The Harry Smith Anthology of Folk Music

The Harry Smith Anthology of Folk Music is a six-album compilation released in 1952 by Folkways Records. The Anthology was compiled by famed musicologist Harry Smith and includes 84 songs on six LPs.

The Life and Work of Harry Smith

Harry Smith was a field collector of folk music, filmmaker, and visual artist, best known for his 1952 Anthology of American Folk Music. The anthology was assembled from commercial 78 rpm recordings from the 1927-1932 period that Smith had collected. It is one of the most influential releases in the history of folk music. It was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998.

Harry Smith’s Early Life

Harry Everett Smith was born in Portland, Oregon on May 29, 1923. His father, Robert James Smith, was a constable in the city police force; his mother Mabel Xavier Smith (née Kubler) worked as a clerk in a grocery store. Shortly after Harry’s birth, the family moved to Vancouver, Washington where his father took a job as a night watchman at a local mill. Harry spent his childhood in Vancouver and attended St. James Elementary School and Columbia High School.

At Columbia High School, Harry developed an interest in music and became friends with fellow student Dick Hodge. Hodge introduced Harry to the work of ethnomusicologist Charles Russell, which had a profound impact on him. After graduating from high school in 1941, Harry began attending college at the nearby University of Washington in Seattle. He continued to pursue his interests in music and anthropology, taking classes from Russell and participating in fieldwork expeditions organized by the university’s Anthropology Department.

Harry Smith’s Work in the Folk Music Revival

As a musicologist, Harry Smith was highly influential in the folklore and folk music Revival of the 1950s and 1960s. In 1952, he released the Anthology of American Folk Music, a six-album compilation of commercial recordings of songs from the 1920s and 1930s that he had collected. The Anthology was commercially unsuccessful but was later hailed as one of the most important documentations of American folk music. In particular, Smith’s work helped to bring attention to previously overlooked artists such as Blind Lemon Jefferson and Bukka White.

In addition to his work on the Anthology, Smith also produced several other folk music compilations, including Folkways Records’ American Folk Music Series (1957-1958) and The CompleteHarry Smith Sarah Vaughan Series (1964). He also worked as an editor at Folkways Records, where he oversaw the release of several important folk music albums, including Woody Guthrie’s Dust Bowl Ballads (1940) and Lead Belly’s Last Songs (1948). In addition to his work in the music industry, Harry Smith was also a painter and filmmaker; his film unfinished Film No. 8: Messiah (1970) is considered an avant-garde classic.

The Anthology of Folk Music

The Harry Smith Anthology of Folk Music was released on August 19, 1952 by Folkways Records. The Anthology was compiled by Harry Smith and released on six double-sided vinyl discs. The Anthology contains 84 songs performed by various artists, and is considered one of the most important folk music collections ever assembled.

The Songs on the Anthology

Smith compiled the songs on the Anthology primarily from commercial 78-rpm discs that he acquired from used-record stores and collectors in New York City. He chose songs that, in his view, represented a cross-section of different song types and geographical areas in the United States. The three volumes of the Anthology were divided thematically and chronologically: the first volume featured “ballads”, the second “social music”, and the third “songs”. In total, eighty-four different songs were included on the Anthology.

Some of the most famous and influential songs on the Anthology are:

“House of the Rising Sun” – a traditional folk song from the southern United States that was popularized by The Animals in 1964
“In My Time of Dyin'” – a traditional folk song from the Appalachian region of the United States that was popularized by Bob Dylan in 1961
“Pretty Polly” – a traditional folk song from Britain that was popularized by The Byrds in 1967
“John Hardy” – a traditional folk song from West Virginia that was popularized by Lead Belly in 1944

The Legacy of the Anthology

The Harry Smith Anthology of Folk Music was released in 1952 by Folkways Records. It was compiled by musicologist Harry Smith and contained 84 songs, mostly originating in the southeastern United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Many of the songs were previously recorded and released on 78rpm records, but several were new recordings made specifically for the anthology. It has been influential on many subsequent compilation albums, particularly those released by Folkways and its later subsidiary, Smithsonian Folkways.

The Anthology was inducted into the National Recording Registry in 2007.