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Musicologist Alan Lomax Dies at 87Alan Lomax, the folk music preservationist and one-time Library of Congress archivist who began recording the songs of the people nearly 70 years ago, died July 19 at the age of 87. Lomax began his career in 1933, traveling with his father, John Avery Lomax, a folk-music collector, through back roads of the South looking for people willing to share their music. Lugging hundreds of pounds of equipment, the pair traveled to remote villages, stopping at prison farms, sawmills, churches, and homes—anywhere people were willing to let them record their songs. Over the years, Lomax recorded thousands of tunes, including Delta blues, Appalachian ballads, and New Orleans jazz. Famous musicians he recorded included Woody Guthrie, “Jelly Roll” Morton, and Leadbelly, whom Lomax’s father had discovered in a Louisiana prison. The song “Rising Sun Blues,” which Lomax first recorded in rural Kentucky in 1937, later became popular as “House of the Rising Sun.” Much of Lomax’s work was done for the Library of Congress, where the Archive of American Folk Song was established in 1928. He also worked hard to popularize the music he recorded, saying it “gave a voice to the voiceless.” In a 1940 radio broadcast, he said, “The essence of what makes America lies not in the headlined heroes . . . but in the everyday folks who live and die unknown, yet leave their dreams as legacies,” the Associated Press reported July 20. Posted July 29, 2002. |
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