The Strange power of Harry Smith

Subject: The Strange power of Harry Smith
From: GUEST,djh
Date: 26 Apr 01 - 04:28 PM

Has anyone noticed the recent upswing of interest in traditional American music started with the first official release of Harry Smith's Anthology of American folk Music?
When the collection first came out as a bootleg Harry stated his goal was to shake the white picket fences of America. He even thought it was of paramount importance that the songs follow each other in a very specific fashion some alchemical pattern he devised.The crazy bastard did it. The collection was the center piece of the great folk scare of the 60's.The larger more debatable repercussions took place in the role that the folk scare played in the civil rights movement.
Swing ahead to '97 where corporate American decides what most people think and know and think they know....here comes Harry again with that ragged odd collection of songs. 3 years later more and more traditional style albums are being recorded and are beginning to approach the mainstream audience with the success of "Oh Brother, where art thou" and I read yesterday that another film "song catcher" with another soundtrack chaulk full of the good stuff is on the way.
Incidentally, 2 other folks from Harry's day who thought they could change the world with the power of the old music are getting more attention these days too- Alan Lomax with the bottomless Rounder series and Woody Guthrie is more popular now than he has been anytime since the folk scare. Folk music is a thirty year locust, right? Anyone else smell a revival?

Subject: RE: The Strange power of Harry Smith
From: Mrrzy
Date: 27 Apr 01 - 01:51 PM

Would be nice...

Subject: RE: The Strange power of Harry Smith
From: mousethief
Date: 27 Apr 01 - 01:54 PM

Didn't the last revival result in the current flap about "what is folk music?" Can we stand any more bifurcation?

Alex

Subject: RE: The Strange power of Harry Smith
From: Jim Krause
Date: 27 Apr 01 - 02:05 PM

Oh, Lord and may a Renaissance be on the horizon for folk music, whatever it may be.

Another revival or renaissance may not be so farfetched. One night after band rehearsal, we decided to play a few tunes outside the local brewery just for grins and jollies. Who should walk up but this twenty something college kid with an open-back banjo wanting some tips and pointers about clawhammer playing! Us ol' farts just grinned from ear to ear to think that this kid was serious.

Then there were other times after we'd had a few beers and instead of being tossed out like a bunch of drunken, rowdy geezers living the Stringband Life, we were actually requested to perform, with beer on the house. For the Catters in the UK, this sort of thing usually isn't done anymore here in the Midlands of the US. They usually just turn up the jukebox even louder and hope you go away before they have to shut off your supply.
Jim

Subject: RE: The Strange power of Harry Smith
From: M.Ted
Date: 27 Apr 01 - 04:04 PM

The pieces all seem to be there--there are definitely a lot of kids out there who love the authentic, raw, and uncommercial, almost as a matter of principle, and there is also a great boom in acoustic guitar and other instrument sales--I hope that the film exposure plus the re-release of a lot of traditional stuff will create more of a taste for the traditional songs and the traditional music styles

Subject: RE: The Strange power of Harry Smith
From: GUEST,#1
Date: 27 Apr 01 - 04:25 PM

A new revival? Let's hope not. The last one just about killed folk music, and Irish traditonal singers and players are still worrying about whether they can survive 'Celtic" music.

Subject: RE: The Strange power of Harry Smith
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 27 Apr 01 - 08:53 PM

Pop is pop. Folk is folk. Don't confuse 'em

Subject: RE: The Strange power of Harry Smith
From: John Hardly
Date: 27 Apr 01 - 09:00 PM

And sometimes Folk gets POPular

Subject: RE: The Strange power of Harry Smith
From: Naemanson
Date: 27 Apr 01 - 10:24 PM

All I know is that I keep seeing young people with acoustic instruments following old folks around, watching their hands and trying out the music. As long as that keeps up I am all for it!

Subject: RE: The Strange power of Harry Smith
From: Art Thieme
Date: 28 Apr 01 - 12:07 AM

The more things change, the more they get different.

