The Harry Smith B-Sides: What the curator left behind.....

A new collection offers further inquiries into folk music of the 1920s and '30s.

            If you want to encounter the “soul” of America – that much discussed, possibly mythical idea that’s become a leitmotif of the 2020 presidential  campaign – listen to the songs its people sang to each other back when the country was younger. When the act of singing, and playing instruments, was more a social endeavor than a business.

            What you hear in these early marvels of audio recording is earnest and unfiltered expression – ordinary folks sharing songs for posterity, and doing it with unguarded joy. Some of this music had been handed down in families for generations, shared at reunions and holidays. Simple folk songs. The blues. Narratives about heroes and villains, births and deaths and the pursuit (and subsequent enjoyment of and the inevitable miseries caused by) bootleg whiskey.  

            Nowadays, there are multiple archives of this stuff – including scholarly databases and a raft of commercial releases focused on individual genres. Still, one of the most influential was released in 1952 on 6 Folkways LPs, as the Anthology of American Folk Music. Curated by the anthropologist, experimental filmmaker and avid record collector Harry Smith, the Anthology focused on a narrow sliver of activity – recordings made between 1926 and 1933, so spanning the period before and during the Great Depression. But it covered a wide stylistic range: the Anthology featured some bluesmen who’d not been properly appreciated – Mississippi John Hurt, for one – and examples of accordion-fueled dance music from the bayou regions of Louisiana that few urban dwellers had ever heard.

   Smith’s work, culled from commercially available 78-RPM releases, has been credited with introducing Americans to distinctly quirky aspects of the American soul, not to mention woefully under-documented aspects of the country’s heritage. Subdivided into “Ballads,” “Social Music” and “Songs,” the Anthology championed wily jug bands alongside bluesmen, and Sacred Harp singers next to country dynasties like the Carter Family. Folk songwriters consider it a foundational document.  

            Now there’s more from that well. The carefully annotated The Harry Smith B-Sides gathers the songs Smith didn’t select for his Anthology – the tracks on the flip side of the original vinyl sources. The new set mirrors Smith’s sequence; its extensive documentation offers clues about his choices and his thinking, offering an unusual glimpse into the curator mindset. What did Smith hear as essential? What could, given very real pre-digital space considerations, be left behind? For example, how many songs did the Anthology need on the topic of President William McKinley’s assassination?  The Anthology contains Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers’ fitful and amazing “White House Blues;” the B-Sides include Ernest and Hattie Stoneman’s heavier “The Road to Washington.”

            There are flat-out stunning moments here – Frank Hutchinson’s swerving harmonica instrumental version of  “Stackalee,” the Carter Family’s clippety-clopping “God Gave Noah the Rainbow Sign,” Furry Lewis’ rambling blues ode “Kassie Jones,” and Joseph Falcon & Cleoma Breaux’ transfixing “Fe Fe Ponchaux.” That last one dwells at the headwaters of a century of cajun/creole exploration that’s still going on today.  

            It should be noted that in the wake of widespread protests about systemic racism and Black Lives Matter that erupted across America this summer, the team that assembled this set took the unusual step of cutting three tracks for offensive subject matter after the book had been printed.

            Some of Smith’s decisions make musical sense instantly. Sister Mary Nelson, a gospel singer based in Memphis, had one of those untamed voices too intense for most microphones. Alongside a small choir of voices, she’s heard to great effect on “Judgement” (from the Anthology) as she chides those in the congregation she considers non-believers. The B-side entry, “The Royal Telephone,” revisits a common trope about talking to the higher power, with Nelson yowling and exclaiming in a “seized by the spirit” way that most students of American music probably only need to hear once.

             That’s a real consideration about The B-Sides: The material provides crazy great history lessons, but as music it’s a touch less engaging than what Smith selected for his original Anthology. He made good calls in most cases. Even as it vastly expands our understanding of what he collected and sorted through, the B-Sides offer slightly fewer astonishments. Still, these stirring and resolute voices act as a kind of high-speed portal into the pre-TikTok days of unscripted performance. These are not slick entertainers. They are voices of conviction whose work endures and remains compelling because of the intensity of their fervor, not the polish of the presentation. Anytime you need a shot of something fiery, something genuine, or something grounded, they’re here. In unvarnished glory.

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