If Alan Lomax was the great musicological explorer who ventured into the Mississippi Delta to record this strange, haunting, new music played by blacks called the Blues—thus introducing it to the world—then Harry Smith did the same for Appalachian Folk and Bluegrass. Only, instead of venturing into the mountains of Tennessee or North Carolina, he explored his gargantuan record collection, harvesting songs there. In doing so, he saved a slab of American culture that would have been lost.100 Archiving
