Anthology of American Folk Music, Vol. 3: Songs

The Anthology of American Folk Music is one of the most important compilations in American music. It was assembled, sequenced, and edited by Harry Smith, a strange, self-styled anthropologist/ethnologist/experimental filmmaker/bohemian independent scholar. He was an odd figure around the intellectual beatnik scene in New York in the 50s and 60s. He had a huge, legendary collection of hillbilly and blues 78s, back when no one really thought much of those recordings. This was before those old recordings were largely ignored or thought of as backwards and unimportant. Smith is partly responsible for changing that perception by creating the Anthology, which became the central canon of American Roots Music.

I won't write a long history of the set. If you want to learn more, you can read about on the Folkways site or in the book The Weird, Old America: The World of Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes, by Greil Marcus, or check it out on Wikipedia. Suffice it to say that it sparked and inspired the Folk Revival of the 1960s and influenced all of popular music since then. It's a source of songs and lyrics of staggering beauty, brutality, and honesty.

I've uploaded Volume 3 of the set, which focuses on lyric songs (as opposed to ballads or story songs) and blues. This is the most accessible volume of the three.

If I had to choose a desert island collection, this would be it. I wouldn't even have to think about it.