Strut my stuff : obscure country & hillbilly boppers
The Harry Smith B-sides
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Reviews (3)
RootsWorld
2020
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Bruce Miller
2020
"The booklet, always such an amazing part of the label's work on any given box set, is leather bound, and includes notes from Ledbetter and parts of an interview Cohen did with Smith in the late 1960s. It also gives the same type of often hilarious track-by-track information with subject summaries that read like newspaper headlines ... What this collection means for the early 20th century, released during a pandemic, just as the country that birthed it grapples with the nastiness of its own divisions along ideological lines so deep that half the country no longer subscribes to fact while the other is more loudly calling for an end to systemic racism, has yet to be seen. Make no mistake though, like wellness practices and homegrown vegetables, it's crucial stuff".
Record collector
512 (2020 December)
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By
Tony Burke
512 (2020 December)
"Flipsides to influental compilation finally collected ... It's full of the stuff that Greil Marcus famously referred to as the "old weird America" - and it's a masterpiece".
Songlines
2020 December
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Nigel Williamson
2020 December
"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 (...), 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 ... 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 ... 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".