THE KIOWA PEYOTE MEETING ~

 

        Recorded & Edited by Harry Smith

        Anadarko, Oklahoma

PETER STAMPFEL SINGS TO HARRY SMITH ~

 

C O S M I C    S C H O L A R

WORLD RECEIVERS ~

 

R E A D      M E

The above is a review of the exhibit

concentrating on Georgiana Houghton

Hilma Af Klint and Emma Kunz,

whose names also make it onto

the front cover of the book —

yet, strangely, Harry Smith

and John Whitney and

James Whitney are

also showcased in the book

with little headline benefit.

The guys get to see how neglect feels.

(Harry knows)

It remains an excellent catalogue.

____________________________

Hirmer, 2018

BENTLY BOYS ~

RE-READING ALAN LOMAX ~

FARMS GOT SO POOR "IT TOOK TWO ROOSTERS TO CROW ONCE" 

From the song 'My Last Ole Dollar' a classic hard-luck story from North Carolina comes collected by Lee Morris (MS Federal Writers Project):

"Hard luck just runs in my family. I mind the time I couldn't even buy a hen and a chicken. Decided to kill myself. Scared my old pistol wouldn't work, so I bought me a gallon of kerosene, a piece of rope, bottle of rat poison. Rowed down to the lake to where some trees hung way out over the water.

So I stood up and tied the rope round my neck. Bid farewell to this hard old world. Poured kerosene all over myself, et that rat poison and set my clothes afire, figgerin' I'd shoot myself just when I kicked the bat out from under my feet.

But that durn pistol shot the rope in two. I fell in the river and put out the fire on my clothes and got to stranglin' and chokin' that water, and throwed up the poison. Well from that I figgered my luck was changin', so I swum out and put up for the legislature. Durned if I didn't get elected, too!"

(and I believe we saw some of his younger relatives in the U.S. House of Representatives during the impeachment hearings for Donald J. Trump; in fact, I know we did.)

No book I went back to read during the Covid-19 pandemic

treated me better and settled down around my shins finer than

Alan Lomax's The Folk Songs of North America. My copy

is a hardcover still in its decorative dustjacket and the boards

of the book are layered in old moss and smell like I've pulled out

a slate shingle from an old pile instead of a book. Lord knows where

I ever found the book — I first read Folk Song USA (John and Alan Lomax, the power house

father and son team of traveling sleuths and field recorders)

in puffy softcover while in high school and it was just too loaded for bear at the time and age

when listening to Bob Dylan, Richard Farina, Phil Ochs, Dave Van Ronk, 

Tom Paxton, Hedy West, Joan Baez who had obviously worked like miners

through this book and the North America bible. 

Since Lomax believed the folk song was aligned with

fantasy and the skill of the unconscious where the American dream and

struggle is truly revealed. In the above players mentioned, Dylan's masterpiece

 "Highway 61" (1965) may be our best example. The maestro has readily

admitted what he pulled out of the guts of this book and the Lomax (and Harry Smith)

jukebox, and we haven't even touched down into the rich gardens this book

gives (there are 300 songs) through original work by the likes of Merle Travis,

Blind Willie Johnson, Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger, A.L. Lloyd, Jean Ritchie,

Pete Seeger, Jimmy Driftwood, prison camp work songs — long before Howard Zinn, 

this book is the people's history of the United States.

[ BA ]

ED SANDERS TALKS HARRY SMITH ~

 

Harry Smith's

"Heaven & Earth Magic"

MORE HARRY SMITH ~

 

H A R R Y     S M I T H

ED SANDERS VISITS ~

RAREST 78 RPM RECORDS ~

Joe Bussard

Scribner 2014

Hands down, this book is a delight to read, so don't hesitate. The author goes to almost every extreme

imaginable, starting with putting up with the wackos of the collecting world, something I know a little about. But in this case, a last of a breed — 78 record hustlers — lovers and devotees. We find the author even taking scuba lessons, renting gear, and diving into some of the murky old rivers of Wisconsin in the region of defunct record pressing plants, like Paramount's in Grafton, Wisconsin, on a brainstorm that she might even find a box of old records tossed away long ago as worthless. Out of the rivers she visits some of the basement haven boarders of terrific record collections, like Joe Bussard (above) priceless in their hands; and what's a book on the subject without a lengthy back history on Harry Smith, compiler and genius of The Anthology of American Folk Music, the musician's

 Leaves of Grass.

[ BA]