Hallock Hill

THE OLD WEIRD AMERICA: An Exploration of Harry Smith’s Anthology

Since it was released in 1952, Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music has continually inspired reverence and debate. It has attained its own crusty mythology, though Smith recognized it as a starting point, not the last word on the subject. One of the original crate diggers, Smith assembled his “Ballads,” “Social Music” and “Songs” with care and a healthy dose of “mystical sequencing.” No student of modern, meaning recorded, music can avoid the long shadow cast by Smith’s collection of early 78s, and no one should. It leads to a broader world of music than can be imagined.

It has inspired books, bands, bootlegs, commercial releases, t-shirts, fashion, graphic design and religious fervor. And now another great blog. Greil Marcus’s book The Old Weird America gives this blog, now about eight months old, its name. What its creator does with mp3s and videos shows the power of Smith’s anthology to inspire the search for more, and it provides an incredible array of downloads based on the track list of the anthology. It’s owner and operator states the mission:

With this blog, i want to use the Folkways Anthology as a roadmap to explore american folk music and maybe other countries traditions along the way. I’ ll use texts, images, music and videos gathered from my personal collection and from the net to make this work-in-progress enjoyable and educationnal the best i can. Any suggestions, additional informations, comments and critics are welcome…

I’ll use Harry Smith’s numerical order starting from the number one performance in the Anthology, “Henry Lee” by Dick Justice and end (someday…) with “Fishing Blues” by Henry Thomas. Each time, i’ll try to collect interesting links on the artist and on the song performed. There will be other performances by the artist and different versions of the selected song that i have access to. You’re invited to download and enjoy the selections but please, as much as you can, try to support the effort of the small records companies that make this old 78 rpm records available and in print.

A little poking around on the site, and you will find that this is put together by a 34-year-old Frenchman, Gael David Hayat, who says he is an amateur musician (viewable as Gadaya on YouTube). And so I will say, jump, don’t walk, to The Old Weird America and dive into this world.

Hayat also creates the Times Ain’t Like They Used to Be blog of roots and traditional music from all over the world and The World’s Jukebox of vintage recordings from all over the world. This is one busy guy.

Special thanks to my friend Adam Frost for bringing Hayat’s The Old Weird America to my attention.