|
Long before the marketing concept of 'Americana' was launched , this legendary set of tracks was
issued on Folkways Records in 1952. All the material on it had been
recorded between 1927 and 1933. It had been compiled by Harry Smith (a man of no fixed
address , a polymath , beatnik and fabulist) from his personal collection of old 78s. The first
song sets the occult tone , involving those staple ingredients of
many a folk-lyric , backwoods crime , a reluctant - and soon dead - lover and a talking bird. A
song sometimes known as Lady Margaret , Young Hunting or Loving Henry ,
this version is Henry Lee , sung in 1929 by a man with the compelling name of Dick Justice.
Hailing from Logan County , West Virginia , his repertoire (like that of
many of his contemporaries) was a mixture of Anglo-American ballads and African-American blues.
"Get down, get down, little Henry Lee, and stay all night with me.
The very best lodging I can afford will be fare better'n thee."
"I can't get down and I won't get down and stay all night with thee,
For the girl I have in that merry green land, I love far better'n thee."
She leaned herself against a fence, just for a kiss or two,
With a little pen-knife held in her hand, she plugged him through and through.
"Come all you ladies in the town, a secret for me keep,
With a diamond ring held on my hand I'll never will forsake."
"Some take him by his lily-white hand, some take him by his feet.
We'll throw him in this deep, deep well, more than one hundred feet.
Lie there, lie there, loving Henry Lee, till the flesh drops from your bones.
The girl you have in that merry green land still waits for your return."
"Fly down, fly down, you little bird, and alight on my right knee.
Your cage will be of purest gold, in deed of property."
"I can't fly down, or I won't fly down, and alight on your right knee.
A girl would murder her own true love would kill a little bird like me."
"If I had my bend and bow, my arrow and my string,
I'd pierce a dart so nigh your heart your wobble would be in vain."
"If you had your bend and bow, your arrow and your string,
I'd fly away to the merry green land and tell what I have seen."
By using old commercial recordings , the freewheeling Smith escaped the reverential pieties of
many another 'heritage' folklorist. He selected musicians who hailed from the
(mainly southern) communities who bought their records. They were almost all men who were looking
for release (if only briefly) from the mines , farms and factories in which
they laboured. This was an anthology of record-collector music whose 'primitive' sounds would
be poured over and imitated by all the young hopefuls of the 50s and 60s American
folk revival. Harry Smith had been a seminal figure in the west coast avant-garde of the 1940s. He
investigated the rituals , music and language of its remaining Native
Americans , painted murals , produced montage films , hunted out all manner of old records ,
whilst smoking dope and taking benzedrine. When he died in 1991 , he'd re-located
to the east coast , where he recorded the Beat poets and The Fugs (1). In the last year of
his
life he said that he'd lived long enough to see the philosophy of the homeless and the
impoverished alter the consciousness of America. Smith was in tune with the vernacular
spirit of his times in much the same way as Breugel the Elder was a painter of that spirit
in sixteenth
century Flanders.
(1) Some of their songs included lyrics by William Blake or Mathew Arnold. They also
wrote and sang the Swinburne Stomp and the timeless Rameses II is Dead , my Love.
|
Archive
Poets' Corner #1 – Poetic
Pessimism, 13th September 2012
Poets' Corner #2 – The Workman's
Friend, 10th October 2012
Poets' Corner #3 – On The Trail of
Two Dylans, 12th November 2012
Poets' Corner #4 – Omar Khayyam,
14th December 2012
Poets' Corner #5 – William Blake,
25th January 2013
Poets' Corner #6 – A Minor Poet,
19th February 2013
Poets' Corner #7 – Thomas Hardy,
20th March 2013
Poets' Corner #8 – Shakespeare's
Sonnets, 21st April 2013
Poets' Corner #9 – Edward Thomas,
20th May 2013
Poets' Corner #10 – Harry Smith's
Anthology, 19th June 2013
Poets' Corner #11 – William
Plomer, 21st July 2013
Poets' Corner #12 – Ghosts ,
20th August 2013
Poets' Corner #13 – William
Dunbar, 20th September 2013
Poets' Corner #14 – Bathtub
Thoughts, 20th October 2013
Poets' Corner #15 – Bagpipe Music,
20th November 2013
Poets' Corner #16 – Sylvia &
Emily, 20th December 2013
Poets' Corner #17 – The Fall Of
Icarus, 16th January 2014
Poets' Corner #18 – Those Gone
Before, 20th February 2014
Poets' Corner #19 – Rudyard
Kipling, 20th March 2014
Poets' Corner #20 – Martin Bell,
20th April 2014
Poets' Corner #21 – Another Modest
Proposal, 20th May 2014
Poets' Corner #22 – Thomas Gray
and The Eighteenth Century, 20th June 2014
Poets' Corner #23 – Edgar Allan
Poe, 18th July 2014
Poets' Corner #24 – Tread Softly,
19th August 2014
Poets' Corner #25 – Mad To Be
Saved, 24th December 2015
Poets' Corner #26 – Wants,
20th January 2016
Poets' Corner #27 – Samuel
Johnson, 15th February 2016
Poets' Corner #28 – T.S.Eliot,
10th March 2016
Poets' Corner #29 – Alfred Lord
Tennyson, 18th April 2016
Poets' Corner #30 – Leonard Cohen,
12th November 2016
|