\n“Hm.” I remember thinking. “Need to provide entrée to the collectors<\/b> who found, preserved, annotated, packaged, released, and loved this music. And to the venues and mass media outlets that brought it to broader publics…” and the more I look into the background, the more stuff I find to explore and include, so more searches get done, more stuff gets ordered and read and heard. Case in point:<\/p>\n
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Just flew in through the transom: The Harry Smith B-Sides<\/a> (“the flip side of 78-rpm records that Harry Smith included on the Anthology of American Folk Music”). <\/p>\n Who needs this? Certainly the music-obsessed, those who have grown up with the Anthology<\/a> (1952, reissued on CDs 2007<\/a>… and download !!liner notes!!<\/a>) and its sequelæ Anthology Of American Folk Music Volume 4<\/a> (Revenant Records 2000) and The Harry Smith Project: The Anthology Of American Folk Music Revisited<\/a> (2006), and the lucky few who followed gadaya’s labor of love MY OLD WEIRD AMERICA An exploration of Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music<\/a> blog when it was alive for downloads of the Variations.<\/p>\n \nThe B-Sides are fully as revelatory as the 84 cuts on the original Anthology: <\/p>\n a mirror image of the Anthology… a way to hear the complete statement of each 78RPM disc… as they were originally released in the 1920s and 1930s…<\/p>\n Most people interested by the Smith Anthology will agree that it stands as an esoteric beacon outside the whole dysfunctional culture system<\/b>. Just like when it was first issued in 1952, you still won’t hear the music of the Smith Anthology on the radio, on TV or on the front pages of the internet… <\/p>\n \nBy releasing his Anthology to the audience of Folkways Records, Harry Smith dropped an extraordinary rural working class culture bomb on a New York City world of artists, bohemians, radicals, and city musicians… (Eli Smith, B-Sides liner notes)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \nA New York Times story on the B-Sides: How to Handle the Hate in America\u2019s Musical Heritage<\/a><\/p>\n \n \nThe 1927 Bristol recording sessions<\/a> (the Big Bang<\/a> of country music) captured 76 songs, recorded by 19 performers or performing groups, including the Carter Family.
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