I saw on Ovation TV a wonderful film about Harry Smith. I had heard of Harry and his collection of Folk music.
"The Anthology of American Folk Music is a compilation of eighty-four folk and country music recordings that were released as 78 rpm records in the 1920s and 1930s. The compilation was originally released in 1952 as a collection of six LPs. The collection is famous due to its role as a touchstone for the US folk music revival in the 1950s and 1960s. The anthology was compiled in 1952 by Harry Smith, a bohemian who lived in Berkeley, California in the late 1940s and 1950s." Link
But really never knew of Harry Smith's accomplishments.
"Harry Smith was an artist whose activities and interests put him at the center of the mid twentieth-century American avant-garde. Although best known as a filmmaker and musicologist, he frequently described himself as a painter, and his varied projects called on his skills as an anthropologist, linguist, and translator. He had a lifelong interest in the occult and esoteric fields of knowledge, leading him to speak of his art in alchemical and cosmological terms." Link
Now you can visit the world of Harry Smith through the The Harry Smith Project: The Anthology Of American Folk Music Revisited (2 CD/2 DVD BOX SET)
"Spread across two CDs and a pair of DVD's are a rich slate of performances captured in Los Angeles, New York, and London in 1999 and 2001, as well as documentary material about Smith's own pioneering efforts that helped inspire them. Beck and Lou Reed spin spare, harrowing takes on blues godfathers Robert Johnson and Blind Lemon Jefferson, respectively, while Elvis Costello, Wilco, Richard Thompson, Steve Earle, Van Dyke Parks, the McGarrigles, and others offer up covers characterized by varying degrees of reverence." Amazon
Richard Thomas: "Coco Bird" from Harry Smith Project
Harry Smith recieves an Emmy
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