V.A. - Anthology Of American Folk Music Edited by Harry Smith (@256) (a selection of tracks)

During the 13th Athens International Film Festival that ends today, Athenians had the opportunity to watch "Control", "The Future Is Unwritten" and "Coffy". For all three movies, you can find respective posts in this blog (here, here and here).
Another very interesting movie that was screened (in a half empty theatre sadly) in the Festival, for which I feel obliged to have an upload was "The Old, Weird America: Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music". The compilation to which the documentary refers is simply a cornerstone release with a definite influence in country, folk, blues, rock'n'roll since. Countless artists have drawn inspiration from this collection of songs; Seeger, Dylan, Baez, Fahey, Garcia, Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul & Mary are some of those. To make it even clearer to the rock orientated music fans, this compilation is as fundamental as Lenny Kaye's Nuggets is to rock music.
As for Harry Smith who compiled it and the movie itself, we read Nathan Southern's article from allmovie:
"The American folk music revival of the 1950s and '60s is a well-known and laboriously discussed historical phenomenon, yet few realize that one man virtually prompted that genre explosion all by himself. Throughout the 1930s and '40s, music aficionado Harry Smith collected untold numbers of folk recordings on 78s, and assembled one of the most massive private libraries of its kind in recent history. In fact, Smith's reputation as a collector spread across the country and reached the preservationists at the Folkways label, who convinced Smith to let them compile and mass-issue a best-of compilation from his library. (...)In the film The Old Weird America: Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music, documentarist Rani Singh — who worked as Smith's personal assistant, from 1989 until his death in 1991 — chronicles the pioneer, his life story, and his little-known accomplishments. The film also features extracts from a concert in which contemporary artists including Nick Cave, Elvis Costello, and Beth Orton interpret old folk ballads from Smith's collection. Hal Wilner (Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man) staged the performance segments."
I deliberately didn't upload the whole thing in order to urge you to get it and discover the power of each track through the brilliant booklets with lyrics, info, drawings, references etc. The songs contained in the following two uploads were equally chosen from the three categories to which this compilation is divided; Ballads (cds A&B), Social Music (cds C&D) and Songs (cds E&F), while the number before the artist and title of each track follows the numbering of the compilation.
Tracklisting:
1st Upload
Ballads:
cdA
A01 Dick Justice - Henry Lee
A03 Clarence Ashley - The House Carpenter
A06 Buell Kazee - The Butcher's Boy (The Railroad Boy)
A07 Buell Kazee - The Wagoner's Lad (Loving Nancy)
A11 Buster Carter & Preston Young - A Lazy Farmer Boy
A12 Carolina Tar Heels - Peg And Awl
A13 G. B. Grayson - Ommie Wise
cdB
B17 Carter Family - John Hardy Was A Desperate Little Man
B19 Frank Hutchison - Stackalee
B20 Charlei Poole with the North Carolina Ramblers - White House Blues
B21 Mississippi John Hurt - Frankie
B22 William and Versey Smith - When That Great Ship Went Down
B25 Bently Boys - Down On Penny's Farm
Social Music:
cdC
C36 Jim Jackson - Old Dog Blue
C38 Joseph Falcon - Arcadian One Step
C39 Breaux Freres - Home Sweet Home
C41 Frank Cloutier and Victoria Cafe Orchestra - Moonshiner's Cance (part 1)
2nd Upload
(Social Music cont.)
cdD
D45 Alabama Sacred Harp Singers - Present Joys
D49 Elders McIntorsh and Edwards - Since I Laid My Burden Down
D52 Blind Willie Johnson - John The Revelator
D56 Rev. D.C. Rice and his Sanctified Congregation - I'm In The Battlefield For My Lord
Songs:
cdE
E57 Clarence Ashley - The Coo Coo Bird
E58 Buell Kazee - East Virginia
E59 Cannon's Jug Stompers - Minglewood Blues
E61 Richard (Rabbit) Brown - James Alley Blues
E62 Dock Boggs - Sugar Baby
E63 Bascom Lamar Lunsford - I Wish I Was A Mole In The Ground
E64 Mr and Mrs. Ernest V. Stoneman - The Mountaineer's Courtship
E67 Carter Family - Single Girl, Married Girl
E68 Clemo Breaux and Joseph Falcon - Le Vieux Soulard Et Sa Femme (The Old Drunkard And His Wife)
cdF
F76 Blind Lemon Jefferson - See That My Grave Is Kept Clean
F79 Uncle Dave Macon - Buddy Won't You Roll Down The Line
F80 Mississippi John Hurt - Spike Driver Blues
F84 Henry Thomas - Fishing Blues

download link: here

album review link: here

P.S. For those interested in this sound, dig also in the superb blog eldiablotuntun.