sugar Babe" ; "Mole In The Ground" ; "Georgia Stomp" ; "Single Girl" ; "Way Down The Old Plank Road" ; "Better Things For You" ; "Fishing Blues" -- all these and more are fucking masterpieces imo.

* there are other great recordings of this song, some under the name "Three Nights Experience" or "Three Nights Drunk" like here --
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cNjh5nn7E0
I particularly love Earl Johnson's version, but it's not on youtube.

oops, not 1958 -- 1952!!!!!

"Indian War Woop"... "Old Dog Blue" ... "I Woke Up One Morning In May" and "James Alley Blues" i mean, jesus christ, it's wall to wall bangers!

http://katiedozier.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/haters-gonna-hate.jpg

Ian OTM

I second this motion and hereby move to close this argument in favor of the anthology.

i actually find it kind of fascinating to hear what works/doesn't work for certain listeners. it's interesting to me, because the reactions are so varied to this stuff. and there such a wide variety of styles on the collection, that i guess it's only natural that certain sections are less appealing to some people. i am just a huge fan of this music. you can quibble all day long about it, of course -- why did Smith include those cajun songs and not, say, Amede Ardoin or Dennis McGee? Who knows? Maybe they were the only ones he had. Maybe they were the ones he had in the best condition, or that fit his criteria for inclusion, or maybe that was just a choice he made.

i like this anthology a lot. it's one of the best anthologies out there IMO.

This was one of the first things I downloaded ten years ago, when I started down that road to perdition. Burned it all onto CD, got through it, but I was consuming a lot of stuff back then. It's something I need to go back to.

This collection was my gateway into American old-time music. As a result, I now own a shitload of CDs/LPs and four banjos...... Absolute classic.

sorry to derail, but I love the Dubliners' version of the "Drunkard's Special" - i.e. their "Seven Drunken Nights".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db03QGHwvtU

As I went home on Monday night as drunk as drunk could be
I saw a horse outside the door where my old horse should be
Well, I called me wife and I said to her: Will you kindly tell to me
Who owns that horse outside the door where my old horse should be?

Ah, you're drunk,
you're drunk you silly old fool,
still you can not see
That's a lovely sow that me mother sent to me
Well, it's many a day I've travelled a hundred miles or more
But a saddle on a sow sure I never saw before

And as I went home on Tuesday night as drunk as drunk could be
I saw a coat behind the door where my old coat should be
Well, I called me wife and I said to her: Will you kindly tell to me
Who owns that coat behind the door where my old coat should be

Ah, you're drunk,
you're drunk you silly old fool,
still you can not see
That's a woollen blanket that me mother sent to me
Well, it's many a day I've travelled a hundred miles or more
But buttons in a blanket sure I never saw before

And as I went home on Wednesday night as drunk as drunk could be
I saw a pipe up on the chair where my old pipe should be
Well, I called me wife and I said to her: Will you kindly tell to me
Who owns that pipe up on the chair where my old pipe should be

Ah, you're drunk,
you're drunk you silly old fool,
still you can not see
That's a lovely tin whistle that me mother sent to me
Well, it's many a day I've travelled a hundred miles or more
But tobacco in a tin whistle sure I never saw before

And as I went home on Thursday night as drunk as drunk could be
I saw two boots beneath the bed where my old boots should be
Well, I called me wife and I said to her: Will you kindly tell to me
Who owns them boots beneath the bed where my old boots should be

Ah, you're drunk,
you're drunk you silly old fool,
still you can not see
They're two lovely Geranium pots me mother sent to me
Well, it's many a day I've travelled a hundred miles or more
But laces in Geranium pots I never saw before

And as I went home on Friday night as drunk as drunk could be
I saw a head upon the bed where my old head should be
Well, I called me wife and I said to her: Will you kindly tell to me
Who owns that head upon the bed where my old head should be

Ah, you're drunk,
you're drunk you silly old fool,
still you can not see
That's a baby boy that me mother sent to me
Well, it's many a day I've travelled a hundred miles or more
But a baby boy with his whiskers on sure I never saw before