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want to hear the folks that created Rock and Country Music look no farthera music education in one box.
It is hard to put a finger on it, so just put an ear to it. These are part of the experience as well.
It is much more than that. It stands alone as a work of art.
Being a music lover of all types and already having collections of songs from this era (the era is a small window of time between the advent of electronic recording and the commercial influence from the spread of radio and TV), I expected this to be just another collection of songs from this time period. Every collection should have such a helpful and interesting book as he included.
There is one booklet that come with it that will explain the history of the anthology, its influence on the music of the sixties, and how much effort went in to cataloging details of the music. Another booklet was by Harry Smith and part of the original release.
The songs are honest and excellent. Harry Smith was an expert musicologist, a master in the field, with a huge and mysterious talent.
I can recall the stuff as a kid. Music like this was once broad cast on every little radio station in the rural south and much of it predates that. I don't just resemble that remark. It does kind of sound like AM radio or a gramophone but this stuff pretty much predates the more modern electronics. The only way to get this stuff to sound like modern multichannel music is to rerecord it from scratch and they used the originals whenever they could.
But here is the funny thing after running through the whole collection. It is no secret that the reviewer in this space has been on something of a tear of late in working through a litany of items concerning American roots music, a music that he first discovered in his youth with the folk revival of the early 1960s and with variations and additions over time has held in high regard for his whole adult life. Since we live in a confessional age, however, here is the odd part. That booklet is worth the price of admission alone on this one. If the "roots is toots" for you, get this thing.Note: For a list of the all the tracks in the entire collection just Google "the Harry Smith Collection" and click onto Wikipedia's entry for Harry Smith. As familiar as I am with Harry Smith's name and place in the folk pantheon, his seemingly tireless field work and a great number of the songs in his anthology this is actually the first time that I have heard the whole thing at one sitting and in one place.
Nevertheless, over time I have actually heard (and reviewed in this space), helter-skelter, most of the material in the collection, except a few of the more exotic gospel songs. Thus a review of musicologist (if that is what he though he was, it is not all that clear from his "career" path that this was so) Harry Smith's seminal "Anthology Of American Folk Music" is something of a no-brainer. I mentioned above that this was the first time that I heard the collection as a whole. Oh sure, back in the days of my ill-spent youth listening to an old late Sunday folk show I would perk up every time the name Harry Smith came up as the "discoverer" of some gem of a song from the 1920s or 1930s but to actually listen to ,or even attempt to find, the whole compilation then just didn't happen.In 1997 Smithsonian/Folkway, as least threoretically in my case, remedied that problem with the release of a high quality (given the masters) six CD set of old Harry's 80 plus recordings. Not only that but, as is usual with Smithsonian, a very nicely done booklet with all kinds of good information from the likes of Greil Marcus and the late folklorist Eric Von Schmidt (of "Light Rain" and Joshua's Gone Barbados" among others fame) accompanies this set. So I guess that youth was not so ill-spent after all.
For lovers of old folk music, this collection is a must have. The music is absolutely amazing, from the ballads to the gospel tunes, and the novelty songs, it just is incredible start to finish. It's also an important work in the history of acoustic music when one considers the influence it's had on so many musicians. This set is lots of great listening.
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