The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #156497 Message #3688821
Posted By: Joe Offer
21-Feb-15 - 11:45 PM
Thread Name: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
Subject: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
Subject: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
From: Mrrzy
Date: 08 Feb 15 - 09:41 PM
Fascinating column on NPR on Alan Lomax and how he got wardens to force black prisoners to sing or else, among other interesting stuff...
Most other Alan Lomax threads available by searching for Lomax (can't do a blicky to a search like that), for simplicity's sake, but I didn't find anything that was germane so I started a new thread.
I didn't know half this stuff, as Doonesbury put it.
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
From: GUEST,Mike Yates
Date: 09 Feb 15 - 05:01 AM
This is a disturbing read. The story about the prison guard pushing a black prisoner in front of Lomax's microphone and the prisoner, thinking that if he did not sing he would be punished, makes for difficult reading. It reminds me of something that the English song collector Peter Kennedy wrote about trying to get songs from a young Scottish traveller:
"Duncan McPhee, age 19, proved to be somewhat shy about singing his Scottish stanzas. Even though he was among his peers, the other teenage Travelers (sic) at the Perthshire raspberry-picking camp, Hamish Henderson and Peter Kennedy, amid shouts of "Come on, Duncan!" had to appeal to the company as a whole to use their group coercion. This eventually involved picking him up bodily and threatening to roast Duncan over the flames of the campfire. (It sometimes happens that collectors, in order to rescue important ballads and preserve our musical heritage, have to resort to somewhat drastic methods.)"
Why, I have often wondered, did Kennedy do such a thing and why did he tell people about his actions, which he clearly felt were justified? And this brings me back to the Lomax story and the "trembling and sweating" prisoner. According to the article "Lomax wasn't ashamed of his methods". But is that really the case? Or, as I suspect, was Lomax actually trying, in a round-about way, to tell the world about the brutality that existed in the southern prison camps at that time?
In a recent review of the Dust-to-Digital double CD and book set, Parchman Farm, I wrote:
"I have long had problems coming to terms with Alan Lomax. I never met him, but have met many people who did know him. Many said that he was arrogant; others said that he was a pain in the butt. I felt that he was too quick to copyright (to himself) any song that he came across. And yet, when I read his books, I have often come across another side of the man. He once said that his job was to be a conduit through which 'the common man could speak … could tell his side of the story'. Now that I like.
I also like this story, told by Bruce Jackson in the book. In 1983 Jackson was attending the annual meeting of the American Folklore Society held that year in a Nashville hotel. Jackson had just been elected President of the Society and was expected to deliver a keynote speech that night. But, in the elevator, he met up with Bess Lomax Hawes, who suggested that they went to Alan Lomax's room to collect him, before going down to the conference room. When they arrived at Lomax's room Lomax suggested that they should have a drink. And, of course, one drink led to another. Soon, Lomax was telling stories, one after another, and before they knew it, three hours had passed. There were 'stories about working with his father, stories about people we all knew, stories about people only he knew, stories about doing the work. Three hours of it. It was just magnificent'. Jackson continues:
I remember one sentence out of all the sentences he said that night. He had gotten onto the subject of academic folklorists and he pointed down to the floor, towards the place however many stories below us they were doing their speechifying:
They squoze and they squoze, he said, and they produced another generation of pedants just like the generation of pedants they wanted to replace. But without the beautiful manners.
How can you not love somebody who can summarize a generation of ambitious and competitive pedants like that? That was the best evening I ever had at an American Folklore Society meeting."
At last, a story that I can relate to, about a man whom I now feel able to understand and empathize with, because in this instance he was right. Too many people feel able to pontificate these days on folk music. And often their knowledge comes from books and libraries, rather than from the actual lips of the people who have produced this music. But it takes guts and determination to produce recordings such as the ones that Alan Lomax made in Mississippi in the 1940s and '50s. Read his book, 'The Land Where the Blues Began', and listen to his stories about being run out of town after town by white sheriffs, who objected to him mixing with black people in his search for the music of America. And, despite such treatment, Lomax continued in his quest throughout his life. This book and CD set are, indeed, a fitting tribute to one of the world's great song collectors.
In a sense, Alan Lomax does not need defending. His work is there for all to see and hear. I have some practical experience when it comes to collecting songs and tales etc. I know how difficult it can be to get singers to actually sing in front of a microphone. And I also know how easy it is for later academic folklorists to sit in their ivory towers and criticise the people who actually get out into the field. That is why I prefer to read what Alan Lomax had to say about his singers, rather than read the later comments of people whose motives often remain hidden and unknown.
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Feb 15 - 06:14 AM
Would go along with what Mike said 100% - too often is the work of pioneers denigrated and dismissed when taken on hearsay or out of context.
Would also go along with Jackson's recommendation "Read his book, 'The Land Where the Blues Began'" to get a picture of both the man and the context
Jim Carroll
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
From: Mrrzy
Date: 09 Feb 15 - 10:21 AM
I knew this would be the place to put that article. Great info from y'all. Fascinating stuff.
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 09 Feb 15 - 02:51 PM
A pedant is someone who is excessively concerned with minor details. Generally, Alan was certainly anything but that. But ever seen cantometrics?
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Feb 15 - 03:01 PM
"But ever seen cantometrics?"
Seemed to go the same was as Charlie Seeger's Melograph - overtaken by the computer before it ot off the ground
Wasn't there a similar project on dance - Choreometrics?
