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Anthology Of American Folk Music (Edited By Harry Smith) [Box set, Original recording remastered, Import]

Various Audio CD
5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
Price: £55.24 & this item Delivered FREE in the UK with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
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Frequently Bought Together

Anthology Of American Folk Music (Edited By Harry Smith) + Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music Vol.4 + The Little Red Box of Protest Songs (4CD)
Price For All Three: £80.30

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Product details

  • Audio CD (21 Oct 2009)
  • Number of Discs: 6
  • Format: Box set, Original recording remastered, Import
  • Label: Smithsonian Folkways
  • ASIN: B000001DJU
  • Other Editions: Audio CD
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 32,229 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

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Product Description

6CD ..Folk Music, History Of Folk, Blues, Cajun, Gospel

Customer Reviews

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
72 of 77 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Back to the Future 27 Dec 2003
By P. Bryant VINE™ VOICE
Format:Audio CD
Some of the songs in this massive collection make you shake your head with wonder - surely this one can't have been released as a record for people to buy in a record shop? Imagine the conversation from 1929 - "Excuse me, have you got I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground, by Bascom Lamar Lunsford?" "Why certainly young sir, it's right here, that'll be 30 cents!" But apparently ALL of these songs, ballads, fiddle tunes, gospel shouts, shape-note choirs, blues, string bands, cajuns and hot sermonising were indeed issued on 78s, and the public did buy them. Well - the rural folk in the Southern states, not those sophisticates in New York.
A guy called Ralph Peer found out by accident that white people down in the South would buy records by Uncle Bunt Stephens in their hundreds and thousands - he couldn't understand it either, being a city slicker himself, but he knew a good thing when he saw it. So what became the country music industry started up. Then Ralph deduced that the black folks would also like the opportunity to buy their own kind of music, and so began to issue country blues. Between 1925 and 1933 an amazing kaleidoscope of country, folk, blues and jazz was released and some of it's right here in this big box.
And at least half is just as enjoyable now as it was then - although you probably need to be a bit of a folkie or a blues fan to really love it. Or maybe you went to see O Brother Where Art Thou and got the brilliant soundtrack album - well, Harry Smith's Anthology is where you find the original recordings of that kind of stuff. It's often raw and harsh, but it cuts through. It has power and magic, and a crazy happiness to it. This music is not show business.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Old weird America 6 Jan 2011
By Richard
Format:Audio CD
The folk music of America at first appealed to rural audiences and only entered the mainstream when it was watered down with hit singles for the Weavers.Later in the decade the college campus and the Hootenannys would enter with Bob Dylan as a sort of catalyst.
What's on here is at first hearing far removed from Blowin' in the Wind or the New Christy Minstrels but its where it began.
The Harry Smith Anthology was only known about to those who collected the Elektra and Vanguard labels and it would be years before the music mainstream acknowledged its existence and supposed importance.
But there's no doubt that Dylan took a lotta material from this collection and even passed some of it off as his own work
Few titles here would have figured on a 50s hit parade but in the next decade with more awareness of the history of blues and country at least the Carter Family would figure prominently especially aftr the Johnny Cash connection and songs would turn up on albums during the Urban Folk Revival as the artists involved would actually seek them out eg Walk right in-which the Rooftop Singers discovered via Gus Cannon 78s.Eventually the growing interest in Roots Music would draw more attention to what was at one time a specialist field
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40 of 43 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Wierd Old America 24 Jan 2001
Format:Audio CD
If you thought that Bob Dylan's sound was new way back in the early 60's (as I did) then think again. That sound goes back much further to an even wierder time. Harry Smith pretty much bootlegged this cross section of American music ranging from blues through jug and gospel to early Dylan style harmonica howls from recordings on obscure labels, which begs the question, how did this very strange music attract a commercial audience in the USA of the 20's and thirties? The roots of all modern music are here and this stuff certainly did influence a generation or two or three. It's a good game spotting who subsequently ripped off what. To own it is to love it. Peg and Awl defies description, but Smith has a go at it, as he does all of these tunes with wonderfully concise tongue in cheek summaries.
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