It was a good program but here's what it missed. (I knew Alan).
1.John A. Lomax tried to get academia interested in the poetry of cowboy ballads.
Lyman Kittredge at Harvard was the man he tried to gain as an ally.
2. John Lomax was a racist and disowned Alan when he started to promote Leadbelly.
He was persona non grata in Lubbock Texas.
3. His sister Bess Lomax Hawes knew as much as Alan did about folk music and the one advantage she had was that she was trained as a musician. She has written a lovely memoir and a wonderful book with Bessie Jones of the Georgia Sea Islands called "Step in Down". The advantage Bess had as a musician enabled her to make a distinction between trained musicianship and untrained ability.
4. Alan started Cantrometrics, a system of classifying vocal and instrumental music using a method of notation not unlike what you would see on an oscilloscope. It wouldn't register the formal language of musical composition, however. You would not be able to register a triad or minor seventh flat five chord or didn't say anything about a sonata form or tri-tones or any aspect of the musical language taught in schools.
5. Alan had a reputation among some folklorists as pushing around his informants a bit too much. He was sort of a music producer of folk songs.
6. Alan was passionate about folk music. He drank a little and interrupted Bud and Travis at one of the Greenwich Village night spots accusing them of corrupting folk music. Yet, he lauded the appearance of the Kingston Trio, when they were popular.
7. He was accused of earning income from copyrights of the folk songs he collected. His motivation, however, was clear. He did not want them to be appropriated by folk revival singers as commodities for which they were by many show biz types.
8. He was one of the most important people in the field of folk music and a great supporter and presenter of African-American folk music when it was being ignored.