In a way anthologist Harry Smith—a record collector among many other things—invented the mixtape with the Anthology. All 84 songs are commercial releases from 1926 to 1933, professional studio not field recordings. They come from Smith’s massive collection, and you get a sense of how important the sequencing is just by scanning the track listings. The Anthology has both broad themes—“Ballads,” “Social Music,” and “Songs” (whatever exactly they mean)—and obvious fine tuning within and across them. Several artists appear more than once, sometimes by pairs of songs together but more often scattered across the vast field of this sprawling set. Smith seems to be following the rules and aesthetics of the old mixtapers, thinking about the organization and sequencing and even cover art and liner notes at least as much as the music itself. It’s largely a lost art now, a neglected consideration. Burning to CDs and building and sharing playlists from streaming services offer some close approximation, of course—but choosing to listen on shuffle (as I typically do with playlists these days, and no one is burning me CDs anymore) undermines the main points of sequencing.
At the same time, the Anthology is just so big I have had a hard time for years getting my arms around it. I enjoy it when it happens to be on, usually at someone else’s place, but I rarely play it for myself, instantly flummoxed by my lack of a context for the whole thing or how it works together. Hailing it as the “old, weird America” is not enough help for me. There’s lots more where this came from that’s available now on streaming services, yet something unusual and distinct remains about the Anthology. What is it? I decided to rely on the convenience of the CD package and treat it as six separate albums in the way I approached listening to it. There’s a high degree of consistency across the whole thing (I understand some feel the “Social Music” sets are not up to the rest but that’s not entirely my experience). I should note upfront that I still don’t have my arms around it—I may never—but here are some thoughts on the songs and individual CDs.
1-A: Ballads
When I first started listening to the Anthology systematically this CD seemed almost the weakest, though eventually some of its songs started to grow on me—in fact, some are still sounding better every time I play it. The CD, the Anthology at large, opens with “Henry Lee” by Dick Justice, basically a murder ballad told from the point of view of a bird. Given how much thought anthologist Harry Smith gave to this project, all these details are no doubt significant. In fact, there are more murder or suicide songs here—Buell Kazee’s “The Butcher’s Boy,” G.B. Grayson’s “Ommie Wise.” I was a little surprised, listening closely, to realize what these songs are. I’m more used to the style of Nick Cave’s 1996 album Murder Ballads (bombastic and loud, not particularly recommended). But another point of consistency across most of this material is how gentle it is—gentle sawing and plucking, often (not always) singing gently with a twang. It confuses me, especially when the lyrics tell intense stories. The songs that most often jumped out at me early on this CD are ones I don’t like: Coley Jones’s comic “Drunkard’s Special” and the Carolina Tar Heels’ yowling “Peg and Awl.” Jones was a veteran of minstrel shows. The confusing lyrics of his song tell a story of a man coming home drunk at night and finding things rearranged, another mule in his stall, a head on his pillow. They suggest his wife’s infidelity, but they are also delusional and she always has an explanation, however absurd (the head on the pillow, for example, is a cabbage head). I didn’t understand any better than the drunkard, and felt some contact-drunk with him as we tried to take it in. “Peg and Awl” is just overdone on the vocals. The songs I came to like better took me some time to absorb—Justice’s “Henry Lee,” Clarence Ashley’s “The House Carpenter,” Bill and Belle Read’s “Old Lady and the Devil,” both of Kazee’s songs, “The Butcher’s Boy” and “The Wagoner’s Lad,” Grayson’s “Ommie Wise,” and Kelly Harrell’s “My Name Is John Johanna.” That reminds me, lots of names are named around here, starting with the first track, many as declarations of identity: Henry Lee, Willie Moore, Ommie Wise (betrayed by John Lewis), John Johanna. Last thought: I’ve never been much of one for a banjo, but I find the way they often play it here—gently—can work well.
