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Alan Lomax 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.
John Avery Lomax was an American teacher, a pioneering musicologist, and a folklorist who did much for the preservation of American folk music. He was the father of Alan Lomax and Bess Lomax Hawes.
Western music is a form of country composed by and about the people who settled and worked throughout the Western United States and Western Canada. Western music celebrates the lifestyle of the cowboy on the open ranges, Rocky Mountains, and prairies of Western North America. Directly related musically to old English, Irish, Scottish, and folk ballads, also the Mexican folk music of Northern Mexico and Southwestern United States influenced the development of this genre, particularly corrido, ranchera, New Mexico and Tejano. Western music shares similar roots with Appalachian music, which developed around the same time throughout Appalachia and the Appalachian Mountains. The music industry of the mid-20th century grouped the two genres together under the banner of country and western music, later amalgamated into the modern name, country music.
"Banks of the Ohio", also known as "Down on the Banks of the Ohio", is a 19th-century murder ballad, written by unknown authors, in which "Willie" invites his young lover for a walk during which she rejects his marriage proposal. Once they are alone on the river bank, he murders the young woman.
John Jacob Niles was an American composer, singer, and collector of traditional ballads. Called the "Dean of American Balladeers," Niles was an important influence on the American folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s, with Joan Baez, Burl Ives, Peter, Paul and Mary, and Bob Dylan, among others, recording his songs.
"Streets of Laredo", also known as the "Cowboy's Lament", is a famous American cowboy ballad in which a dying cowboy tells his story to another cowboy. Members of the Western Writers of America chose it as one of the Top 100 Western songs of all time.
Skewball was the name of an 18th-century British racehorse, most famous as the subject of a broadsheet ballad and folk-song.
Texas Anna Gladden was an American folk singer, best known for her traditional Appalachian ballad style of singing, which she began to record in the 1930s.
Jack of Diamonds is a traditional folk song. It is a Texas gambling song that was popularized by Blind Lemon Jefferson. It was sung by railroad men who had lost money playing conquian. At least twelve white artists recorded the tune before World War II. It has been recorded under various titles such as "A Corn Licker Still in Georgia" and "Rye Whiskey".
"Darlin' Cory" is a well-known American folk song about love, loss, and moonshine. It is similar in theme to "Little Maggie" and "The Gambling Man" but is not considered the same as those songs.
The American folk music revival began during the 1940s and peaked in popularity in the mid-1960s. Its roots went earlier, and performers like Josh White, Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Big Bill Broonzy, Richard Dyer-Bennet, Oscar Brand, Jean Ritchie, John Jacob Niles, Susan Reed, Paul Robeson and Cisco Houston had enjoyed a limited general popularity in the 1930s and 1940s. The revival brought forward styles of American folk music that had, in earlier times, contributed to the development of country and western, jazz, and rock and roll music.
"See See Rider", also known as "C.C. Rider", "See See Rider Blues" or "Easy Rider", is a popular American 12-bar blues folk blues song that became a blues and jazz standard. Gertrude "Ma" Rainey was the first to record it on October 16, 1924, at Paramount Records in New York. The song uses mostly traditional blues lyrics to tell the story of an unfaithful lover, commonly called an "easy rider": "See see rider, see what you have done", making a play on the word "see" and the sound of "easy".
"Dink's Song" is an American folk song played by many folk revival musicians such as Pete Seeger, Fred Neil, Bob Dylan and Dave Van Ronk, Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Cisco Houston as well as more recent musicians like Jeff Buckley. The song tells the story of a woman deserted by her lover when she needs him the most.
"Git Along, Little Dogies" is a traditional cowboy ballad, also performed under the title "Whoopie Ti Yi Yo." It is believed to be a variation of a traditional Irish ballad about an old man rocking a cradle. The cowboy adaptation is first mentioned in the 1893 journal of Owen Wister, author of The Virginian. Through Wister's influence, the melody and lyrics were first published in 1910 in John Lomax's Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads. It is cataloged as Roud Folk Song Index No. 827. Members of the Western Writers of America chose it as one of the Top 100 Western songs of all time.
"The Buffalo Skinners" is a traditional American folk song. It tells the story of an 1873 buffalo hunt on the southern plains. According to Fannie Eckstorm, 1873 is correct, as the year that professional buffalo hunters from Dodge City first entered the northern part of the Texas panhandle. It is thought to be based on the song Canaday-I-O.
"Ida Red" is an American traditional song of unknown origins that was made famous in the upbeat 1938 version by Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys. Wills' Ida Red served as the primary inspiration for Chuck Berry's first big hit Maybellene. It is chiefly identified by variations of the chorus:
"I'm Alabama Bound" is a ragtime melody composed by Robert Hoffman in 1909. Hoffman dedicated it to an M. T. Scarlata. The cover of its first edition, published by Robert Ebberman, New Orleans, 1909, advertises the music as "Also Known As The Alabama Blues" which has led some to suspect it of being one of the first blues songs. However, as written, it is an up-tempo rag with no associated lyrics. The song has been recorded numerous times in different styles—both written and in sound recordings—with a number of different sets of lyrics.
"The Little Old Sod Shanty On The Claim" is an American folk song written by Oliver Edwin Murray of South Dakota. It appeared somewhere around 1880 published in several American newspapers. The printings suggested that it be sung to the tune of "The Little Old Log Cabin In The Lane" written by Will Hays in 1871. The song tells of the trials of homesteading on the Great Plains and became immensely popular among the settlers. The title comes from variations of a refrain found in the verses and the chorus:
James "Iron Head" Baker and Moses "Clear Rock" Platt were African American traditional folk singers imprisoned in the Central State Prison Farm in Sugar Land, Texas. They are notable for a number of field recordings of work songs and other material made by John Lomax for the Library of Congress Archive of American Folk Music in the 1930s.
The Southern Journey is the popular name given to a field-recording trip around the Southern States of the USA by ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax. He was accompanied on the trip by his then-lover, English folk singer Shirley Collins. It resulted in the first stereo field-recordings in the Southern United States, and is perhaps most noted for the 'discovery' of 'Mississippi' Fred McDowell. The music collected on the trip has had a significant impact on the development of popular music. Tracks recorded on the trip were sampled by Moby for his Platinum-selling album Play. It also served as the inspiration for the soundtrack to the Coen Brothers' film O Brother Where Art Thou. The Southern Journey is the subject of an autobiography by Shirley Collins entitled America over the Water. It is also the subject of a 2017 feature documentary, The Ballad of Shirley Collins. Lomax' own recollections of the trip were documented in his autobiography "The Land Where Blues Began", which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 1993.
References
- ↑ "Vaughan Williams Memorial Library - Welcome to the English Folk Dance and Song Society". vwml.org. Retrieved 2015-03-08.
- ↑ Lomax, John A., Edward N. Waters, and Alan Lomax. Cowboys Songs and Other Frontier Ballads. New York: Macmillan, 1938. pp. 266-267.
- ↑ Cohen, R. (2004). Alan Lomax: Selected Writings, 1934-1997. Taylor & Francis. p. 62. ISBN 9781135949228 . Retrieved 2015-03-08.