It documented the stories, musicians and listeners behind blues music. His book “The Land Where the Blues Began” won the 1993 National Book Critics Circle award for nonfiction. Citing one song with a particularly complex rhythm, he said, “When I recorded it, there had been nothing like it in America before.” All these new kinds of songs were simply mysteries,” Lomax said. “At the time, it was wonderful, but simply bewildering. Lomax recalled the Louisiana recording sessions vividly. When interest in Cajun music and its cousin, zydeco, exploded in the 1980s, for example, a two-album set of the Lomaxes’ recordings from the 1930s was issued.
Much of their work was done for the Library of Congress, where the Archive of American Folk Song had been established in 1928.Īs interest in folklore and minority groups’ culture has grown in recent decades, experts and fans alike have been able to draw upon the recordings made so long ago. Lomax said making it possible to record and play back music in remote areas “gave a voice to the voiceless” and “put neglected cultures and silenced people into the communications chain.” Among the famous musicians recorded by the Lomaxes were Woody Guthrie Huddie Ledbetter, known as Leadbelly “Jelly Roll” Morton Muddy Waters and Son House. Long before tape recording became feasible, the work entailed lugging around recording equipment that weighed hundreds of pounds. Among the famous songs it saved for posterity was “Home on the Range.” Two songs from the younger Lomax’s collection were featured on the 2002 Grammy-winning soundtrack of “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”Īlan Lomax was still in his teens when he began assisting his father’s efforts to interview and record musicians of almost every stripe.
Lomax, whose 1910 book “Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads” was a pioneering work in the field of music preservation. The blues discs will also serve inaugurate the Alan Lomax Popular Songbook series, which will boast original recordings of songs that have gone on to become standards.Alan Lomax, the celebrated musicologist who helped preserve America’s and the world’s heritage by making thousands of recordings of folk, blues and jazz musicians from the 1930s onward, died Friday at Mease Countryside Hospital in Safety Harbor, Fla. Earlier this year, Evans wan a Grammy Award for his notes included with Revenant’s exhaustive 140-track “Screamin’ and Hollerin’ The Blues: The Worlds of Charley Patton” box set.
It also includes three versions of “Joe Turner” recorded by Ed Young & Hobart Smith, the Pratcher Brothers, and Big Bill Broonzy.ĭavid Evans contributes liner notes for both 20-track collections.
Congress-declared “Year of the Blues,” the second volume of the series will feature such tracks as “Kill-It-Kid-Rag” by Blind Willie McTell, “I Be’s Troubled” by Muddy Waters, and “Blind Lemon Blues” by Leadbelly. The first set boasts recordings of such legendary artists as Howlin’ Wolf (“Dust My Broom”), David Honeyboy Edwards (“Worried Life Blues”), Jellyroll Morton (“I Hate a Man Like You”), and Bessie Jones (“Beggin’ the Blues).Ĭlosing out the U.S. Like all releases in the Alan Lomax Collection, the discs will be issued and distributed through Rounder exact release dates have not yet been announced.Īll of the songs are field recordings captured by the late folk music historian/archivist Lomax and his father, John A. Due in the fall is “Alan Lomax: Blues Songbook – Volume 1,” to be followed by “Volume 2” at the end of the year. A pair of upcoming blues compilations culled from the Alan Lomax Archives and the Library of Congress collect original versions of some noted blues standards.