Partch could be considered “one of the first multi-media artists, and in one way or another, the thread that connects him to the 21st century is his fascination with information of every kind¹.” Painting and making experimental films found Partch working in a variety of mediums. Because of these disparate works and how he incorporated them – drawing on film stock, illustrating the box set he sequenced – there are some that understand his work, in some ways, to mirror the approach to culture that deejays now occupy, splicing all manner of work together in order to arrive at something new. Dock Boggs and Uncle Dave Macon didn’t have a chance to sit in the same room as Henry Thomas while performing, but if that had occurred, everyone lucky enough to witness that set would have approved. Partch heard the similarities and worked to splice it all together in order to create a cohesive whole and an indispensible historical document detailing how American music is basically all the same.

Serving as the template from which the late fifties and sixties folk and blues revival was based, The Anthology provided a songbook from which guitar players and singers could work from, sound well versed in the music and use it all as a common language with which to communicate with one another. Apart from this brief moment during the second half of the twentieth century there hasn’t really been a commercialized version of music related to these backwoods strains of music.

There wasn’t an equivalent in the jazz world, although, innumerable compositions served to unify that community as well. What happened to jazz after its incubation in the South and subsequent popularization in dancehalls across the country was a purposeful detachment from digestible sounds. It’s been figured that 1959 was one of the most important years in the recording of jazz music. With Atlantic Records issuing both Ornette Coleman’s The Shape of Jazz to Come  as well as John Coltrane’s Giant Steps, it’d be difficult to dispute that point of view¹. Regardless of whether or not ’59 matches any other calendar year in terms of importance, both the Coleman and Coltrane albums point to the demise of jazz as popular music.

The trend towards other musics becoming more common on radio stations and hocked as singles at record stores probably began prior to Elvis Presley recording a few well selected covers, but by the end of the ‘50s, there was really no question that rock and roll would soon dominate the buying habits of American youths.

Throughout that decade, a modicum of jazz players would attempt to assimilate rock’s good time feel into their own genre to varying success. John McLaughlin and Herbie Hancock, in the wake of performing with Miles Davis, might have come closest to achieve success in that field – or maybe Donald Byrd with his Black Byrd. Each of those players, though, weren’t able to sustain a broad interest in its work. Jazz, obviously, didn’t disappear, as its player’s sense of style is still pretty evident in American fashion, but when Wynton Marsalis has become the genre’s spokesman, it’s easy to figure that the music’s hey-day has passed us by.