I had a question or two for folks who are a little (or a lot) older than me.
I just discovered Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music about a half year ago and (at the risk of sounding melodramatic) it's really changed my world -- at least as far as music goes. I used to think guys like Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters were the old, old foundations, the roots, but this stuff -- God, it's like listening to the soil sing. I mean not only that the recordings are 70 some odd years old but they echo with all the generations of people who sang those songs before. A choir of ghosts.
Anyway, what I was curious about was (at least in part) what the sound quality of the original LPs was like. The CD version has, from what I've read in the liner notes, been digitally cleaned up quite a bit. And sometimes it's pretty impressive -- it's hard to believe the stuff was recorded in the before the Depression. For those of you who were listening to the LPs in the 50's, what was your impression of the sound of those recordings? Was it difficult to make out the lyrics? The instrumental parts? (I've heard stories of Jerry Garcia listening to John Hurt's pieces at half speed for hours on end trying to work out the picking.) Did you get into friendly arguments with your fellow folkies about deciphering lyrics? Chord changes? Interpretations of the songs?
Anyway, the little thread that's been running about the figuring out the lyrics to "Henry Lee" has got me to thinking about this stuff, and I guess I'm trying to get a little better sense of what that scene was like. Any thoughts or reminiscences would be nice to hear.
Bryant
sj