Alan Lomax recorded thousands of musicians, some became famous due to Lomax’s recordings. That list includes Robert Johnson, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Burl Ives, Lead Belly and Muddy Waters.
Many of the people that Lomax recorded spoke publicly and often about Civil Rights. Some were blacklisted as Communists and it increasingly seemed to Lomax that he might be next.
He decided to leave the U.S. and work in Europe. Lomax made hundreds of recordings from Italy to Scotland.
He came back to the States in 1959 and produced that year’s Folksong concert at Carnegie Hall. Lomax asked the audience to set aside their bias against Rock and Roll and was loudly booed for it. That’s according to another central figure of folk music, the producer and writer Izzy Young. Talking about the 1959 Folksong concert at Carnegie Hall, Young wrote, “Lomax put on what is probably the turning point in American folk music... the point he was trying to make was that Black and white music were mixing, and Rock and Roll was that thing.”
An undated b/w photo of Alan Lomax, headphones on, with recording equipment and a bed(?)
Image source: Wilkes Heritage Museum | Blue Ridge Music Hall of Fame
“The essence of America lies not in the headlined heroes...but in the everyday folks who live and die unknown, yet leave their dreams as legacies.”
-American folklorist Alan Lomax, born on this day in 1915
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