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Scotty Moore. For fans of those vintage railroad rhythms, Lee kicks things off with “Let’s Boogie” and closes out with a jumping remake of “I’m Going Home.”
    In short, Alvin Lee—much like Jerry Lee Lewis, John Lee Hooker, and all the other great boogiemen—unlocks the not-so-secret history of American roots music.
    That is, he boogies like it’s going out of style—which it never has and, apparently, never will.

WHEN HARRY MET ALLEN
    Were prophecies evoked in 1965 when the Fugs sang the words, “ Village Voice nothing, New Yorker nothing, Sing Out and Folkways nothing, Harry Smith and Allen Ginsberg , nothing, nothing, nothing?”
    The Fugs were a lot of things back then—they were literary, politically active, antiwar poets who embraced comedic folk-rock and bridged the generation gap between the beatniks and the hippies. Involved in music, literature, journalism, theater, and films, they reigned shrewdly, crudely, and lewdly over the East Side of Greenwich Village—especially when it came to the free love and the drugs.
    The song “Nothing” was included on The Fugs First Album , which was produced by Harry Smith. That was nearly a decade before Harry Smith and Allen Ginsberg combined their own talents for an impromptu (or was it planned?) recording session at the Chelsea Hotel, which resulted in the Allen Ginsberg album First Blues : Rags, Ballads & Harmonium Songs.
    So then, might First Blues be a representation of the existential nothing? Or is it really something?
    Allen first met Harry in 1959 at the Five Spot in Manhattan, where pianist Thelonious Monk was enjoying one of his residencies.Previously, Ginsberg had only heard about Smith, but recognized his presence immediately—Harry was sitting at a table transcribing Monk’s angular melodies into impressionistic drawings. Allen described his first vision of Smith as “slightly hunchback, short, magical-looking, in a funny way gnomish or dwarfish, same time dignified.”
    A chance meeting? Not necessarily, considering the synchronistic Weltanschauung when it comes to all things Harry Smith. And just how much empyrean nonsense is it to contend that these two opposites did indeed attract?
    Surely, the two men couldn’t have come from more contrasting orientations. One, a hermetic, neocelibate white-bread record collector/visual artist from Oregon with roots in freemasonry and an attraction to occultisms. The other, a free-loving Buddhist Jew queer from New Jersey who became reigning ambassador of the beat generation and a poet of Whitmanesque proportions.
    Ginsberg was an exhibitionistic showman who, to quote historian Harvey Kubernik, “was a tireless self-promoter that would show up for the opening of an envelope.”
    Smith, on the other hand, was a cultural obeah man who lived on Skid Row in small rooms stacked with books and kept dead animals stuck in the freezer.
    Their talents differed, but Harry and Allen both had an impact on the expanding of consciousness in the twentieth century. Ginsberg’s epic poems, “Howl” and “Kaddish,” fueled the imaginations of many. Along with Messrs. Kerouac and Burroughs, he contributed to a generative unshackling of prose and poetry. His libertine lifestyle ran against the grain of the intellectual establishment and his countercultural stance encompassed drug and sexual experimentation, political dissidence, gay rights activism, and antiwar protests.
    For his part, Harry Smith enriched the realms of film, visual art,and cultural anthropology. Most notably, his annotated compendium of rural song traditions, The Anthology of American Folk Music (first released in 1952), has had a lasting influence on music appreciation in the (post) modern world.
    The album these two men created together, First Blues , is a folk-form cryptogram of sorts, with connections, implications, and historical significance that defy simple