1-B: Ballads
This CD is my favorite of the six, featuring lots of folk hits and luminaries: the Stagger Lee legend (“Stackalee” by Frank Hutchison), the Frankie and Johnny murder ballad (“Frankie” by Mississippi John Hurt, a favorite of mine since I first heard him years ago), the John Henry story (“Gonna Die With My Hammer in My Hand” by the Williamson Brothers and Curry, and note that later in the Anthology there’s a version of the story by Hurt), and the Casey Jones story (the two-part “Kassie Jones” by Furry Lewis, a lovely interlude). Kelly Harrell (“My Name Is John Johanna” on the first CD) returns with (My Name Is) “Charles Giteau” (“my name I’ll never deny”)—Giteau, the assassin of James Garfield. And this 1-B CD has not one but two songs by the Carter Family, another long-time favorite. It’s just winners all over the place here. The guitar playing is excellent throughout, with various fine pickers such as Hurt, Lewis, Maybelle Carter working the lower strings, and the so-called Masked Marvel (Charley Patton) on “Mississippi Boweavil Blues.” And all this still doesn’t get to my absolute favorites on the CD and probably the Anthology at large: “Down on Penny’s Farm” by the Bently Boys, which sounds modern somehow, perhaps due to its obvious influence on Bob Dylan’s “Maggie’s Farm.” The other big hit for me is the last song on the CD, “Got the Farm Land Blues” by the Carolina Tar Heels, who also appear on 1-A with “Peg and Awl,” a song I don’t much care for. But “Farm Land Blues” has a winning dry humor with a band that sounds like a flivver-trap machine, clanking and barely functional but holding together with string and glue and perfectly charming. The singer, out in the country trying the farm life, in one bad night has his chickens stolen, his corn stolen, and the tires right off his car stolen, when he attempts to drive over to the sheriff and report the incidents. Later a storm wipes him out entirely, which happens more than once on the Anthology. The singer ends up back in town. “Farm Land Blues” feels modern too—or at least of the ‘60s and ‘70s—with its hippie-like “back to the country” air, and, from there, back to town again because the farming life is not easy. “Hard luck!” It is as if foretelling the future of its own audience with great accuracy, plus the delivery is so deadpan it often hits as plain lol funny. Winners all around on this CD.
2-A: Social Music
I get the impression from liner notes and whatnot that the “Social Music” sets have the least regard of the three broad-based divisions in the Anthology, with “Ballads” and “Songs.” On the original release they could be bought separately as double-LP gatefold packages and apparently everyone bought “Social Music” last if they bought it at all. I guess I agree but remember that the Anthology in general has an exceedingly high floor. Also, I admit I don’t entirely understand the other two categories—isn’t one a subset of the other? The meaning of social music, by contrast, is much more clear. This half, this specific 2-A CD, is largely devoted to what might be called DOF (dance-oriented folk, compare DOR and EDM). The first eight tracks are mostly instrumentals and feature a good deal more fiddle, often the main instrument driving these often pleasant nod-along ditties. “Georgia Stomp” by Andrew and Jim Baxter features some dance calling, presumably square: “Now break loose and walk back,” “Now swing your partner,” etc. I count four tracks with dance references in the title: “Georgia Stomp,” “Indian War Whoop” by Hoyt Ming & His Pep-Steppers (“whoop” possibly more a type of song than dance), “Old Country Stomp” by Henry Thomas, and “Acadian One-Step” by Joseph Falcon. “Indian War Whoop” has a lot of wordless keening and crying and is close to a novelty, or maybe I’m distracted by the potential for racism. “Old Country Stomp,” track 8, has some singing to go with a wind instrument I’m going to call an ocarina (greetings to Canned Heat’s Al Wilson). The rest of the CD is something of a dumping ground. You can’t really dance to “Old Dog Blue” by Jim Jackson. It’s a sad story of a widower who loses his good dog—genuinely affecting, but I’m a sap for this kind of stuff with dogs and cats and horses. I don’t know how it’s not a song if not a ballad but apparently I’m missing something. That’s followed by a trio of songs that are a little more DOF which I would classify as zydeco, under Cajun influence. “Saut Crapaud” by Columbus Fruge and “Acadian One-Step” seem amenable enough to dancing, but “Home Sweet Home” by the Breaux Freres is more of a drunken night-ender harping on the old chestnut—a low point of the Anthology. “Newport Blues” by the Cincinnati Jug Band is lively DOF with a jug barely keeping up, and the slightly freakish “Moonshiner’s Dance Part One” by Frank Cloutier & the Victoria Café Orchestra is even more lively. I hear klezmer in it, I hear polka, a clarinet, a mandolin, and a trumpet all step up for blasts of good energy, the orchestra counts it off in unison “1 - 2 - 3 - 4.” I wish we got Part Two!
