Harry Smith ed. - Anthology of American Folk Music

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Mission Control - Entry Number 001

Artist: Various Artists; Edited by Harry Smith
Title: Anthology of American Folk Music, aka The Harry Smith Anthology

Release Date: 1952 (material recorded between 1926 and 1932; all material previously released)
Length: 4 hrs 16 min
Relevance: RS #276 (2003) / #273 (2005)

Personal favorites:
V1: "Gonna Die With My Hammer In My Hand" by The Williamson Brothers & Curry
V2: "Rocky Road" by Alabama Sacred Harp Singers
V3: "See That My Grave Is Kept Clean" by Blind Lemon Jefferson

TLDR:  Great album to start the mission.  Historical curiosity satisfied, desire to hear murder tales and religious gaiety satisfied, desire to hear songs that sound like a Deceptacon eating gravel very very satisfied.

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Volume One: Ballads

Spoiler: Everyone Dies.

Well, maybe not everyone.  Everyone dies, or murders, or gets their heartbroken,  or breaks a heart, or hates their boss, or is a horrible boss.  If I went solely upon the stories in these 27 songs, I would assume that Americans at the dawn of the 20th century were all quite dysfunctional, to the point that it's surprising that the nation survived.  No one here is happy, no one is in a nice happy relationship.  What a downer.

But I suppose that's why these songs were written.  Documenting a specific tragedy or crime might have served to help people remember the downfall of others.  Don't get to clingy, ladies, or you'll get thrown off a waterfall like Naomi Wise did.  Don't be to reckless, engine driver, or you'll die with your engine wrapped around you, like your momma said, and like that song said. 

As far as the music goes, it was nice to hear a collection of guitar and violin and banjo recordings from before recordings were widely available.  I could be wrong (and that's very likely), but I imagine that most of the players here were either self-taught or were taught by someone who was.  In other words, I imagine that the instrumental work here was developed before there were established conventions or expectations for what popular music should sound like.  Vocally, some of the stuff here is bafflingly hard to listen to, and you can also tell that some of these voices would be unattractive even with today's recording quality.  Maybe they sounded sexy at the time, but it's hard to imagine so.  The recording quality... well, you take what you can get, I guess, and given that some of this stuff was recorded 85 years ago, I'm not going to knock them for that.  Still, the songs alternate between sounding like they are being played here in the room and sounding like they were recorded in an underwater warehouse-slash-bee-factory.  I wonder if any improvements could be made with today's remastering technology, but maybe that's part of the charm.  

Volume Two: Social Music

The first half of this volume is instrumental music not unlike the songs played in the dance scene of "Back to the Future 3," but I imagine that the hootin' and hollerin' was toned down for the recording process.  Still, it's very easy to imagine these songs played much more raucously, with much more stompin'.  Very fun stuff.  The second half is made up of religious songs, some of which sound like a sermon from a Sunday morning and some of which are more upbeat and include hootin', hollerin' and stompin'.  Indeed, many fall into both these categories.

Musically, the comments from the previous section apply here too.

Volume Three: The Songs

As opposed to the first volume, which deals with songs about specific people and the events that happened to them at specific times, these are more general songs about... well, whatever songs are ever about.  Most of the songs on the anthology that are "[such and such] Blues" are on this volume.  To make a long story short, I can't figure out a way to classify the songs here except that they don't fit into the other two volumes. 

Musically, see above.

Other Comments

I think this is the perfect first item for my mission, for numerous reasons.

First of all, it's by multiple artists.  Over 60 artists, in fact.  This gives me a nice, wide picture of what American folk really sounded like, and not be limited to hearing one man's particular style.  Imagine trying to get a picture of what rap sounds like by listening to a single album by a single artist (hint: you can't, and it's foolish to think you can). 

Secondly, this anthology features recordings dating back to the earlier part of the history of recorded music, which gives me the impression that there aren't many recordings older than these.  In order to hear earlier music, it would be up to someone else to play it.  These are, I imagine, some of the earliest recorded musical documents there are (I could be very wrong, though).

Thirdly, the songs here are documented with known years by known artists, but had been developed over the course of years, decades or possibly even centuries, and continued to be transformed after these recordings.  This makes the anthology a window on 1926-1933 in a process of American folk music that dates 1776-Present.  I appreciate the knowledge that this document sort of encompasses at least a hundred years of the development of popular music, and I'm excited that I'll hear these songs again in the course of my mission, developed further by Joan Baez, Nick Cave and others.

Other good points include the satisfaction of my historical/sociological curiosity (lots of courting, lots of casual discussion of murder), and the liner notes by Portland's own Harry Smith.  Best of Mr. Smith's song descriptions: "Zoological miscegeny achieved in mouse-frog nuptials. Relatives approve."  Who wouldn't want to listen to that?

(Technically this compilation wasn't put together until 1952, so that's when most people [like Bob Dylan] would have first been able to hear most of these songs. I guess you could say the influence of this collection wouldn't be happening untilthen, so I should have listened to it after Django Reinhardt, Hank Williams, etc.  Oh well.)

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Up Next: The Devil's Music

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