Keeping with my USA chauvanism, Harry Smith is not the most significant Folkie, but perhaps one of the most overlooked. I recently purchased his "Anthology Of American Folk Music." I was stunned by how many songs I knew (but done by someone else).

I was wafted back to the early '60's, when the "folk scare' had just begun (for me, at least). Harry collected many artists who were then "rediscovered" by others and then recorded. He helped capture the period that followed Lomax and inspired many to save music whose practitioners were nearing the end of their years.

I think this thread speaks clearly that it takes many hands to achieve the task of preserving a music that is often unrecorded, unwritten, and otherwise undocumented. As for Lomax and his faults, there are not many angels out there. Most of us toads have warts, but we keep croaking anyway, and out croaking is important.

Roger in Baltimore