Brand New Old-Time Southern Americana: Harry Smith’s Anthology Brings French Louisiana Music into the Folk Canon

Peknik, Patricia

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-97424-8_5

Patricia Peknik²

125 Accesses

Abstract

In the post-World War II years, American folk art and its aesthetic of the modest symmetry of homespun craftwork occupied a prominent place in the hearts of American modernists. John D. Rockefeller’s wife Abby’s collection of Americana—weathervanes, decoys, doorstops, cigar store figures, lawn ornaments, and watercolor paintings—had been one of the founding collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York when it opened the week after the stock market crashed in 1929, introducing lovers of avant-garde painting to the handiwork of the anonymous American everyman at the very moment that he was being thrown into a state of financial despair.

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Notes

1.
Andrew Perchuk, “Struggle and Structure” in Harry Smith, The Avant-Garde in the American Vernacular, ed. Andrew Perchuk (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2010), 12.
2.
Albert C. Barnes in They Taught Themselves, American Primitive Painters of the 20th Century, Sidney Janis (New York: The Dial Press, 1942), 7–8; 187.
3.
Sidney Janis, They Taught Themselves, 232–233.
4.
Sidney Janis, They Taught Themselves, 76–77.
5.
Jonas Mekas in American Magus, Harry Smith, A Modern Alchemist, ed. Paola Igliori (New York: Inanout Press, 1996), 83.
6.
Harry Smith, Anthology, liner notes, 10.
7.
Allen Ginsberg, “Allen Ginsberg on Harry Smith,” Harry Smith Anthology, liner notes, 55.
8.
Ginsberg, Anthology liner notes, 56.
9.
Marcus, Anthology liner notes, 9.
10.
Marcus, Anthology liner notes, 21.
11.
Moses Asch, “The Birth and Growth of the Anthology of American Folk Music,” Anthology liner notes, 33.
12.
Asch, Anthology liner notes, 32.
13.
Asch, Anthology liner notes, 37.
14.
Chuck Pirtle, Anthology liner notes, 52.
15.
Marcus, Anthology liner notes, 10–11.
16.
Harry Smith in “A Rare Interview with Harry Smith,” John Cohen, in Sing Out! The Folk Song Magazine, Volume 18/Number 1, April/May 1969, reprinted in American Magus Harry Smith: A Modern Alchemist, ed. Paola Igliori (New York: Inanout Press, 1996), 26.
17.
Smith, Sing Out! The Folk Song Magazine, 40.
18.
Marcus, Anthology liner notes, 7.
19.
Marcus, Anthology liner notes, 8.
20.
Marcus, Anthology liner notes, 5.
21.
Gene Bluestein, Poplore (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994), 109–118.
22.
Asch, Anthology liner notes, 32.
23.
Moses Asch, “The Birth and Growth of Anthology of American Folk Music,” in American Magus, 94.
24.
Marcus, Anthology liner notes, 10.
25.
Marcus, Anthology liner notes, 25.
26.
Smith, Anthology liner notes, 22–24.
27.
Marcus, Anthology liner notes, 11.
28.
Rosenberg, Anthology liner notes, 37.
29.
Marcus, Anthology liner notes, 11.
30.
Asch, “General Notes on this Series,” Anthology liner notes.
31.
Francois, Yé Yaille, 273.
32.
John Cohen, Anthology liner notes, 5.
33.
Van Ronk, Anthology liner notes, 5.
34.
Anthony Seeger and Amy Horowitz, “Introduction,” Anthology liner notes, 3.
35.
Cantwell, “Smith’s Memory Theater,” 365.
36.
John Pankake, “The Brotherhood of the Anthology,” Anthology, liner notes, 26.
37.
Marcus, Anthology liner notes, 6.
38.
Ralph Ellison, “The Little Man at Chehaw Station,” reprinted in The American Intellectual Tradition, Volume II, fourth edition, ed. Charles Capper and David A. Hollinger (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 425, 433, 435.
39.
John Pankake, Anthology liner notes, 27.
40.
Marcus, Anthology liner notes, 17.
41.
Robert Cantwell, “Smith’s Memory Theater: The Folkways Anthology of American Folk Music,” New England Review, Vol. 13, No. 3/4 (Spring–Summer 1991): 364.
42.
Pete Stampel, Anthology liner notes, 22–23.
43.
Filene, Romancing the Folk, 63–65.
44.
Jeff Todd Titon, “Authenticity and Authentication: Mike Seeger, the New Lost City Ramblers and the Old-Time Music Revival,” Journal of Folklore Research, Vol 49, No, 2. (May–August, 2012): 228.
45.
Marcus, Anthology liner notes, 6.
46.
Luis Kemnitzer, “West Coast Record Collector,” Anthology liner notes, 30.
47.
Joseph C. Hickerson, review of Friends of Old Time Music, Ethnomusicology Vol. 10, No. 3, Sep., 1966: 371.
48.
Marcus, Anthology liner notes, 7.
49.
Richard Gagné, “Ralph Rinzler, Folklorist: Professional Biography,” Folklore Forum 27:1 (Bloomington: Folklore and Ethnomusicology Department, Indiana University, 1996): 26.
50.
Alan Lomax, Alan Lomax: Selected Writings: 1934–1937 (London: Routledge, 2005), 155.
51.
Alan Lomax, Selected Writings, 173.
52.
Gagné, “Ralph Rinzler,” 28.
53.
Gagné, “Ralph Rinzler,” 39.
54.
Gagné, “Ralph Rinzler,” 40.
55.
Gagné, “Ralph Rinzler,” 21.
56.
William S. Walker, “A Living Exhibition: The Smithsonian, Folklife, and the Making of the Modern Museum” (PhD diss., Brandeis University, 2007): 125.
57.
Robert R. Grimes, “Form, Content and Value: Seeger and Criticism to 1940,” in Understanding Charles Seeger, Pioneer in Musicology, ed. Bell Yung and Helen Rees (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 80.
58.
Andrew Lloyd, Interview with Mark Gregory, published in Overland Literary Journal, 1970. http://folkstream.com/reviews/lloyd/
59.
Gagné, “Ralph Rinzler,” 22–24.
60.
John Szwed, Alan Lomax, The Man Who Recorded the World (New York: Viking, 2010): 203–204.
61.
Szwed, Alan Lomax, 249.
62.
Szwed, Alan Lomax, 251.
63.
Lomax, Selected Writings, 90.
64.
Lomax, Selected Writings, 114–116.
65.
Szwed, Alan Lomax, 225; 234.
66.
Szwed, Alan Lomax, 315–316.
67.
Brauner, “The Newport Folk Festival,” 61.
68.
Szwed, Alan Lomax, 348–349.
69.
Alan Lomax, “An Appeal for Cultural Equity,” 1972, reprinted in 1985 Festival of American Folklife Program Guide, Smithsonian Institution.
70.
William S. Walker, The Smithsonian and the Transformation of the Universal Museum (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2013), 124.
71.
Brauner, “The Newport Folk Festival,” 183.
72.
Broven, South to Louisiana, 105.
73.
Broven, South to Louisiana, 113.
74.
Brauner, “The Newport Folk Festival,” 179.
75.
The New York Times, “Ralph Rinzler, 59, Smithsonian Official and Folk-Life Expert,” July 8, 1994.

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Berklee College of Music, Boston, MA, USA
Patricia Peknik

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Peknik, P. (2019). Brand New Old-Time Southern Americana: Harry Smith’s Anthology Brings French Louisiana Music into the Folk Canon. In: French Louisiana Music and Its Patrons. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97424-8_5

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97424-8_5
Published: 11 September 2018
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-97423-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-97424-8
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