The Anthology of American Folk Music

The Anthology of American Folk Music is a six-album compilation released in 1952 by Folkways Records, edited by Harry Smith.

Introduction

American folk music is a musical genre that developed in the United States during the 19th century. It is rooted in the folk music of Europe and Africa, and has been influenced by a wide range of musical styles, including blues, gospel, country, and rock and roll. The Anthology of American Folk Music is a six-album compilation released in 1952 by Folkways Records, comprising eighty-four American folk, blues and country songs recorded between 1927 and 1932.

The Anthology was assembled by Harry Smith from his personal collection of 78 rpm records. It includes material by such artists as Blind Lemon Jefferson, Bessie Smith, Charlie Poole, Eck Robertson, Furry Lewis, Henry Thomas, Jean Ritchie, John Hurt, Lead Belly, Lucille Bogan and Mississippi John Hurt. The acoustic guitar is the most prominent instrument on the Anthology recordings; other instruments include the banjo, fiddle and harmonica.

The wide variety of songs included on the Anthology reflects the diversity of American folk music at the time it was recorded. The collection has been highly influential on later artists in the folk music genre, particularly Bob Dylan and Joan Baez.

The Collection

The Anthology of American Folk Music is a six-album compilation released in 1952 by Folkways Records, edited by Harry Smith. The collection comprises eighty-four American folk, blues and country music recordings that were originally issued on 78-rpm discs in the 1920s and 1930s. Of the six albums, the first two are compiled from commercial recordings, the second two from non-commercial discs, mostly recorded by folklorists, and the last two from manuscripts and field recordings of songs, instrumental pieces and dance music.

The songs

The Collection is a 6-disc set containing songs from the Anthology of American Folk Music, compiled by Harry Smith. The songs were recorded between 1927 and 1932 and released on 78rpm records.

The set includes 84 songs by 73 different artists, spanning a wide range of genres including blues, country, folk, gospel, and jazz. Many of the songs are considered classics, including “Ain’t Nobody’s Business”, “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love”, “St. James Infirmary”, and “When the Saints Go Marching In”.

The performers

The performers on the 52 tracks of The Anthology of American Folk Music were almost all obscure figures, many of them nonexperts in music. Nevertheless, they created some of the most arresting folk recordings ever made. Few of the singers and instrumentalists had careers in music outside their involvement with the recording sessions assembled by Harry Smith, and several appear to have been one-shot recording artists. Some were already elderly when they made their records; others were very young. A few were black, but most were white and sang or played in the Anglo-American musical tradition. Most but not all hailed from rural areas; a few lived in or near urban centers.

The singer-guitarist Dock Boggs was born in Norton, Virginia, in 1898 and learned to play music as a teenager from field hollers, songs sung by laborers while they worked. The young Boggs quickly developed into an effortlessly virtuosic picker; he could make his guitar wail and moan like a human voice—something few musicians have been able to do before or since.

The banjo player Roscoe Holcomb was born in 1911 in Daisy, Kentucky, a tiny hamlet near the Cumberland Gap. He learned to play from his father and other relatives, who performed for square dances held in their home each Saturday night. At first Holcomb played only for his own amusement—and that of his neighbors—but eventually he became well known as a musician and singer throughout southeastern Kentucky, northeastern Tennessee, and southwestern Virginia.

Henry Thomas was born in 1874 or 1879 (accounts differ) near Marshall, Texas. As a youngster he learned to play “arkansas” on a fiddle cobbled together from scrap wood; “Arkansas” is an African American folk song that may have originated with slaves who worked on riverboats plying the Arkansas River. Thomas also knew dozens of other songs—folk songs, minstrel tunes, religious numbers—that he had heard blacks and whites sing while growing up. In 1927 he recorded nine of these songs for Victor Records in Dallas; among them was “Bull Doze Blues,” which would eventually become one of the best-known country blues recordings ever made

The Legacy

The Anthology of American Folk Music is a six-album compilation release of American folk music, compiled by Harry Smith and originally released on August 1951. The Anthology was commercially very successful and influential. It is considered one of the most important releases in the history of American Folk Music.

The influence on American music

The Anthology of American Folk Music is a six-album compilation released in 1952 by Folkways Records, subdivision of Columbia Records. The album had a profound and lasting influence on the development of American folk music in the 20th century, particularly on the American folk revival of the 1940s and 1950s. The Anthology was compiled by Harry Smith from his personal collection of 78 rpm records.

The Anthology consists of eighty-four songs by seventy-two different artists recorded between 1927 and 1932. TheGenesis of the Anthology occurred during one restless summer night in 1948, when a young record collector named Harry Smith sat up late, flipping through his collection of old 78 rpm records, making mixtapes for friends. These “mixtapes” would eventually become The Anthology of American Folk Music.

The Anthology has been influential in shaping the canon of American folk music and launching the careers of several important folk musicians, including Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, and Odetta. In 1998, the U.S. National Recording Registry honored The Anthology by adding it to the National Recording Registry at the Library of Congress.

The influence on popular culture

The Anthology of American Folk Music exerted a profound influence on the folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s, inspiring many young musicians such as Bob Dylan, Jerry Garcia, Joan Baez, and others to start performing traditional folk songs. The Anthology also had a significant impact on the development of the American musicologist Harry Smith, who compiled the set while working at the Gotham Book Mart in New York City. In 1952, Smith was an impoverished Thomaston, Connecticut-based painter who supplemented his income by reselling used 78 rpm records from local thrift shops. He developed an interest in avant-garde and experimental music, which he pursued by buying obscure jazz and blues records by artists such as Jelly Roll Morton and Blind Lemon Jefferson.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the Anthology of American Folk Music is an essential part of any music lover’s collection. Not only does it contain some of the finest recordings of traditional American music, but it also provides an important historical document of a bygone era. If you’re looking for a taste of the real America, this is the perfect place to start.