HARRY SMITH'S Complete Anthology of American Folk Music Box Set 8 LP SEALED OOP
$
200
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Description
Please see my other listing for more audiophile records; additional purchases ship for only $1 more. Harry Smith's / Complete Anthology of American Folk Music. 8 LP set. Factory Sealed. Purchased new, and stored in a second protective bag in a climate controlled home. Set arrived with spine bumping through cellophane and a corner bump (please see photos). Long out-of-print. Complete manufacturer description follows listing. Photo is of actual item; sorry for the camera flash glare. Record will be professionally packaged and shipped promptly by media mail for $4, or by Priority for $18, if requested. Please Note: All records are guaranteed for safe arrival, and I will offer a full refund for any sealed record returned to me which you are unhappy with the condition it arrives in, or if the record differs in condition from the photo shown. However, I cannot control for the rare occasion when records may have defects from the manufacturer. Therefore, I can not accept returns or offer refunds for any records that are sold sealed after they are opened. Thanks!
Complete manufacturer description:
"Now for the first time ever all together on vinyl a complete box set: 4 double LPs featuring the 3 original double LP volumes (Ballads, Social Music, Songs) along with the great LOST Country Music & Bluegrass double LP that remained unissued for almost 50 years. Compiled by Harry Smith contemporaneously with the first three volumes (which were originally released in 1952), it includes tracks by the Monroe Bros., Carter Family, Robert Johnson, Bukka White, Lead Belly, Uncle Dave Macon and Sleepy John Estes and more!
The box set is actually not a 'box', but is modelled after the old 78 rpm multiple record storage sleeve, where the albums are stored in sleeves that are pages in a book.
The importance of Harry Smith's work can not be overstated. Not only did he single-handedly save much of American folk music from extinction, but when he handed his record collection over to Smithsonian folkways in 1952, he opened the floodgates for the American folk revival of the following decade. Not since John and Alan Lomax had anyone paid so much attention to saving the American folk song from extinction, but unlike the Lomaxes, Smith was not a government worker armed with a tape recorder, he was just a guy from Portland, Oregon armed with a love of music and an insatiable curiosity. So, when the U.S. Armed Forces began melting down old records to be used as shellac during WWII, Smith kicked into high gear, buying up as many old 78s from the '20s and '30s as he could find.
Much of the music found here then comes from a time before television -- arm-in-arm with rock & roll -- began beaming its über-culture into every household in America, erasing much of what had grown up locally. Prior to WWII, America was in many ways no more than a patchwork of territories, with distinct local cultures and musical traditions reaching both far into the immigrant past of each area's inhabitants, but also into a future firmly rooted in the newness and adventure (as well as hardships) of life on this new continent."
