Alan Lomax has died

Cafe Society
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According to the news this evening, Alan Lomax died this morning, at the age of 87. Lomax, with his father, set up the original Library of Congress/Smithsonian Institute collection of American folk music. He traveled all over the country doing wire recordings and single handed preserved much of what is today the standard folk repertoire. His recordings at Southern prison farms are classic. He was the first to record Leadbelly. To keep the original artists, who for the most part were illiterate country people, from being exploited he copy righted a fair amount of the stuff as its arranger/adapter. He gave Pete Seeger his first job in music. Anyone who enjoys folk music owes him a great debt.

Rest in peace, Mr. Lomax.

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While his contributions to humankind may not impact life the way some of the physical scientist do, he is one of those momentarily unique persons who comes along, has an idea, and acts upon it.

My personal spiritual life without his musical contributions would be poorer.
Lomax homepage

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Are you sure he died? Maybe he just lifted himself by the seat of his pants and heisted himself and took leave of this place, through a hole in the smog, without leaving a trace.

Oh, wait, that was the Lorax.

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I’m embarrassed to say this, but I’m having a Theremin moment here…I’d just assumed Lomax HAD BEEN dead for years.

What’d he been up to for the past few decades?

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Among other things, he wrote The Land Where the Blues Began, a wonderful, scholarly memoir of Southern blues. That first chapter, about being arrested by a Southern sherriff for having the audacity to hang around black musicians in the 1930s, is gorgeous.

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Alan Lomax was the first person to record Leadbelly, Woody Guthrie, and Muddy Waters among others, and assisted in the “rediscovery” of such bluesmen as Mississippi Fred McDowell.

Have you ever heard Alan on Guthrie’s Library of Congress recordings? You can basically hear the two of them getting more and more inebriated as they carry on a conversation and Alan pulls songs and stories out of Woody. But when Alan asks Woody about his “hard times” and Woody goes into his family history, it’s one of the most affecting moments ever to make its way onto any recording.

On a somewhat related note: The day before Lomax passed away, the founder of Vanguard Records, Seymour Solomon, died. Vanguard started as a classical label, but moved into the folk area when they recorded the Weavers after the group had been blacklisted by other record companies during the McCarthy era. In fact, The Weavers at Carnegie Hall has been credited with starting the mid-50’s folk revival. Vanguard was also known for their recordings of the Newport folk and jazz festivals throughout the late '50’s and early '60’s and had such artists as Joan Baez, Odetta, Ian & Sylvia, Buddy Guy and Charlie Musselwhite (not to mention Peter Schickele and P.D.Q. Bach!).

People like Alan Lomax and Seymour Solomon are exactly what the music business is missing these days–people who are willing to take a chance!

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I think that much of life as we know it in the last 20 years is missing what they had. And it isn’t just to be willing to take a chance. It might have something to do with morals, honor, selflessness, etc.

Some things are bigger than the individual. I would say the whole way of life that these individuals exemplified has disappeared. A throwback like Jimmy Carter might still be found today, but famouse/importand people in the public eye, willing to subvert their ego to the good of humankind have passed on.

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Those kinds of people do still exist, but you are not likely to find them in mainstream, corporate-controlled institutions like the Republicrat and Demublican Parties.

You will have to look to alternative institutions such as the Green Party, and people such as the Greens’ 1996 and 2000 presidential ticket of Ralph Nader and Winona LaDuke. It is here that you will find people of true conscience and character, who mean what they say and are not for sale to the highest bidder.

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I agree with your sentiment here, but not the post-em-dash part.

It wasn’t that Lomax and Solomon were “willing to take a chance”…they didn’t record Appalachian banjoist Dock Boggs or Mississippi road-gang prisoner James Carter because they thought they were gonna be the next Elvis or anything.

It was that they were willing to do something for what they felt was to the good of music and society without first worrying about whether they were gonna get rich off of it.

Lomax was lucky enough to have held partial copyright to one of Leadbelly’s greatest hits, “Goodnight, Irene,” which brought in enough cash to make it possible for him to continue making road trips and doing field recording.

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The Land Where the Blues Began is one of the most important influences on my (long aborted) dissertation. Lomax’s recordings helped give us Elvis, the Beatles, and what we call rock and roll today.

The opening song/scene in O Brother, Where Art Thou, at least on the soundtrack, is a Lomax recording.

RIP.

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fine obituaryGoodnight, Irene

Goodnight, Alan. Here’s a http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/20/obituaries/20LOMA.html fine obituary in the NY Times.

Alan Lomax is one of my heroes. Without his, and his father, John Lomax’s work, the world would be a lot poorer, musically. They hauled around recording equipment when it was quite a chore, and laboriously documented the voices of people who were pretty much discounted by society at large. Their recordings influenced all of the musicians in the Folk Music revival of the 60’s, and continue to do so today. The opening track of
O Brother, Where Art Thou is, appropriately, a Lomax recording. I do hope he was able to appreciate that his work was finally bearing fruit in a mainstream music biz sense, in it’s purer sense, and not just rock bands ripping off riffs.

I worked in Mississippi for 10 years documenting blues musicians: many of the same ones Lomax had “found” decades earlier. His recordings put them “on the map”. As per minty’s post, there are a lot of odd sociological issues when giving due attention to blues musicians in rather closed communities. I found it to still be true in the 1990’s…can well imagine what it must have been like in the early years.

I had the fortunate occurence of visiting with Alan in one of his last visits to Mississippi. At the time, I was lucky enough to be close to one of the musicians featured in The Land Where the Blues Began. ( Fer you Uke, neither of them believed the other was still alive!) They did connect after that, though, and a good thing, because Eugene Powell died shortly after that.

I’ve done the type of work that Alan Lomax did best: it’s an odd and difficult journey, but when you show the world a beautiful voice, that sings beyond your capacity, the best you can do is to record it, and know that people will hear it at some point. Alan was the best at that; recognizing what was beautiful, and preserving it for the time we might catch up.

Goodnight, Alan, I’ll see you in my dreams…

Uke Uke

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I dunno where that Uke Uke. at the end came from… no idea…

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elelle Why’d ja hafta go do that. Now I’m all teary-eyed again. Thanks.

I can’t figure out why you link doesn’t work for the NYT obit. I copied it here and it works.?Alan Lomax

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Thanks much, Sam, for a clear link. Alan was a great good soul. Here’s to hopin’ that his afterever will be sung along by all the voices he held dear.

Smiling, remembering cantankerousness, and appreciating it all the more why we oughtta listen intently. Um, that’s what Alan told me: to listen intently, record impeccably, and get yer ego the hell out of the way. I hope I listened enough to do a wee bit of good.

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[sub]I love you too, elelle![/sub]