The Harry Smith Centennial

The great Bohemian whatsit known as Harry Smith was born 100 years ago today (1923-1991).

When Smith passed away, over 30 years ago now, I recall reading an in depth portrait of him in perhaps the Village Voice or The New York Times that focused on his eccentricity. I’d long known about his most famous project, Folkways’ Anthology of American Folk Music, but I knew nothing more than a name. Smith had actually made important contributions to a half dozen important fields. But the overall impression you walked away with from this posthumous profile, was that of a famous Village character. He had been a long time resident of the Chelsea Hotel, was a well-known hoarder, and had lived on the generosity of friend and colleague Allen Ginsberg for many years. Sometimes he stayed in Bowery flophouses, sometimes at the homes of wealthier artist friends in upstate New York.

Smith did so much in so many fields it’s impossible to know where and how to start describing him. Basically he had a hand in anything cool or interesting that was happening from the early 1940s through the early 1970s. He was of the post-war Beatnik generation, but very much influenced the generation that came up after him. Like Ken Kesey, he was from the Pacific Northwest, in his case Washington State. He was later important in the avant-garde arts scenes in San Francisco and New York. He was raised by a pair of eccentric parents who were both Theosophists and lovers of the arts. His mother was a teacher on the Lummi Indian Reservation. His father was in the fishing business (and was therefore steeped in maritime culture), and was grandson of an Illinois politician who had written several books on Freemasonry. There must have been some family money to float some of the indulges Smith enjoyed as a young person. He was given painting lessons, and a camera of his own, and books like Carl Sandburg’s American Songbag and was set up in his own blacksmith shop at the age of 12. where he was reportedly encouraged to experiment in alchemy in addition to the more quotidian Vulcan arts. Most significantly he somehow had the resources to become a collector, and he amassed what eventually become an important collection of old blues and hillbilly record albums from the early years of the 20th century. Granted, he snatched plenty of them up for a song in the years when they were undervalued. He attended the University of Washington for a time, majoring in anthropology, documenting the folk culture of the Lummi Indians with whom his mother worked. During World War Two, he also worked in defense plants.

After the war, Smith moved to San Francisco, where he became deeply saturated in be bop music and the Thelemic religion of Aleister Crowley. Throughout the ’40s he created scores of abstract expressionistic paintings intended to communicate visually the sounds he heard in be bop, as well as numerous experimental films, short abstract animations coming from a similar place. The paintings were later destroyed but you can find photos of them online. And you can see some of his films on Youtube. In 1950 he got a Guggenheim Grant to support his film-making. Because his movies are well known and influential, I felt a need in my earlier post on Jack Smith to clarify that the two men were unrelated. Harry Smith’s movies eventually went to live at the Anthology Film Archives.

In 1952, Folkways released The Anthology of American Folk Music, comprised entirely of records from Smith’s personal collection. Most of the artists represented among the nearly 100 tracks are people you’ve never heard of, but some names became famous, largely with the assistance of this release, including The Carter Family, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Sleepy John Estes, Furry Lewis, Mississippi John Hurt, Charley Patton, et al. The recordings became an important factor in the burgeoning folk and blues revival movements of the ’50s and ’60s, which also influenced mainstream rock and pop music of the psychedelic era. Bob Dylan and Dave Von Ronk covered tunes off this three record set.

Since his college days, Smith was also involved in making field recordings (the business too of Zora Neal Hurston, Alan Lomax, John Hammond, and others to whom we owe so much). He had started off with the Lummi people, but he later recorded Kiowa peyote rituals, as well as Hebrew liturgical chanting, Bowery bums, and performances by Allen Ginsberg, the latter released in 1981 as New York Blues: Rags, Ballads and Harmonium Songs. He was also instrumental in The Fugs getting their first record deal in 1965. Smith was said to be the spiritual adviser for the Fugs’ 1967 effort to levitate the Pentagon!

Late in life, Smith became a bishop in the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica, the church of the Ordo Templi Orientis, the occult order to which Aleister Crowley belonged, and which draws from the traditions of Freemasonry and other esoteric belief systems. For much much more, check out the official site of the Harry Smith Archives, here.

Smith left many collections behind him when he died. Eccentrics of this magnitude are rare. One is also reminded of Henry Darger and Taylor Mead and many others who lived art and couldn’t be bothered with money, to the point of monk-like privation. They’re like Holy Saints. As Smith worshipped the likes of William Blake, let us worship him. Blasphemy? No, appreciation.