Anthology of American Folk Music

In 1952, filmmaker Harry Smith released a compilation of field recordings, country blues and folk songs from the 1920s and 30s that became an inspiration for budding folksingers and the movement that followed. The rather extensive Anthology of American Folk Music presented artists like The Carter Family, Mississippi John Hurt, Charlie Poole, and Clarence Ashley, among many, many others.

In the early part of the 20th century, folklorists set out to catalog the oral histories spread through folk music, to study the traditions it carried, and to record (on paper and on record) the songs and the people who sung them. Harry Smith collected a number of these recordings, which spanned religious hymns, nonsense songs, murder ballads, social songs, labor songs, chants and the country blues. (Since many of the early folklorists didn't consider protest music to be equivalent to folk music, little of that is included in this anthology.)

Instead, the collection gave budding songwriters like Bob Dylan and Jerry Garcia a peek into the cultures and traditions around which American folk music congregated in the early part of the 20th Century.

Consider the historical context. Some things that were happening in 1952 (according to Wikipedia): the Cold War and Korean War were ongoing. There was a massive strike involving steel workers. The Hydrogen bomb was tested, and Eisenhower was elected. The Weavers had just disbanned after being blacklisted two years prior.

More notably, though, rock and roll was beginning to pick up where the big band era had left off. Elvis's debut was still a few years off. Things were changing. The nation was suburbanizing, the highway system was growing, and perhaps the baby boomer generation turned on to folk music in response, as they began to have greater access to cultures and traditions outside of their hometowns and families. Early indications of the coming Civil Rights revolution and the small window of time between the conflict in Korea and that in Vietnam no doubt influenced young people to seek community through music and other activities.

The Anthology of American Folk Music was one of the first recorded spotlights on the craft. Sure, there was an extensive history of recorded folk music preceding that. Woody Guthrie and the Almanac Singers had appeared on radio and television. The Weavers had their successful stint that helped to inspire the generation behind them. But, for the first time, the music of tiny nowhere towns and the people that inhabited them, was collected and presented as worthwhile and viable.

By the end of the decade in which the Anthology was released, Joan Baez had made her debut and the era of the American folk festival had begun. By the time Bob Dylan arrived in New York City, the Anthology had already begun to work its magic. The songs were so accessible and unforgettable that they were being played and shared in the song circles and hootenannies.

It can't be single-handedly credited with the Folk Revival of the 1950s and 60s, but this groundbreaking collection certainly helped steer and elevate it in a big way. And, it's hard to imagine the Revival without the release of The Anthology of American Folk Music.