2-B: Social Music
The “social music” on this CD, for me the weakest of the Anthology, is on the order of religion, church and church-adjacent music, including gospel. Lots of familiar themes crop up—“Since I Laid My Burden Down” by the Elders McIntosh & Edwards’ Sanctified Singers, “He Got Better Things for You” by Memphis’s Sanctified Singers, “I saw the light!” in “Dry Bones” by Bascom Lamar Lunsford, so on so forth—which are then mixed around with stranger things. The first two tracks, “You Must Be Born Again” and “Oh Death Where Is Thy Sting,” both credited to the Rev. J.M. Gates, are very short and stark, moans edited down from longer sermon pieces. The next two, “Rocky Road” and “Present Joys” by the Alabama Sacred Harp Singers, are shape-note songs—music intended for congregational singing. They are imbued with joy but there is also something eerie and ghostly about them. Maybe that’s the Holy Ghost. My ongoing bad attitude about evangelical Christianity likely figures in to my general resistance to much of the music on this CD, which can tend toward the dreary for me. I find myself making fun of them, singing, for example, “He’s got better things to do” with “He Got Better Things for You,” or “bedtime,” speaking to my cats, for Sister Mary Nelson’s raw and bawling “Judgement”: “Better get ready for BEDTIME!” This CD is much more focused on vocals and singing, such as the oddball a cappella “This Song of Love” by the Middle Georgia Singing Conv. No. 1, with a clever arrangement and visions of doo wop in the future. “John the Revelator” memorably matches Blind Willie Johnson’s bullfrog vocal with Angeline Johnson’s more floating soprano lines—a weird one for sure, speaking of the old America. The best song here by my lights is another by the Carter Family, their third appearance in the Anthology. The Bible story “Little Moses” is all pro forma, while the greatest rewards are once again the lower strings of Maybelle Carter’s guitar, gently driving the music to intensity. “Dry Bones” has some nice banjo play (is that frailing?). The last two songs—“Fifty Miles of Elbow Room” by the Rev. F.W. McGee and “In the Battlefield for My Lord” by the Rev. D.C. Rice and His Sanctified Congregation—are more lively, starting off with similar musical figures. “Battlefield” has singers, piano, trumpet, trombone, bass, drums, and triangle. It serves up a pretty good time out there on the battlefield.
3-A: Songs
I’ve had a harder time getting a bead on this CD. It seems to be notably all over the place, with a kind of cross-hatching of artists who appear before and later: Buell Kazee, Dock Boggs, Bascom Lamar Lunsford, the Carter Family, Blind Lemon Jefferson. At least three songs are Cajun-sourced, maybe a couple are what could be called deep blues. Perhaps not surprisingly guitars and banjos are once again the most common instruments (for the first time since the “Ballads” 1-A and 1-B CDs), with occasional harmonica or jug. In some ways the hand of the obsessive sequencing anthologist Harry Smith may be felt most on the “Songs” CDs. One of the impressive points of the Anthology is how much of it is colorblind in effect—it’s hard to know with certainty which artists are Black and which are white without the sometimes scant photographic evidence. This CD includes two of the most written-about songs, at least in the liner notes pamphlet: “The Coo Coo Bird” by Clarence Ashley and “I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground” by Lunsford, previously seen witnessing the lights of heaven in “Dry Bones.” I love “The Coo Coo Bird” straight up, an irresistible singalong and one of the single best tracks on the Anthology (with “Down on Penny’s Farm” and “Got the Farm Land Blues”). I’m not as certain about “Mole,” where the metaphysical powers ascribed to it escape me. But I like it for its strangeness. Then there is the Stoneman Family (and/or Ernest and Hattie Stoneman) with a matched pair of comical songs, “Mountaineer’s Courtship” and “The Spanish Merchant’s Daughter.” The first is largely a dialogue between lovers plotting marriage with surprisingly candid turns: She sings, “Oh, how long you think you'll court me, you'll court me, you’ll court me? / Oh, how long you think you’ll court me, my dear old reckless boy?” He replies, “I expect I'll court you all night, all night, all night.” Eventually she discovers he has six children, one unnamed because it wouldn’t scan, but the wedding still seems to be on at song’s end. “Spanish Merchant’s Daughter” turns on advice from the Spanish merchant to his daughter to say “no sir” to men approaching her while he is away. But “no sir” is never a refusal in the song. Her would-be lover says, “Would you be in any way offended / If I walked and talked with you?” She replies, “No sir, no sir, no sir, no sir!” Hattie Stoneman’s piping vocals make these songs distinct and the interplay with Ernest reminds me a little of John Doe and Exene Cervenka. The Carter Family get still another song, “Single Girl, Married Girl.” All this Carter Family drove me back to my box set, where interestingly this song does not sound as strange as it does in the context of the Anthology. I’m not sure why that is. Maybe I’m starting to get the drift of the “old, weird America” thing.
