Old Weird American

Harry Smith is mostly known for as the creator and curator of the highly influential box-of-wonders, the Anthology of American Folk Music. Released in 1952, this collection of tunes from the 1920s and 30s unleashed many secret recordings by Bascombe Lamar Lunsford, Richard "Rabbit" Brown and the Masked Marvel (a pseudonym of Charley Patton's) to an American public who had mostly forgotten this other America. It's since been re-released on CD by the Smithsonian and once again reminding us about this alternative America.Harry, besides being an exhaustive collector of old records and a repository of biographical and historical knowledge about old songs and musicians, was an accomplished avant garde filmmaker. Experiementing with painting straight on to film, here's a look at some "early abstractions" of Harry's from 1946-57...