Alan Lomax

Alan Lomax  (January 31, 1915 – July 19, 2002) was an American ethnomusicologist, best known for his numerous field recordings of folk music of the 20th century.  He was also a musician himself, as well as a folklorist, archivist, writer, scholar, political activist, oral historian, and film-maker.  Lomax produced recordings, concerts, and radio shows in the US and in England, which played an important role in preserving folk music traditions in both countries, and helped start both the American and British folk revivals of the 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s.  He collected material first with his father, folklorist and collector John A. Lomax, and later alone and with others, Lomax recorded thousands of songs and interviews for the Archive of American Folk Song, of which he was the director, at the Library of Congress on aluminum and acetate discs.  Lomax's greatest legacy is in preserving and publishing recordings of musicians in many folk and blues traditions around the US and Europe.  (More from Wikipedia)

 

Woody Guthrie’s first recordings were made by Alan Lomax, the famous folklorist that I wrote about in my last post; they had several hours of recordings and conversations between them.  His first album, Dust Bowl Ballads (1940) followed.  It is regarded as one of the very first concept albums and was Woody’s most successful record. 

(March 2015)