3-B: Songs
The sixth and final CD of the Anthology opts for nearly half blues, as evidenced by the word appearing in titles of six of the 14 tracks—“Poor Boy Blues,” “Country Blues,” etc. With a photo of Harry Smith on the back cover, the hand of the anthologist is once again felt in the exuberant air generally and in the sequencing specifically. We have already heard from many of these artists: Cannon’s Jug Stompers, Dock Boggs, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Cleoma Breaux & Joseph Falcon, Mississippi John Hurt, the Memphis Jug Band, and Henry Thomas. Jefferson gets a pair back to back, including one of the best songs on the CD, the eerie “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean.” A newcomer to the Anthology at this point, Uncle Dave Macon, also gets a back-to-back pair, with two more of the best here, “Way Down the Old Plank Road” and “Buddy Won’t You Roll Down the Line”—best on this CD and best on the Anthology as a whole. Somehow I forget how good this particular CD is—listening to the CDs in order, perhaps I’m a little tired by the time I get here—that is, until I start to break it down by songs. Then it is perhaps second only to 1-B. The opener, “Poor Boy Blues” by Ramblin’ Thomas, is a singalong that feels like coming from a deep place. And it’s always good to hear from Mississippi John Hurt, “Spike Driver Blues” carrying on with the John Henry mythos. “K.C. Moan” by the Memphis Jug Band is sneaky-good with an excellent use of jug and harmonies and a palpable sense of mystery. While this set is mostly blues there is room for more Cajun fare from Breaux & Falcon and also for a melodic country yodel in “The Lone Star Trail” by Ken Maynard. As a general rule I think I like Gene Autry more for this kind of thing but it’s still good to hear here. The Anthology finishes on track 84, “Fishing Blues” by Henry Thomas. It’s an apt ending with some ocarina play and a delightful sense of “not in, gone fishin’.” In this day and age, with today’s technology, it would not be that hard to take the Anthology along on a fishing day trip. It’s likely an excellent soundtrack and “Fishing Blues” certainly ends it nicely on exactly that note. See you later.
When I first started listening to the Anthology systematically this CD seemed almost the weakest, though eventually some of its songs started to grow on me—in fact, some are still sounding better every time I play it. The CD, the Anthology at large, opens with “Henry Lee” by Dick Justice, basically a murder ballad told from the point of view of a bird. Given how much thought anthologist Harry Smith gave to this project, all these details are no doubt significant. In fact, there are more murder or suicide songs here—Buell Kazee’s “The Butcher’s Boy,” G.B. Grayson’s “Ommie Wise.” I was a little surprised, listening closely, to realize what these songs are. I’m more used to the style of Nick Cave’s 1996 album Murder Ballads (bombastic and loud, not particularly recommended). But another point of consistency across most of this material is how gentle it is—gentle sawing and plucking, often (not always) singing gently with a twang. It confuses me, especially when the lyrics tell intense stories. The songs that most often jumped out at me early on this CD are ones I don’t like: Coley Jones’s comic “Drunkard’s Special” and the Carolina Tar Heels’ yowling “Peg and Awl.” Jones was a veteran of minstrel shows. The confusing lyrics of his song tell a story of a man coming home drunk at night and finding things rearranged, another mule in his stall, a head on his pillow. They suggest his wife’s infidelity, but they are also delusional and she always has an explanation, however absurd (the head on the pillow, for example, is a cabbage head). I didn’t understand any better than the drunkard, and felt some contact-drunk with him as we tried to take it in. “Peg and Awl” is just overdone on the vocals. The songs I came to like better took me some time to absorb—Justice’s “Henry Lee,” Clarence Ashley’s “The House Carpenter,” Bill and Belle Read’s “Old Lady and the Devil,” both of Kazee’s songs, “The Butcher’s Boy” and “The Wagoner’s Lad,” Grayson’s “Ommie Wise,” and Kelly Harrell’s “My Name Is John Johanna.” That reminds me, lots of names are named around here, starting with the first track, many as declarations of identity: Henry Lee, Willie Moore, Ommie Wise (betrayed by John Lewis), John Johanna. Last thought: I’ve never been much of one for a banjo, but I find the way they often play it here—gently—can work well.
