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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 a musician, 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 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.
The term American folk music encompasses numerous music genres, variously known as traditional music, traditional folk music, contemporary folk music, vernacular music, or roots music. Many traditional songs have been sung within the same family or folk group for generations, and sometimes trace back to such origins as the British Isles, Mainland Europe, or Africa. Musician Mike Seeger once famously commented that the definition of American folk music is "...all the music that fits between the cracks."
Bob Dylan is the debut studio album by the American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on March 19, 1962, by Columbia Records. The album was produced by Columbia talent scout John H. Hammond, who had earlier signed Dylan to the label, a controversial decision at the time. The album primarily features folk standards but also includes two original compositions, "Talkin' New York" and "Song to Woody". The latter was an ode to Woody Guthrie, a significant influence in Dylan's early career.
Sister Rosetta Tharpe was an American singer, songwriter and guitarist. She gained popularity in the 1930s and 1940s with her gospel recordings, characterized by a unique mixture of spiritual lyrics and electric guitar. She was the first great recording star of gospel music, and was among the first gospel musicians to appeal to rhythm and blues and rock and roll audiences, later being referred to as "the original soul sister" and "the Godmother of rock and roll". She influenced early rock-and-roll musicians including Little Richard, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and also later guitarists, such as Eric Clapton.
The origins of rock and roll are complex. Rock and roll emerged as a defined musical style in the United States in the early to mid-1950s. It derived most directly from the rhythm and blues music of the 1940s, which itself developed from earlier blues, the beat-heavy jump blues, boogie woogie, up-tempo jazz, and swing music. It was also influenced by gospel, country and western, and traditional folk music. Rock and roll in turn provided the main basis for the music that, since the mid-1960s, has been generally known simply as rock music.
"The Cherry-Tree Carol" is a ballad with the rare distinction of being both a Christmas carol and one of the Child Ballads. The song itself is very old, reportedly sung in some form at the Feast of Corpus Christi in the early 15th century.
"Precious Memories" is a traditional gospel song credited to J. B. F. Wright in 1925. Wright was born in Tennessee on February 21, 1877. The song has been performed by a wide variety of famous recording artists, including Tammy Wynette, Bill Monroe, Rosetta Tharpe, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Alan Jackson, Emmylou Harris, Daniel O'Donnell, Gerry Rafferty, the Edwin Hawkins Singers, a duet by George Jones and Patti Page, Jim Reeves, Bob Dylan, Waylon Jennings, J. J. Cale, and James Blackwood's quartet.
"Midnight Special" is a traditional folk song thought to have originated among prisoners in the American South. The song refers to the passenger train Midnight Special and its "ever-loving light."
Samuel Blythe Price was an American jazz, boogie-woogie and jump blues pianist and bandleader. Price's playing is dark, mellow, and relaxed rather than percussive, and he was a specialist at creating the appropriate mood and swing for blues and rhythm and blues recordings.
"Rock Island Line" is an American folk song. Ostensibly about the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad, it appeared as a folk song as early as 1929. The first recorded performance of "Rock Island Line" was by inmates of the Arkansas Cummins State Farm prison in 1934.
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, Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey 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, blues, jazz, and rock and roll music.
"Children, Go Where I Send Thee" is a traditional African-American spiritual song. Among the many different versions of the song, a defining feature is the cumulative structure, with each number accompanied by a biblical reference. Today, many Americans know it as a Christmas carol.
"Take This Hammer" is a prison, logging, and railroad work song, which has the same Roud number as another song, "Nine Pound Hammer", with which it shares verses. "Swannanoa Tunnel" and "Asheville Junction" are similar. Together, this group of songs are referred to as "hammer songs" or "roll songs". Numerous bluegrass bands and singers like Scott McGill and Mississippi John Hurt also recorded commercial versions of this song, nearly all of them containing verses about the legendary railroad worker, John Henry; and even when they do not, writes folklorist Kip Lornell, "one feels his strong and valorous presence in the song".
"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.
Harriet Elizabeth "Hally" Wood was an American musician, singer and folk musicologist. She worked with John and Alan Lomax and participated in the publication of songbooks for the works of artists like Lead Belly and Woody Guthrie. She also performed as a singer and recorded solo and collaborative albums with folk singers such as Pete Seeger.
"Poor Paddy Works on the Railway" is a popular Irish folk and American folk song. Historically, it was often sung as a sea shanty. The song portrays an Irish worker working on a railroad.
The Union Boys was an American folk music group, formed impromptu in 1944, to record several songs on an album called Songs for Victory: Music for Political Action. Its "all-star leftist" members were Josh White, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, Pete Seeger, Burl Ives, Tom Glazer.
Marie Knight was an American gospel and R&B singer.
Gospel Train is a studio album by the gospel and R&B artist Sister Rosetta Tharpe. It was recorded in July 1956 and released in December the same year. Tharpe is accompanied on vocals by the traditional black gospel quartet the Harmonizing Four on some of the songs. The album was noted as part of Tharpe's induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
References
- Cohen, Norm (2000). Long Steel Rail: The Railroad in American Folksong, 2nd Ed. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-06881-5.
- Lomax, Alan (2002). The Land Where the Blues Began . New York, New York: The New Press. ISBN 1-56584-739-3.