Jim Carroll
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 09 Feb 15 - 03:04 PM
Should read "same way"
Jim Carroll
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
From: Felipa
Date: 09 Feb 15 - 05:35 PM
Peter Kennedy's account seems to me "tongue in cheek"
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
From: Felipa
Date: 09 Feb 15 - 06:02 PM
I would not jump to the conclusion that Lomax asked the guards to point guns and be domineering with the prisoners; I expect that's the way the guards acted anyway.
Also his selectivity in wanting to hear "authentic" songs would be common to folklore collectors working among any group of people. "after a few fruitless circuits of greater Castleisland, Munnelly complained to Carroll: 'Sometimes I'll go through this sort of thing for two solid days and wind up with some ould one singing I'll Take You Home, Kathleen'." http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/heritage/in-search-of-lost-rhyme-an-irishman-s-diary-on-the-song-collecting-of-tom-munnelly-1.2091397
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
From: Brian Peters
Date: 10 Feb 15 - 08:34 AM
I'm surprised that this hasn't attracted more comment, given the status of the subject, and the controversial nature of the programme.
I'd suggest that anyone who's interested listens to the entire 13-minute broadcast rather than relying on the written transcription, which paraphrases a lot and omits several very contentious statements. Now, there are far greater Lomax experts out there than a mere Englishman like me, and I hesitate to take issue with eminent American professors, but this programme seems to me so determined to find fault as to lose any sense of balance.
You can guess at what's coming by the partisan tone of the title: 'How Lomax segregated music'. What - the man who brought Hobart Smith together with Bessie Jones and Ed Young - a segregationist? Doesn't sound quite right. The nature of some of the criticism will be familiar to anyone who's read Dave Harker and the various critiques of Cecil Sharp: the collector finds only that which fits his own preconceptions, thus presenting an inaccurate picture of the culture in question. We read in the transcript that "If a man gave him a Tin Pan Alley number or a church song, Lomax wasn't terribly interested". The actual quote in the audio is: "If a man gave him a Tin Pan Alley number or a church song, Lomax would wave and just drive away". After hearing one song he didn't approve of? Really?
Karl Hagstrom Miller tells us that, "There's a difference between what folklorists were searching for, and what people were listening to and enjoying". Even if we grant him the assumption that the commercial music that people were "listening to and enjoying" was also what they were actually singing, you wonder whether Lomax's collection would have been of greater value if he had assiduously recorded every Tin Pan Alley ditty and thus left himself starved of time and tape to record the unique stuff that he found. As Felipa says, some kind of focus is essential to this kind of collecting.
Miller also criticizes the narrowness of Lomax's collecting criteria: "He asked for songs that fit into his idea of old-time folk songs." You have to wonder what 'his idea of old-time folk songs' might have been, given that during his collecting career he recorded such an astonishing variety of African-American material including fiddle tunes, Menhaden fishermen's rowing shanties, Mississipi fife and drum bands, children's singing games and lots of sacred music, as well as the blues (both acoustic and electric) and prison work songs that the programme chooses to focus on almost exclusively.
"Where does he find his real, raw, authentic black music?" asks the presenter, before stating with finality: "In the penitentiary." Period. But what about the church, the front porch, the fishing village? Ah, but now we're told, in a tone of incredulity, that "It would take fourteen years before he recorded in a black church!" I'm not sure what year they've counted from, but Lomax's first tapes were made in 1946, and he recorded in three black churches in 1948. Who's done the research here? I found that in two minutes.
And that passage about the convict 'trembling and sweating', that Mike Yates found so disturbing? Yes, it is disturbing, but like Felipa I read it as Lomax's horrified account of routine brutality in the camp. Yet the programme makers, by insinuating the statement that 'reluctant subjects could be coerced' are effectively telling us that prisoners were forced to sing at gunpoint to Lomax's order, an outrageous suggestion.
Much is also made by Dwandalyn Reece and others of the intertwining of black and white music over many years, the implication being that Lomax was either unaware of it, or deliberately suppressed his knowledge of it. It's a good general point, but Lomax was the man who made recordings of Hobart Smith, of Sid Hemphill, and of Dock Boggs, for heaven's sake!
Finally, the remark that really made my eyebrows his the ceiling (again omitted from the transcript, but cropping up at 4' 37' in the audio): "Here's the real problem. Lomax's blind spot. He was in search of pure black music, not realising that, for the most part, it wasn't there." Anyone who's looked at folk music in any depth knows very well that looking for 'pure' anything is likely to be a fruitless task, and I doubt very much whether the above represents Lomax's own words. But should we believe that there was no distinctly African-American music during the period Lomax was collecting?
It's true that the programme makers pay lip-service to Lomax's huge contribution, and at least they got Dom Flemons along to provide a token balancing opinion, but overall this is highly prejudiced. I know it's healthy for the giants in the field – like Cecil Sharp himself – to have their methods and their conclusions held up to scrutiny, and perhaps Lomax had an unattractive side too, but this is just a demolition job.
More debate on this, please!
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
From: Deckman
Date: 10 Feb 15 - 09:02 AM
Brian ... well done. I have also viewed, several times, the interview. If one opens his brain to it, there is a LOT of information. After I try to get some sleep, I'll post again about another aspect of the interview ... which is Lomax's comments regarding "popular music." He put,in very few words, the essance of my life long complaint. CHEERS, bob(deckman)nelson ((btw ... I enjoyed your concert in Seattle a little while back))
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 10 Feb 15 - 09:46 AM
Have you ever heard the proverb "The tall tree catches the wind"? It means that the person who stands above the crowd gets gossiped about.