But real folksongs will stay there waiting to be noticed -- once more -- and then again. The green scum covered the pond but when the winds blew and made a patch of open H2O, one could look downward, find and dredge up those lost gems we thought had died with Moe Asch and other mentors.
And Harry Jackson gets rediscovered---gets found by a whole other generation.

The folksongs are not good because they are old. They're old because they are good -- and they have such fine tales to tell us !

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: The Strange power of Harry Smith
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 28 Apr 01 - 12:58 AM

I wish Harry Jackson WOULD get re-discovered, Art.

Rick

Subject: RE: The Strange power of Harry Smith
From: mousethief
Date: 28 Apr 01 - 01:22 AM

They're not old because they're good. They're old AND REMEMBERED because they're good. Plenty of bad old songs are long forgotten.

Alex

Subject: RE: The Strange power of Harry Smith
From:
Date: 28 Apr 01 - 07:43 AM

Well put Art. It is interesting that some of the bad songs from Smith's collection never do get "revived". (Like the one about the flower garden, with a Hawaiin guitar!).

When I was young (the first time around for the "folk revival") it was agreed that volume 2 of the "Anthology" was the "bad" one, not worth listening to. Has anyone besides me discovered all the treasures in that volume?

Murray

Subject: RE: The Strange power of Harry Smith
From: RichM
Date: 28 Apr 01 - 01:23 PM

Seems to me, after playing and listening to "Folk" music for the last 50 odd years, that the only safe definition of Folk music is what is long dead.
That's ok.
I've had my fill of dealing with music purists. I play what I want to now--folk, irish, Québecois, appalachian, bluegrass, new rock, old rock, rockabily, newage, newfolk,what have you.
I don't give a shit about labels, or about definitions anymore.

Rich McCarthy

Subject: RE: The Strange power of Harry Smith
From: GUEST,#1
Date: 28 Apr 01 - 02:20 PM

Destroy all definitions, so we can start over with a crude form of sign language at the Tower of Babel.

Subject: RE: The Strange power of Harry Smith
From: GUEST,Pete Peterson
Date: 29 Apr 01 - 01:56 AM

Sorry for the thread creep but who is Harry jackson and how can I find out more about him?

Subject: RE: The Strange power of Harry Smith
From: Stewie
Date: 29 Apr 01 - 03:52 AM

Pete, it is not 'thread creep', but I dunno either. He may be the Harry Jackson who recorded a two-disc a cappella album for Folkways: 'The Cowboy: His Songs, Ballads and Brag Talk'.

Art and Rick, is that the bloke you are referring to? If so, and if he is half as good as Slim Critchlow, I for one would like to hear his songs.

--Stewie.

Subject: RE: The Strange power of Harry Smith
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 29 Apr 01 - 10:45 AM

I was making a small joke for Art, as I thought he meant "Harry Smith" when he said "Harry Jackson"....and yup, he was a Cowboy singer.

Rick

Subject: RE: The Strange power of Harry Smith
From: Art Thieme
Date: 29 Apr 01 - 12:34 PM

Rick,

You are right. Sorry, I did mean Harry Smith when I said Harry Jackson. Thanks for knowing what I meant.I must've made a Thorpian slip (if ya know what I mean).

I'll send one of my 1998 CDs to the first one who knows what a Thorpian slip might refer to.

Pete and Stewie,
Yes the Folkways double LP box of cowboy songs that Harry Jackson did (THE COWBOY---His Songs And Brag Talk--FH 5723) was one of my favorite albums of cowboy material. The records were ripped off from me quite a long time back but I held onto the voluminous liner note booket because it was my practice to put those fascinating and scholarly notes into a 3-ring binder. I'm lookin' at 'em right now as we speak. Jackson did many of the well-worn cowboy trad. songs and a few lesser known gems like "Clayton Boone"---a cowboy version of "Blackjack Davey" that others like Bob Bovee and Ed Trickett have done so beautifully in latter days. There are also grand cowboy boasting songs that illustrate pretty graphically the art of cowboy tall tale telling. I used some of Jackson's works in a Liars Class I taught at Augusta (Elkins, West Virginia) in 1995.

