Alan Lomax was the son of the folklorist John Lomax, whose primary focus
was cowboy songs, although he and Alan worked together for the Library of
Congress. Howard Odum was another notable folklorist who focused on
African-American folk songs.
The son of revered folklorist John Lomax, Alan started out recording the
songs of prisoners in the south, and later worked at the Library of
Congress as a folklorist with his father. He attended Harvard University,
Columbia University, and the University of Texas.
Lomax is probably best known, though, for his extensive interviewing of
artists like Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Jelly Roll Morton, and others for
the Library of Congress Archive of Folk Culture.
In addition to focusing on the folk music of the American south, Lomax
also chronicled plenty of Irish folk music, as well as other folk music
from Italy and elsewhere around the world. In the mid-to-late 1950s, he
traveled around the south recording folk artists and folk songs for a
collection eventually published by Atlantic records, called Songs of the
South. These tunes were later put to work in the film O Brother, Where Art
Thou?
Lomax was also under suspicion of being a communist during the McCarthy
era, when he left the country and spent some time in Europe studying folk
music. Encyclopedia Brittanica calls him "one of the most dedicated and
knowledgeable folk-music scholars of the 20th century." Along with his
sister Bess, he was a member of the groundbreaking labor rights group the
Almanac Singers.
Lomax has received awards from the Library of Congress, the National Book
Critics Circle, and the Grammy Trustees.
NEW!
VA-Alan Lomax's American Patchwork (2LP) @FLAC24-48
Ruf Records’ Blues Caravan is unstoppable. Fifteen years after
Europe’s most respected label put on its first showcase tour, the
founding concept is instantly familiar to blues fans: every night,
on club stages across the US and Europe, three rising talents will
burn down the house and kick the blues into the modern age.
But there’s a twist. With the lineup chosen each year from the
cream of the Ruf roster, every Caravan has a fresh vibe, a fizzing
chemistry and plenty of flying sparks. And with three wildly
different artists running the gamut of styles in 2020, all bets are
off.
From our humble beginnings in the basement of an Ann Arbor, Michigan
blues club in 1977, Blind Pig Records has grown into one of the
premier blues labels in the world. A virtual who's who of blues and
roots artists performed on the Blind Pig stage at one time or another
-- Otis Rush, Koko Taylor, Commander Cody, Asleep At The Wheel,
Roosevelt Sykes, Robert Lockwood, Mighty Joe Young, Johnny Shines, The
Fabulous Thunderbirds, Walter Horton, Bonnie Raitt, Eddie Taylor,
Jimmy Rogers, and Hound Dog Taylor, to name a few.