1-B: Ballads
This CD is my favorite of the six, featuring lots of folk hits and luminaries: the Stagger Lee legend (“Stackalee” by Frank Hutchison), the Frankie and Johnny murder ballad (“Frankie” by Mississippi John Hurt, a favorite of mine since I first heard him years ago), the John Henry story (“Gonna Die With My Hammer in My Hand” by the Williamson Brothers and Curry, and note that later in the Anthology there’s a version of the story by Hurt), and the Casey Jones story (the two-part “Kassie Jones” by Furry Lewis, a lovely interlude). Kelly Harrell (“My Name Is John Johanna” on the first CD) returns with (My Name Is) “Charles Giteau” (“my name I’ll never deny”)—Giteau, the assassin of James Garfield. And this 1-B CD has not one but two songs by the Carter Family, another long-time favorite. It’s just winners all over the place here. The guitar playing is excellent throughout, with various fine pickers such as Hurt, Lewis, Maybelle Carter working the lower strings, and the so-called Masked Marvel (Charley Patton) on “Mississippi Boweavil Blues.” And all this still doesn’t get to my absolute favorites on the CD and probably the Anthology at large: “Down on Penny’s Farm” by the Bently Boys, which sounds modern somehow, perhaps due to its obvious influence on Bob Dylan’s “Maggie’s Farm.” The other big hit for me is the last song on the CD, “Got the Farm Land Blues” by the Carolina Tar Heels, who also appear on 1-A with “Peg and Awl,” a song I don’t much care for. But “Farm Land Blues” has a winning dry humor with a band that sounds like a flivver-trap machine, clanking and barely functional but holding together with string and glue and perfectly charming. The singer, out in the country trying the farm life, in one bad night has his chickens stolen, his corn stolen, and the tires right off his car stolen, when he attempts to drive over to the sheriff and report the incidents. Later a storm wipes him out entirely, which happens more than once on the Anthology. The singer ends up back in town. “Farm Land Blues” feels modern too—or at least of the ‘60s and ‘70s—with its hippie-like “back to the country” air, and, from there, back to town again because the farming life is not easy. “Hard luck!” It is as if foretelling the future of its own audience with great accuracy, plus the delivery is so deadpan it often hits as plain lol funny. Winners all around on this CD.