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
From: Brian Peters
Date: 10 Feb 15 - 09:50 AM
I've heard it called 'Tall poppy syndrome' but, yes, that's apt.
Hi Bob Deckman!
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
From: Lighter
Date: 10 Feb 15 - 11:08 AM
> 'How Lomax segregated music'.
Absolutely and insufferably absurd.
> Read his book, 'The Land Where the Blues Began'" to get a picture of both the man and the context.
The best advice. Even after growing up during the Civil Rights Era (Parchman Farm, cross-burnings, murdered Freedom Riders, slaying of Medgar Evers, the bombing of churches), I found Lomax's account of conditions in southern Mississippi in the '30s - in *and* out of prison - appalling almost beyond belief.
> He was in search of pure black music, not realising that, for the most part, it wasn't there.
Maybe what this means is that "pure black music" wasn't in the prisons. Overlooking the "pure," a lot of it obviously was: most of the black convicts (some of them elderly in the '30s) had grown up in a segregated and marginalized society mostly uninfluenced by Tin Pan Alley and supposedly "pure" white music.
From the article:
"This much is undeniable: right at the time the Civil Rights movement was trying to bring whites and blacks together in a common cause, Lomax drew a hard line between white music and black music that — with help from the record companies — helped keep us apart."
This is so vastly exaggerated as to be almost meaningless. Lomax certainly made an intellectual distinction between black and white *styles* and *preferences* because he saw such distinctions - as have most other people. A "hard and fast line"? Never. A look at the intro to "Folk Songs of North America" shows what malarkey that is. And the record companies had been segregating white- and black-style disks from long before Lomax appeared on the scene - in part to make it easier for buyers to find what they were looking for. (You mean there's no discernible difference today between "Country-Western" and "Rhythm 'n' Blues"? And is that difference segregationist and racist?)
As Bryan suggests, the "helped keep us apart" may be the most foolish statement of all. The actual evidence for that is...what? How many segregationists even heard of Alan Lomax? And if they did, how many said, "Black music? Blues? Thank God this Lomax guy has taught me to hate it!"
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 10 Feb 15 - 12:48 PM
I'm familiar with the name Karl Hagstrom Miller because he wrote a very poor book in which he selectively marshalled quotes from commentators on blues to serve the absurd notion that blues music did not arise as folk music. He showed so little familiarity with the history of folk music scholarship in that book that e.g. he pictured the use of the word "ballad" by a folklorist as evidence that the folklorist thought the song in question had a pop music association. (You know, "ballad"?)
The disassociation of early blues from folk music (which has zero actual merit -- all the guys W.C. Handy's age said the same thing Handy did, blues originated as folk music) has been popularized by the late Stephen Calt (because he was an unreliable eccentric who had a huge axe to grind with folkies) and Elijah Wald (because he was ignorant about early blues when he wrote his 2004 book, but had read Calt's Skip James book).
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
From: GUEST,Fred McCormick
Date: 10 Feb 15 - 01:26 PM
Brian Peters. "More debate please".
Let me get the easy one out of the way first. Alan Lomax never recorded Dock Boggs. Boggs recorded commercially before the second world war, and for Mike Seeger and several others following his rediscovery. But not Alan Lomax.
More importantly, to call Lomax a segregationist is just plain ridiculous. Lomax in fact voiced his disgust at racism and at the Southern penal system in very passionate and highly eloquent terms on many occasions. For starters read the book everyone else has recommended, The Land Where the Blues Began. Also, read the sleeve notes to Murderers' Home, the LP of Parchman Farm prison songs which was issued in the 1950s. (Sorry, I can't remember whether they were incorporated into the either of the two CDs which Rounder made of Lomax's PF recordings, Murderous Home and Don'cha Hear Poor Mother Calling and I don't feel like getting off my butt to take a look.) Come to think of it, would Guthrie, Seeger and the rest of the New York radicals have had anything to do with him if he had been in favour of racial segregation?
In any event, the article is misleading in two respects. Firstly, Lomax never recorded in a black church in his early days because of the limitations of his recording equipment, not because of any antipathy towards the music. Secondly, Lomax recorded in at least one black college. I can't remember the details, but some of the results are on one of the Deep River of Song CDs.
For that matter, far from being a segregationist, Lomax was the man who encouraged the Georgia Sea Island Singers and Hobart Smith to record together, in an attempt to reconstruct the music of the anti-bellum American South.
Regarding what Lomax did or did not record, yes he was looking for what he regarded as the authentic music of America, and that precluded tin pan alley songs. But even if he had wanted to record everything there's a question of time and cost, and recording media in those days was hideously expensive.
Then there's the passage about "But when the Lomaxes were able to get the cooperation of a prison warden, their subjects could be coerced. "Presently the guard came out, pushing a Negro man in stripes along at the point of his gun," Lomax wrote about one session. "The poor fellow, evidently afraid he was to be punished, was trembling and sweating in an extremity of fear. The guard shoved him before our microphone.""