One of several other interesting items on the record was "Old Blue Was A Gray Horse"---a version of "Stewball". Jackson learned it from an Afro-American horse groom on a farm for broke down race horses near DeKalb, Illinois. Strange to say, I know where that farm was. I spent my youth going to DeKalb when my aunt & uncle lived there in the 1940s. The farm, with it's distinctive sprawling greenery and white barns and fences, was on the way to the swimming pool on the highway to Sycamore. Now there's no farmland at all between the two towns.

HARRY JACKSON was nothing like Slim Critchlow other than they both did cowboy songs. Slim Critchlow was to Harry Jackson what Jean Richie was to Aunt Molly Jackson (no relation).

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: The Strange power of Harry Smith
From: Peter T.
Date: 29 Apr 01 - 01:22 PM

Can't figure out a thread title that would get you people talking about these obscure figures. Maybe: "Who Should Be Rediscovered?". Well, give it a whirl.

yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: The Strange power of Harry Smith
From: Rick Fielding
Date: 29 Apr 01 - 02:09 PM

Ahh yes, the old "Thorpian Slip". Well of course Art is referring to former British Liberal Party Leader Jeremy Thorpe, who rather than respecting the ages old English Political tradition of being whipped, buggered, dressing in Mary Quant originals and keeping your boyfriends OUT of the public eye, commited the unforgiveable sin (or "slip") of having one of them murdered very publicly. Messed up his chance of being the next Mrs. Thatcher. Or was it that he was WEARING a slip, and LISTENING to Harry Jackson while dreaming of a wilder West?

Humble apologies.

Other than the Thorpe Posters, I don't get the reference, Art.

Rick

Subject: RE: The Strange power of Harry Smith
From: Stewie
Date: 29 Apr 01 - 06:25 PM

Thanks for that, Art. Last night, I found a few tracks of Harry Jackson in my collection - 'Little Joe the Wrangler's Little Sister Nell', 'The Strawberry Roan', 'Morning Grub Holler', 'Round-up Cook' and 'Some Cowboy Brag Talk'. They are on 'Cowboy Songs on Folkways' (CD SF 40043). Your Ritchie/Aunt Molly analogy for Critchlow/Jackson is spot on - totally different, but excellent. I did not expect them to be similar - my reference to Critchlow resulted from the fact that I discovered him only in the last couple of years and think his renditions of cowboy songs are splendid.

Cheers, Stewie.

Subject: RE: The Strange power of Harry Smith
From: GUEST,Roger the skiffler
Date: 30 Apr 01 - 10:35 AM

Rick,
The ex-boyfriend (alleged) was unhurt and had his day in the press, the dog it was that died.
Hence all the hoo-hah, you know what we Brits and our press are like where animals are concerned!
RtS

Subject: RE: The Strange power of Harry Smith
From: Songster Bob
Date: 30 Apr 01 - 01:32 PM

I'd have thought that Dwayne might have made a few Thorpian slips in his day, too.


As for the "new revival," we're in the midst of one right now. All that's lacking is the audience.

Bob C.

Subject: RE: The Strange power of Harry Smith
From: mousethief
Date: 30 Apr 01 - 02:07 PM

Given Smith's history, I'd say his "strange powder" was probably cocaine.

Alex

Subject: RE: The Strange power of Harry Smith
From: Art Thieme
Date: 30 Apr 01 - 06:44 PM

Rick, yer wrong. Sorry. By "Thorpian slip" I meant an allusion to cowboy material since the first book of cowboy songs ever isasued in the U.S. was put out in 1908 by N. Howard "JACK" THORP. That was 2 whole years before John Lomax's book of cowboy songs came out. Thorp's book is still available in paperback from Bison Books (University of Nebraska Press at Lincoln, Nebraska) Another pretty good book by Jack Thorp (as told to NeilMcCullough Clark) was PARDNER OF THE WIND. I think I saw that was also a Bison Book now. It was from Pardner Of The Wind that I got the some of what became the tale I called the "GREAT TURTLE DRIVE".

Art