2-A: Social Music
I get the impression from liner notes and whatnot that the “Social Music” sets have the least regard of the three broad-based divisions in the Anthology, with “Ballads” and “Songs.” On the original release they could be bought separately as double-LP gatefold packages and apparently everyone bought “Social Music” last if they bought it at all. I guess I agree but remember that the Anthology in general has an exceedingly high floor. Also, I admit I don’t entirely understand the other two categories—isn’t one a subset of the other? The meaning of social music, by contrast, is much more clear. This half, this specific 2-A CD, is largely devoted to what might be called DOF (dance-oriented folk, compare DOR and EDM). The first eight tracks are mostly instrumentals and feature a good deal more fiddle, often the main instrument driving these often pleasant nod-along ditties. “Georgia Stomp” by Andrew and Jim Baxter features some dance calling, presumably square: “Now break loose and walk back,” “Now swing your partner,” etc. I count four tracks with dance references in the title: “Georgia Stomp,” “Indian War Whoop” by Hoyt Ming & His Pep-Steppers (“whoop” possibly more a type of song than dance), “Old Country Stomp” by Henry Thomas, and “Acadian One-Step” by Joseph Falcon. “Indian War Whoop” has a lot of wordless keening and crying and is close to a novelty, or maybe I’m distracted by the potential for racism. “Old Country Stomp,” track 8, has some singing to go with a wind instrument I’m going to call an ocarina (greetings to Canned Heat’s Al Wilson). The rest of the CD is something of a dumping ground. You can’t really dance to “Old Dog Blue” by Jim Jackson. It’s a sad story of a widower who loses his good dog—genuinely affecting, but I’m a sap for this kind of stuff with dogs and cats and horses. I don’t know how it’s not a song if not a ballad but apparently I’m missing something. That’s followed by a trio of songs that are a little more DOF which I would classify as zydeco, under Cajun influence. “Saut Crapaud” by Columbus Fruge and “Acadian One-Step” seem amenable enough to dancing, but “Home Sweet Home” by the Breaux Freres is more of a drunken night-ender harping on the old chestnut—a low point of the Anthology. “Newport Blues” by the Cincinnati Jug Band is lively DOF with a jug barely keeping up, and the slightly freakish “Moonshiner’s Dance Part One” by Frank Cloutier & the Victoria Café Orchestra is even more lively. I hear klezmer in it, I hear polka, a clarinet, a mandolin, and a trumpet all step up for blasts of good energy, the orchestra counts it off in unison “1 - 2 - 3 - 4.” I wish we got Part Two!
2-B: Social Music
The “social music” on this CD, for me the weakest of the Anthology, is on the order of religion, church and church-adjacent music, including gospel. Lots of familiar themes crop up—“Since I Laid My Burden Down” by the Elders McIntosh & Edwards’ Sanctified Singers, “He Got Better Things for You” by Memphis’s Sanctified Singers, “I saw the light!” in “Dry Bones” by Bascom Lamar Lunsford, so on so forth—which are then mixed around with stranger things. The first two tracks, “You Must Be Born Again” and “Oh Death Where Is Thy Sting,” both credited to the Rev. J.M. Gates, are very short and stark, moans edited down from longer sermon pieces. The next two, “Rocky Road” and “Present Joys” by the Alabama Sacred Harp Singers, are shape-note songs—music intended for congregational singing. They are imbued with joy but there is also something eerie and ghostly about them. Maybe that’s the Holy Ghost. My ongoing bad attitude about evangelical Christianity likely figures in to my general resistance to much of the music on this CD, which can tend toward the dreary for me. I find myself making fun of them, singing, for example, “He’s got better things to do” with “He Got Better Things for You,” or “bedtime,” speaking to my cats, for Sister Mary Nelson’s raw and bawling “Judgement”: “Better get ready for BEDTIME!” This CD is much more focused on vocals and singing, such as the oddball a cappella “This Song of Love” by the Middle Georgia Singing Conv. No. 1, with a clever arrangement and visions of doo wop in the future. “John the Revelator” memorably matches Blind Willie Johnson’s bullfrog vocal with Angeline Johnson’s more floating soprano lines—a weird one for sure, speaking of the old America. The best song here by my lights is another by the Carter Family, their third appearance in the Anthology. The Bible story “Little Moses” is all pro forma, while the greatest rewards are once again the lower strings of Maybelle Carter’s guitar, gently driving the music to intensity. “Dry Bones” has some nice banjo play (is that frailing?). The last two songs—“Fifty Miles of Elbow Room” by the Rev. F.W. McGee and “In the Battlefield for My Lord” by the Rev. D.C. Rice and His Sanctified Congregation—are more lively, starting off with similar musical figures. “Battlefield” has singers, piano, trumpet, trombone, bass, drums, and triangle. It serves up a pretty good time out there on the battlefield.