This is naive beyond belief. The whole point of the prison system is that it was intentionally brutal and Lomax, or any other collector would simply have had to go along with it. Indeed, had Lomax been this guy's lawyer - and yes, some Black arrestees did have lawyers – the guard would still have pushed the prisoner in at the point of a gun. That was simply the way Black prisoners were treated. No fault of Lomax's.
What infuriates me about this piece is that it seems to draw on the work of two folklorists, neither of whom I am familiar with. However, if either of them has made any criticisms of Lomax's collecting methods, I'm willing to bet they are a lot more balanced and objective than the piece of writing we're discussing.
Let's not forget who we are dealing with. Alan Lomax was, together with Hamish Henderson, the man who discovered Jimmy MacBeath and Davy Stewart. He was the man who helped to kick-start the English and Scottish folk revivals. He was also the person who first unearthed Fred McDowell and, while his father John Lomax deserves most of the credit, he was there when the two of them discovered Leadbelly.
He made the first in depth audio interview of any musician that I ever heard of, namely Jelly Roll Morton, and followed it up a couple of years later with a similar groundbreaking recording of Woody Guthrie. When he wasn't doing all that, he somehow found the time to conduct extensive field trips in Italy and Spain. This at a time when Spain was a fascist country and deeply hostile to Marxists like Lomax. Indeed, he spent much of his time in that country being hounded by the goons of Franco's police forces.
Add to that, his work in the Bahamas and his 1959 Southern Journey, and the wonderful array of recordings which came out of that, and we are face to face with the man who could justifiably claim to be the world's most important folk music collector - ever.
Alan Lomax's methods are not above criticism, and I have come across too many complaints of his hassling his informants for them to be ignored. Nevertheless, his is not a name to be trifled with, or to be abused in some shoddy article by some reporter or other who probably hasn't a clue what he is talking about.
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
From: GUEST,Fred McCormick
Date: 10 Feb 15 - 01:33 PM
Sorry folks. I just posted the above and realised I'd made a bollix of the following sentence. "Boggs recorded for commercial record companies and for Mike Seeger and several others following his rediscovery. But not Alan Lomax."
It would make more sense had it read, "Boggs recorded commercially before the second world war, and for Mike Seeger and several others following his rediscovery. But not Alan Lomax." The Seeger recordings were of course subsequently issued by Folkways.
Also, regarding Joseph Scott's comments about Karl Hagstrom Miller. That would figure, and probably explain why his name was unknown to me.
The sentence mentioned in your first paragraph was corrected in the post above, but since you made more comments this post is left in place. --mudelf
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
From: Lighter
Date: 10 Feb 15 - 02:02 PM
Thanks, Fred.
> "Presently the guard came out, pushing a Negro man in stripes along at the point of his gun," Lomax wrote about one session. "The poor fellow, evidently afraid he was to be punished, was trembling and sweating in an extremity of fear. The guard shoved him before our microphone."
First of all, can anyone believe that Lomax was expressing his approval?
Second, black or white, the man was a convict in the rural South in the 1930s, and the guard was "pushing," not striking. (If he had been, Lomax would have said so.)
Third, the guy was probably trembling because he'd suddenly been summoned before a white authority figure. Did he keep trembling after he found that Lomax only wanted to hear songs?
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 10 Feb 15 - 02:18 PM
From the show:
"There certainly were not a lot of people who were interested in African-American culture." After Newman White had written his '20s book that was more sensibly reasoned than anything Alan Lomax ever wrote? After Howard Odum's '20s books? After Dorothy Scarborough's '20s book? After Thomas Talley's '20s book? After Abbe Niles' section of Handy's '20s book? Krehbiel's 1914 book? E.C. Perrow? The Thomas brothers? Charles Peabody? Etc.?
"He imagined himself in battle with... the radio." No, he WAS in battle with the influence of the radio on folk music. No "imagination" was involved there at all, you patronizing...
Even when giving Alan "his due" they don't know what they're talking about.
Hagstrom Miller says Alan Lomax asked for "old-time folk songs." Oh no! He actually didn't do that as consistently as his father did, but in any case, wasn't that exactly the point of what he was doing? No one _needed_ to document what Lil Green sounded like for posterity, because Lil Green was being recorded commercially, because her style was current.
"He never recorded at black colleges." Fort Valley State College was a black college. Alan Lomax, 2/27/42 letter to Harold Spivacke: "I had definitely decided to go down [to record at the Fort Valley Folk Festival] when I noticed that John Work... who... is using our blanks for field purposes... might do the recording in my place and thus save the Library a considerable sum of money.... May I suggest that the following funds... be allocated to this project." This was the festival where e.g. Sidney Stripling b. about 1882 was recorded singing "Coonjine." (Which is definitely an old-time folk song, not Lil Green like Alan should have been trying to document for posterity.)
Hagstrom Miller or whoever it is saying that we don't have an opportunity to hear what middle-class and upper-class African-Americans were into. Gee, were those the people who could afford to buy more _commercial_ records than poor blacks could? By the likes of, say, Duke Ellington, whose 1930-1949 commercial studio recordings fill about thirty CDs?
Oh the scorn on the word "penitentiary." How relatively little-warranted (ask Leadbelly whether he wished the Lomaxes never existed). But how dramatic!
Alan Lomax said he wanted to "restore the balance," "cultural equity," with someone edited to respond, "That's a very complicated issue...." No, it's not. Alan's interest (however well carried out) in the meek getting more voice relative to the powerful in order to create "balance" for all individuals was virtuous and is not a complicated notion at all. Recording what Memphis Slim thought about whatever was giving voice to a relatively marginalized man while meanwhile the unmarginalized didn't need that.
