Harry Smith – born 5/29/23

Harry Smith is best known for compiling the influential Anthology of American Folk Music which was originally released in 1952. It was released on 6 CDs in 1997 by Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. It’s an amazing collection of all kinds of American music (including blues, folk, country, gospel, and Cajun) recorded in the 1920s and 1930s. Tribute concerts were held in 1997, 1999 and 2001. They’re all on CD and there are DVDs of the 1999/2001 ones in a set with the CDs.

A Perfect 10: I wrote about one of the best, earliest, + most important mixtapes ever made—Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music, 84 tracks of white-hot feeling, for Pitchfork's Sunday Review. @Marcissist says it's the longest P4K review ever? https://t.co/ilPdPvJtJN
— grayson haver currin (doesn't tweet much at all) (@currincy) February 5, 2023

@Folkways – Celebrating the birthday of Harry Smith – https://t.co/FtVqxOcQVM pic.twitter.com/Op8FhRtRaP
— AllenGinsbergEstate 🐀 (@Ginsbergpoem) May 29, 2022

While Harry Smith, born #OnThisDay in 1923, is most widely recognized for his preservation of American folk music, he was a polymath who had a multitude of interests, including a collection of hundreds of paper airplanes he found on streets of NYC over course of several decades https://t.co/KoihNzHS9e pic.twitter.com/5Njk4Sb186
— Michael Lobel (@mlobelart) May 29, 2022

It’s official! The first solo exhibition of Harry Smith‘s groundbreaking work will open at @whitneymuseum this fall on October 4th! We can’t wait to expand some minds and share his idiosyncratic genius with the masses. Link to exhibition details in bio. ⚗️ pic.twitter.com/AIR1UT4BWE
— Harry Smith Archives (@HS_Archives) February 16, 2023