3-A: Songs
I’ve had a harder time getting a bead on this CD. It seems to be notably all over the place, with a kind of cross-hatching of artists who appear before and later: Buell Kazee, Dock Boggs, Bascom Lamar Lunsford, the Carter Family, Blind Lemon Jefferson. At least three songs are Cajun-sourced, maybe a couple are what could be called deep blues. Perhaps not surprisingly guitars and banjos are once again the most common instruments (for the first time since the “Ballads” 1-A and 1-B CDs), with occasional harmonica or jug. In some ways the hand of the obsessive sequencing anthologist Harry Smith may be felt most on the “Songs” CDs. One of the impressive points of the Anthology is how much of it is colorblind in effect—it’s hard to know with certainty which artists are Black and which are white without the sometimes scant photographic evidence. This CD includes two of the most written-about songs, at least in the liner notes pamphlet: “The Coo Coo Bird” by Clarence Ashley and “I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground” by Lunsford, previously seen witnessing the lights of heaven in “Dry Bones.” I love “The Coo Coo Bird” straight up, an irresistible singalong and one of the single best tracks on the Anthology (with “Down on Penny’s Farm” and “Got the Farm Land Blues”). I’m not as certain about “Mole,” where the metaphysical powers ascribed to it escape me. But I like it for its strangeness. Then there is the Stoneman Family (and/or Ernest and Hattie Stoneman) with a matched pair of comical songs, “Mountaineer’s Courtship” and “The Spanish Merchant’s Daughter.” The first is largely a dialogue between lovers plotting marriage with surprisingly candid turns: She sings, “Oh, how long you think you'll court me, you'll court me, you’ll court me? / Oh, how long you think you’ll court me, my dear old reckless boy?” He replies, “I expect I'll court you all night, all night, all night.” Eventually she discovers he has six children, one unnamed because it wouldn’t scan, but the wedding still seems to be on at song’s end. “Spanish Merchant’s Daughter” turns on advice from the Spanish merchant to his daughter to say “no sir” to men approaching her while he is away. But “no sir” is never a refusal in the song. Her would-be lover says, “Would you be in any way offended / If I walked and talked with you?” She replies, “No sir, no sir, no sir, no sir!” Hattie Stoneman’s piping vocals make these songs distinct and the interplay with Ernest reminds me a little of John Doe and Exene Cervenka. The Carter Family get still another song, “Single Girl, Married Girl.” All this Carter Family drove me back to my box set, where interestingly this song does not sound as strange as it does in the context of the Anthology. I’m not sure why that is. Maybe I’m starting to get the drift of the “old, weird America” thing.
3-B: Songs
The sixth and final CD of the Anthology opts for nearly half blues, as evidenced by the word appearing in titles of six of the 14 tracks—“Poor Boy Blues,” “Country Blues,” etc. With a photo of Harry Smith on the back cover, the hand of the anthologist is once again felt in the exuberant air generally and in the sequencing specifically. We have already heard from many of these artists: Cannon’s Jug Stompers, Dock Boggs, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Cleoma Breaux & Joseph Falcon, Mississippi John Hurt, the Memphis Jug Band, and Henry Thomas. Jefferson gets a pair back to back, including one of the best songs on the CD, the eerie “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean.” A newcomer to the Anthology at this point, Uncle Dave Macon, also gets a back-to-back pair, with two more of the best here, “Way Down the Old Plank Road” and “Buddy Won’t You Roll Down the Line”—best on this CD and best on the Anthology as a whole. Somehow I forget how good this particular CD is—listening to the CDs in order, perhaps I’m a little tired by the time I get here—that is, until I start to break it down by songs. Then it is perhaps second only to 1-B. The opener, “Poor Boy Blues” by Ramblin’ Thomas, is a singalong that feels like coming from a deep place. And it’s always good to hear from Mississippi John Hurt, “Spike Driver Blues” carrying on with the John Henry mythos. “K.C. Moan” by the Memphis Jug Band is sneaky-good with an excellent use of jug and harmonies and a palpable sense of mystery. While this set is mostly blues there is room for more Cajun fare from Breaux & Falcon and also for a melodic country yodel in “The Lone Star Trail” by Ken Maynard. As a general rule I think I like Gene Autry more for this kind of thing but it’s still good to hear here. The Anthology finishes on track 84, “Fishing Blues” by Henry Thomas. It’s an apt ending with some ocarina play and a delightful sense of “not in, gone fishin’.” In this day and age, with today’s technology, it would not be that hard to take the Anthology along on a fishing day trip. It’s likely an excellent soundtrack and “Fishing Blues” certainly ends it nicely on exactly that note. See you later.
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