Regarding reenforcing stereotypes: Did Alan Lomax ever claim to anyone that Cab Calloway or John Coltrane didn't make real black music? If so, I haven't seen it.
The music Alan Lomax recorded described by the narrator as "his music": here we go. Since when was that _Alan's_ music? Interesting, eh?
Alan was "trying" to collect true African-American cultural expression, the female interviewee says. Let's see, what _was_ Alan recording when he recorded the Pratcher brothers? Oh yeah, true African-American cultural expression. Who's "trying"?
All in all, I'd give the show an F.
I have plenty of criticisms of Alan Lomax (along with plenty of praise). He was a sloppy theorist. He was a romantic. People think e.g. that we have evidence that blues music originated in the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta (we have more that it originated in Louisiana) because... he felt like saying so. Sounded good to him (and it was a place _he_ had recorded relatively early, hmmm): reason enough to announce that to everyone for decades, if you're a sloppy romantic.
The use of the word "segregation" in summing up Alan Lomax's work is preposterous and offensive. Young whites who throw around interesting-sounding outright falsehoods about deceased whites because the market will bear it (and is more interested in falsehoods about _whites_ than in e.g. Fred McDowell, is there some irony there?) should be ashamed of themselves, and forgotten, and they will be.
One more: "It's possible that without Alan Lomax we wouldn't have had rock and roll as we know it."
Oh my God hahahahahaha! The rock and roll sound a la "Rock The Joint" by Chris Powell 1949 and "Rock That Boogie" by Jimmy Smith 1949 existed as of 1949 because black jump blues musicians got the idea to update mid-'40s jump blues to sound like gospel music as a sacrilegious joke. ("Rocking," deacons, etc. in the lyrics were references to "rocking in the bosom of Abraham" etc., and the prominent backbeat had not been in almost any mid-'40s jump blues and was brought over from black gospel to serve the obvious joke, which offended black parents, which pleased black kids.) The fully developed rock and roll sound a la late '50s Little Richard was already top ten nationally on the black charts in 1949 ("Boogie At Midnight" Roy Brown, etc.). That modernistic jump blues made for young blacks had NOTHING to do with researching old folk songs, it had to do with professional jazz-oriented black-pop-oriented black musicians putting a new (fairly slight, all and all) twist on the likes of professional jazz-oriented black-pop-oriented mid-'40s Louis Jordan, Roy Milton, etc. Roy Brown didn't know who Son House was at the time, because why would he want to? He was in the music _business_ and trying to get young blacks _interested_ in dancing to his music as of 1947-1949.
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 10 Feb 15 - 02:22 PM
"First of all, can anyone believe that Lomax was expressing his approval?" Yes, when it's read by someone else in that snickering tone, the naive radio listener who is even younger than Dom Flemons can.
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
From: Brian Peters
Date: 10 Feb 15 - 02:45 PM
Whew! That's told 'em. Glad to see some people with heavyweight knowledge joining the fray.
"Alan Lomax never recorded Dock Boggs. Boggs recorded commercially before the second world war, and for Mike Seeger and several others following his rediscovery. But not Alan Lomax."
Yes, I have those recordings. It's just that Boggs sings 'Country Blues' on 'Alan Lomax: Blues Songbook' which I don't own but assumed consisted of AL's recordings. But perhaps not - you know more than I do, Fred.
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 10 Feb 15 - 02:51 PM
"It's just that Boggs sings 'Country Blues' on 'Alan Lomax: Blues Songbook' which I don't own but assumed consisted of AL's recordings." Alan Lomax's name is routinely used in marketing recordings actually made by others. Which is arguably pretty much what Alan would have wanted. :-/
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
From: Brian Peters
Date: 10 Feb 15 - 02:56 PM
OK, happy to be corrected by experts.
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
From: GUEST,Hootenanny
Date: 10 Feb 15 - 03:20 PM
Fred,
Re Doc Boggs, without getting up and looking through my shelves to find a DVD I am certain that Lomax did film Doc Boggs. It was at one of the Newport Folk Festivals if my memory is correct, after Mike Seeger had persuaded Boggs to start playing again. I believe it was probably at the same festival that he recorded Hobart Smith with The Georgia Sea Islanders.
Just checked my shelf after all Three tracks by Doc Boggs filmed in 1966: Country Blues / Pretty Polly / I Hope I live. The Video was called Shady Grove not all of which was filmed by Lomax.
In 1940 Alan Lomax did assemble an RCA re-issue of commercially recorded 78's which included Doc Boggs and Blind Joe Taggart among others. But obviously they were not his recordings.
Apart from the book mentioned above I would also recommend the Lomax biography by John Zwed "The Man Who Recorded The World".
Whatever faults the man had we all have much to thank him for in his work.
Hootenanny
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
From: GUEST,Mike Yates
Date: 10 Feb 15 - 04:17 PM
Just to confirm that the Dock Boggs recording of "Country Blues" issued on the double CD "Alan Lomax Blues Songbook" (Rounder CD 1866-2) was, in fact, recorded by Alan Lomax at the 1966 Newport Festival. The booklet notes say that the track is "previously unissued".
