Ronnie D. Lankford, Jr.

Under Appreciated

RONNIE D. LANKFORD, JR.
 
 

John A. Lomax began chronicling cowboy songs in the early years of the 20th Century.  He had grown up in rural Texas and began transcribing these songs as a hobby at a young age.  Ronnie D. Lankford, Jr. notes in Allmusic:  

“[H]is first book, Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads, in 1910, [was] a groundbreaking work that helped establish the validity of the American folk song outside of the British tradition.  He also joined with Professor Leonidas Payne in establishing a Texas branch of the American Folklore Society, an organization committed to preserving folklore before it disappeared.”  

 

(February 2015)

 

Last edited: March 22, 2021