Tannywheeler summed it up great I'm a-thinkin'!! The Lomax's did fine and extremely valuable work, and to diminish that with nitpicking using values of this century is not a good thing at all. If Leadbelly hasn't been mentioned lately, it's because we who venerated the man and loved his music have pretty much said what we felt about him already.
Son House, John Hurt, Sleepy John Estes, Furry Lewis, Bukka White, Sam Lightnin' Hopkins, Muddy, Wolf, Big Bill, Little Walter, Josh White, Sonny & Brownie, James Cotten, Gus Cannon, Skip James, Fred McDowell, Hammy Nixon, Walter Vinson, Jim Brewer, Gary Davis, Carl Martin, Ted Bogan, Howard Armstrong, Yank Rachel and many others were all still alive and waiting to be rediscovered in the 1960s. We got to hang out with, and hear, all of them. And many really could still do the music pretty damn well. We were there for that before these real roots experts, who truly had defined their art and their era, left this world behind. What great good luck it was to be there then!!!