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 10 Feb 15 - 05:14 PM
Quoting from the show's narrator: "This much is undeniable: Right at the moment when the civil rights movement was trying to bring blacks and whites together in a common cause, Lomax drew a hard line between white and black music -- one the record companies were happy to exploit -- that kept us apart."
A lot of phoniness here. "Right at the moment": Alan Lomax acted like himself in the '30s, '40s, '50s, '60s, '70s, '80s, '90s. But in this show it was at a particular "moment" -- oh the cheap fictional irony.
"trying to bring blacks and whites together in a common cause" Such as Alan Lomax encouraging whites to enjoy black music in hopes that that would bring whites and blacks together, which it generally did?
"Lomax drew a hard line between white and black music" Such as what white music and what black music? Alan's belief that folk blues was at first entirely developed by blacks isn't conflicted with by any real evidence.
"one the record companies were happy to exploit" Screwed-up chronology, or at least misleading (but close enough for government work?). In the '30s and early '40s the record companies were already in the habit of almost completely doing that, while meanwhile the Lomaxes were putting white folk songs and black folk songs in books together.
"kept us apart" What kept people apart? White and black people buying _Sounds Of The South_ in 1960 and on it hearing white and black people, such as E.C. Ball and Vera Hall one right after the other on Side One, or Sid Hemphill and Wade Ward one right after the other on Side Two? (What was Atlantic Records "exploiting" there?)
When Alan and Pete Seeger recorded Wade Ward performing "Chilly Winds" in 1939, was that because they didn't realize "Chilly Winds" was part of a family of songs mostly associated back in the day with black people? If Alan had realized that, would he have not wanted to record it?
Alan Lomax writing about bluegrass in _Esquire_ in 1959: "a sort of mountain Dixieland combo in which the five-string banjo... carries the lead like a hot clarinet...." That's Alan not giving into the notion some held that bluegrass was "pure" folk music, and instead, more accurately, associating it with the "hot clarinet" that readers of _Esquire_ in 1959 knew had largely been popularized by black clarinetists. This was keeping who apart from whom how?
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
From: Brian Peters
Date: 10 Feb 15 - 06:09 PM
"Just to confirm that the Dock Boggs recording of "Country Blues" issued on the double CD "Alan Lomax Blues Songbook" (Rounder CD 1866-2) was, in fact, recorded by Alan Lomax"
Even happier to be vindicated by experts...
Another good post, Joseph Scott.
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
From: Janie
Date: 10 Feb 15 - 09:00 PM
Not a Lomax scholar, nor a folk music scholar. Not inclined to elevate people to sainthood or see their personhood as iconic because of their body of work other contributions to knowledge, art, culture, etc. Can appreciate and admire and very grateful for any number of people's bodies of work or efforts in particular areas without needing for them to be more than normally human.
I thought that 13 minute clip pretty objective and balanced. Didn't slam Lomax. Didn't elevate him to sainthood. Acknowledged the benefit all of us have received from what he documented and recorded, noted the limitations and the caveats, including the thoughtful and nuanced observations and informed opinions of other scholars.
Unless one mistakes a song collector as a higher order of human being, I'm not sure what the ruckus is about.
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
From: Brian Peters
Date: 11 Feb 15 - 03:57 AM
You don't need to believe Lomax to have been a superior being to revel in the wealth of music he made available, or to recognize that his work is head and shoulders above most others in the field.
Accusing him of 'segregation' and mis-representing African-American musical culture, or of 'coercing' prisoners to give him songs, is about as serious as it gets. The programme is full of misrepresentation, unfair allegation and factual inaccuracy, mostly contained in the narrator's script rather than the academic contributions. Preceding that with a token acknowledgement of Lomax's great contribution does not equal objectivity.
Nothing to do with the sainthood of song collectors, just a regard for truthfulness. That's what the ruckus is about.
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
From: GUEST,Fred McCormick
Date: 11 Feb 15 - 05:54 AM
Apologies to various people who corrected me over the issue of Lomax recording Dock Boggs. Well hell, even I can't be rght all of the time. Just once every blue moon would be a good start.
Apologies also if smebody else has mentioned it already, but John Szwed's The Man Who Recorded the World; A Biography of Alan Lomax is an excellent book. If you want to understand Alan Lomax you couldn't do better.
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
From: Lighter
Date: 11 Feb 15 - 07:16 AM
Nothing fair and balanced that distorts both the good and the bad.
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
From: Brian Peters
Date: 11 Feb 15 - 08:23 AM
Just doing a bit of online browsing, I find that 'Goodnight Irene' originated in Tin Pan Alley. So it seems even the claim that the Lomaxes rejected TPA songs is questionable.
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
From: GUEST,Fred McCormick
Date: 11 Feb 15 - 10:00 AM
Brian. The Lomaxes probably didn't know that at the time. In fact Leadbelly said he'd got it from his uncle, so they probably took it as some locally composed song.
Even so, I've always found both Lomaxes to be more inclusive collectors than many others. After all could one imagine Sharp collecting Cajun songs, blues, and various other idioms that don't quite fit Sharp's view of folksong? I hardly think so, and I hardly imagine that, if Maud Karpeles had pointed out a Negro busking outside a piggly wiggly, she and Sharp would have legged it back to discover that the busker was none other than Blind Willie McTell, who'd had quite a career recording for commercial record companies in the previous decade? John and Ruby Lomax did though, and got some very important stuff.
