The Harry Smith B-Sides

Harry Smith’s legendary six-LP series, Anthology of American Folk Music, surely stands as the most influential collection of early 20th century American blues, folk and country recordings ever assembled. Released in 1952 and compiled by the eccentric polymath Smith from his vast collection of ancient 78rpms, the compilation has been plundered for inspiration and source material by everyone from Bob Dylan to John Fahey. In one of those ‘why didn’t anyone think of this before?’ moments, it dawned on the folklorists John Cohen and Eli Smith that if the tracks in Smith’s original 84-track anthology were all released on pre-war 78s then there must be the same number of tracks of similar historical interest awaiting discovery on their B-sides. It took seven years of painstaking research to trace the material, but now we have The Harry Smith B-Sides in a wonderful four-CD box set of the songs that were left behind. Sequenced in the identical order that Smith created for his 1952 anthology, it’s not quite complete, for three tracks have been omitted on the grounds that they contain ‘racist language’. Listeners will take different views on whether that is right or a misguided censoring of history.

What all can agree on is that the B-sides stand proud comparison with the A-sides. When these artists went into the studio all those years ago, they simply recorded their best songs, there was no thoughts of filler or throwaways to go on the flip side of a hit single – they simply recorded their two best songs. As a journey into what Greil Marcus famously called “the old, weird America,” these tracks sound as spooked and uncanny as you could wish, as voices from another age sing about such timeless subjects as love, murder, death and spiritual dread. From the great bluesmen Blind Lemon Jefferson and Mississippi John Hurt via the country songs of the Carter Family and Dock Boggs to the righteous gospel harmonies of the Memphis Sanctified Singers, this is music at its most vital, visceral and elemental. The set comes with a splendidly informative book featuring song transcriptions plus annotations for each track by more than 80 artists, writers and musicians, including Devendra Banhart, Rosanne Cash and Will Oldham.