ABSTRACT
What can we hear when we listen with care to the second song on the first album, “Ballads,” in Harry Smith’s Anthology of Amer ican Folk Music? An instant of reproduced hiss and crackle, from a worn needle dragged through the dust on neglected shellac, loud enough to compete with the music when it starts a split second later: a Hawaiian guitar, at a stately or tentative pace, as if the player is feeling his way through the tune for the first time, picks out the melodic line that will accompany the vocal performance, backed by a simple two-beat strum on an acoustic guitar. The Hawaiian overture drops out before the voices start, as if the player can’t play and sing at the same time:
It rained, it poured, it rained so hard, It rained so hard all day, That all the boys in our school Came out to toss and play.