Can't imagine anyone else of Alan Lomax's generation recording something like a three hour interview with Woody Guthrie either. Again, Guthrie would have been regarded by Sharp et al as something less than the real deal.
One might recall Maud Karpeles' comments to the effect that she and Sharp got into the Southern Appalachians in time to collect pure "English" folk songs, just before radio and records introduced the serpent of Hillbilly music into the region. two decades later, there's Alan Lomax recording hillbilly music in the Southern Appalachians.
And it's not just the SAs. Alan Lomax was recording urban blues and bluegrass well before either idiom became acceptable to American academia.
Equally, studying his Italian recordings, I am struck by how many were products, not of the Italian folk music tradition, but of folklore dance troupe revivalism. (I think ditto for the Spanish recordings, but can't be sure without digging them all out.) Not sufficiently authentic for Sharp's tastes perhaps, but bloody enjoyable none the less.
Come to think of it, how many people know that Home on the Range was written by a doctor and an ear, nose and throat specialist at that. Now that would have stopped John Lomax dead in his tracks. "Cain't collect that one boys. That's not an authentic folksong. Why, ah do believe it was the product of one of them there medical doctors."
Sorry to bash the ghost of Cecil Sharp about the head with the ghosts of the two Lomaxes. But there's somebody else, of whose methods we can be extremely critical, whilst recognising the enormous contribution he made to our knowledge of folksong.
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
From: Brian Peters
Date: 11 Feb 15 - 10:32 AM
Fred: I agree with much of what you say, including that Sharp set his aim more narrowly than Lomax, and would not have crossed the street for the sake of a black busker.
However, despite Sharp and Karpeles self-confessedly seeking 'English (sic) folk songs', they managed to note any number that Sharp surely knew were indigenous American ('Pretty Saro', 'John Hardy', 'Wild Bill Jones'), some that could be considered 'hillbilly music'('Old Joe Clark'), pieces from the Civil War ('Battle of Shiloh'), at least one chain gang song ('Swanannoa Town [Tunnel]'), several hymns - despite Sharp's distaste for them ('Sinner Man', etc) - and a number pieces that he noted were of 'negro' origin, although collected from white singers. Oh, and a clutch of fiddle tunes, too.
Karpeles actually seems to have used stricter criteria than Sharp when she travelled to Newfoundland after his death. Perhaps he wasn't quite the purist everyone believes.
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
From: GUEST,Fred McCormick
Date: 11 Feb 15 - 11:08 AM
Brian. Pretty Saro isn't indigineous American. It's descended from The Maid of Bunclody. Also, Old Joe Clark is only a hillbilly number if it's played in hillbilly style. Sharp probably heard someone singing it as an old time dance tune.
Also, there's a note somewhere, possibly in English Folksongs From The Southern Appalachians, to the effect that Sharp had previously included included The Sweet Sunny South (Roud 772 Take me back to South where I first saw the light. Not the other one about the civil war.), but removed it when he found it was a pop song.
Regarding the rest, they are probably exceptions which "proved the rule". IE., somebody sang one of them to him. He found it interesting and noted it down.
BTW., I'm not going to hang my arse over the side of the ship on this one, but are you sure Swannoah Tunnel was a worksong? It certainly has the feel of one. It's just that, in all my delvings through Negro worksongs, I've never come across anything which resembles it.
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
From: Brian Peters
Date: 11 Feb 15 - 11:53 AM
Fred: I'll take your word for 'Pretty Saro'.
'Swanannoa Tunnel' is a version of 'Nine-Pound Hammer' / 'I Got a Bulldog'. See this thread. The actual tunnel was constructed by convict labour in the 1870s.
"Old Joe Clark is only a hillbilly number if it's played in hillbilly style."
Yes, well that was a bit of mischief. It's also true that Sharp knew that Joe Blackett was a 'banjer-man' but chose to collect only his unaccompanied songs. But he did note down 'OJC' - and those fiddle tunes.
"somebody sang one of them to him. He found it interesting and noted it down."
Well yes - and isn't that just what a diligent collector should do? He could have told the singer that's not what he wanted and moved on. And he (or MK) wasn't obliged to include them in the book. I'm just saying that during his Appalachian trips C# began to develop the idea of recording a particular singer's repertoire, rather than just the 'English' ballads, and to make some notes about individual singers.
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
From: Brian Peters
Date: 11 Feb 15 - 11:57 AM
"Sharp had previously included included The Sweet Sunny South (Roud 772 Take me back to South where I first saw the light. Not the other one about the civil war.), but removed it when he found it was a pop song."
Just had an email from Jeff Davis (who is lurking here) to say that 'SSS' is in the 1932 edition of 'English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians', i.e. not removed during Sharp's lifetime.
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 11 Feb 15 - 12:31 PM
Hi Janie,
I don't think Alan Lomax was more than human in the way you suggest -- and not even close. E.g., I'm a blues researcher and I think the way he misled people about where we have evidence blues music began is a (lasting) travesty of empty self-indulgence.
And also, this NPR show is a joke. I'll try to spell things out more clearly (or at least again) about the show, using some of the examples I've already given and adding more.
27:55 Interviewee says "There certainly were not a lot of people who were interested in African-American culture." This is simply wrong, and I can give many more examples than Newman White, Howard Odum, Dorothy Scarborough, Thomas Talley, Abbe Niles, Henry Krehbiel, E.C. Perrow, the Thomas brothers, and Charles Peabody if you like. She's giving Alan Lomax credit for something that happens not to be true (because this show is partly about giving Alan credit, whether or not you actually know what you're talking about, to balance it partly being about criticizing Alan, whether or not you actually know what you're talking about).
