Harry Everett Smith

Yeah, absolutely.

And he and Robert Hunter first bonded over watching Harry Smith films.

So, you know, thinking about just the universe of psychedelic art as it was part of the larger culture there, there's a great relationship always between art making and music making.

I play bass in two bands in the process of figuring out a bass line for a song or figuring out a composition for a painting or not.

I'll still be around as a discorporate entity.

And so really the, um, and you know, um, Harry Smith's anthology of American popular music with all the occult alchemical symbols, right? This avant-garde filmmaker and artist who also did art for Friday of Crowley's books, et cetera.

But for, um, So this that anthology of American folk music is what put forward this particular obscure stream of music.

Right.

And we actually rock came from the jump blues, which is an R&B form, and then they slowed it down, etc.

But this whole movement, rock died, original rock.

rock everybody either died or was put in jail in 1959 right so that plane crash you know and then of course American Pie have talked about that so that song has a lot to it that song expresses that but in a sense this is that cusp of you have this lull right so and and so and you know as i always emphasize that you know 19 so the the impetus so that the harry smith um anthology um you have basically this folk movement um you know all that stuff so you have people you know because rock is basically gone okay it didn't everybody was gone elvis is in the army you know uh all the other guys are you know marrying 13 12 year old girls and or else you know they're dying in accidents or you know etc so rock just ended so then you have this very kids music very cheesy kind of pop music and this goes on for about five years okay you have novelty songs you have you know there's like say surf music whatever but then The whole and we're still living in 1950s America until now.

Even then you have the trauma, of course, of the Kennedy assassination.

Right.

So that's Harry angel.

Of course, his name is angel, but, um, and I was mentioning a bit in the pre-show is that, you know, the book does focus more on occult rituals among the elite in New York city area and other political figures.

And they have particular, um, you know, types of, uh, covens and ritual objects etc but the basic plot is is the same um so yeah so one of the things just to keep in mind is that if we look at sort of the occult anatomy the overlay the symbolic overlay of media with a lot of these elements of occult things or symbolic or even potentially trying to you know invoke these energies we can see One of the earliest things we look at the popular music, so the song Staggerly, right? So the Staggerly song is very much like the story of Angel Heart.

But the basic story of staggerly is he's just a, he kills a guy and then he ends up defeating the devil and becomes the king of hell.

Right.

Very similar to Harry angel.

So it's tied into this popular culture and popular music.

I wish I was a mole in the ground.

A version of this highly spooky ditty was recorded by Bascombe Lamer Lumsford in 1928 and later appeared on Harry Smith's highly influential Anthology of American Folk Music.

Lumsford sings, I don't like a railroad man, a railroad man, he'll kill you when he can and he'll drink up your blood like wine.

Dylan counters this ominous warning with another hysteriously paradoxical aside.

They, there were no reissue albums back then.

There was the American Folka Anthology that Harry Smith did, and a lot of kids had that record, that set, but there was very little else.

So it was a larger world back then, and Wein brought all these people to the festival.

Uh, and like, uh, Queskin said, there was Skip James.

But the, the thing about that time was your, your options were pretty limited.

You know, having, having, like, in, in, in, in Austin, Minnesota in 1976 to 5, to have a, a Mance Lipscomb record in the house, and not only that, but a, a Lightnin' Hopkins record that I dearly loved, Albert King, uh, even, even a couple of volumes from the Harry Smith anthology, you know-

Yes

... were there.

Billy Gray is on Blind Dog from Norman and Nanci Blake on Rounder Records.

We'll follow that with Darlin' Corey from the late Greg Huven and his band from the recording The Harry Smith Connection on Smithsonian Folkways.

Songs about outlaws and bandits on this week's edition of the Sing Out Radio Magazine.

Here's Norman and Nanci Blake.

And we heard Red-Haired Becky, which is somewhat related to Pretty Polly, but this time Red-Haired Becky has a rifle.

It's on Strictly Country Records, Sarah Lynch Thomason and Sam Gleaves.

And before that, a recording made live at Wolftrap in 1997, celebrating the Harry Smith collection.

We heard Greg Houen and His String Band with Darlin' Corey.