29:30 When the show says Alan "imagined" that radio was a threat to the continued existence of folk music, that's patronizing, contrived nonsense, because it was indeed a huge threat to it. That's not pretty "objective" at all, it's just contriving a pretend criticism out of thin air.
31:05 "Here's the real problem, Lomax's blind spot: He was in search of pure black music, not realizing that for the most part it wasn't there.... [B]lack and white cultures _had_ been mixing.... It was blacks who learned and then played the waltzes, jigs, and reels at white people's parties." Okay, letting us know what Alan didn't realize -- except when I open up my _Sounds Of The South_ booklet I see Alan writing this: "... [Blacks] had replaced white fiddlers as the musicians at plantation balls. They learned British jigs and reels...."
33:17 "'He asked for them to find songs that fit into his idea of old-time folk songs." He was collecting old-time folk songs. The implication that there was something wrong with him collecting them is baloney. Currently popular music was already being documented by the record companies. (And Alan Lomax had a far better idea what "folk" music was than the interviewee Hagstrom Miller does.)
33:51 He wasn't interested in recording at black colleges: Unfair because untrue, see my post above.
34:00 We don't get the chance to hear what relatively wealthy blacks were into: no, yes we do, on commercial recordings, because relatively wealthy blacks bought more records than poor blacks did and were catered to accordingly. And Alan Lomax was very aware of that. And Hagstrom Miller can't figure it out. His suggestion that because of Alan's interests we can't hear what "urban African-Americans" were into is hilarious: how many records did Lonnie Johnson make?
34:54 Alan Lomax's words are read by someone else as if Alan thought it was funny (there's an actual chuckle before "The poor fellow...") when a prisoner was frightened. Is that fair to Alan? Is adding that chuckle your idea of being "pretty" objective?
36:00 "That gets into stereotypes...." Was the interviewee even talking about Alan personally when she said this? The editing of the show is happy for us to think she was. "They're not smart." Is this the Alan Lomax who wrote publicly that Zora Neale Hurston was one of our greatest folklorists and wrote to her in 1935 suggesting they collaborate that we're talking about?
38:04 "Lomax drew a hard line between white and black music" Same booklet, describing "Jesse James," Alan says it has both "black" and "British" influences and is obviously excited about how the blend sounds. As with the _Esquire_ example I gave in another post, and many other examples I could give, that interest in blending is the _opposite_ of trying to enforce hard lines.
38:06 "kept us apart": Alan recorded e.g. the black fife player Ed Young with the white banjoist Hobart Smith because he was aware of commonality between black music and white music (contrary to to what the show would have us believe) and interested in bringing black and white people together (contrary to to what the show would have us believe), and did (contrary to to what the show would have us believe).
38:23 "He was trying to...." He wasn't trying to, he was. (Speaking of biases.)
Honestly, the show gets almost nothing right. Even down to its creative mush about how Alan might have had something to do with rock and roll arising (no).
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 11 Feb 15 - 02:16 PM
"Alan Lomax was recording urban blues... well before either idiom became..."
Well, he recorded Jelly Roll Morton. Jelly was older than the typical urban blues pianist (e.g. about 15 years older than Pete Johnson and Roosevelt Sykes) and I think that's part of the reason Alan was interested in him, he was after old folk songs such as "Alabama Bound" and "Funky Butt" and potential roots of early blues.
I'd say in general Alan wasn't interested in recording urban blues as such. E.g. Sampson Pittman wasn't what Detroit really had to offer in the way of urban blues, he was largely ruralish in style. Even when he recorded pianists, Alan was interested in doing so in places more like Clarksdale, not places more like Memphis. As mentioned in other posts, of course there was little point anyway in someone non-commercially documenting the playing of a Roosevelt Sykes type when the record companies already were documenting his playing.
Not that I think there was as much difference between Clarksdale piano and Memphis piano as Alan seems to have believed. On a related note, I think Forrest City Joe made urban blues, given that he was an emulator of the real Sonny Boy Williamson, who made urban blues, but I think Alan recorded Joe despite that, not because of it. Alan was dismissive of the Butterfield Blues Band in part because they were rock-influenced, which they were -- Bloomfield said himself in about 1966 that he started out in the '50s with rock and roll -- but also I think because he wasn't that interested in urban blues anyway.
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
From: GUEST,Jeff Davis
Date: 11 Feb 15 - 03:18 PM
All, Any hope of the producers of the program seeing any of this discussion? None?
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
From: GUEST,Joseph Scott
Date: 11 Feb 15 - 04:31 PM
Any hope of them caring? Judging from the show, no.
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 11 Feb 15 - 04:35 PM
I sent the following tweet:
Critical review of @Studio360show "Black Mirror" & Racist Stereotypes/Alan Lomax http://bit.ly/1EZ8jSA @MudcatCafe http://bit.ly/1KKjfE3
That links all of the parties and a shortened link to the page. See what happens.
SRS
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
From: GUEST,Mrr at work
Date: 11 Feb 15 - 05:34 PM
Thanks for the detailed analysis! I *knew* this was the right place!
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
From: Janie
Date: 11 Feb 15 - 09:55 PM
Hi Joseph,
Like I said, I'm not a Lomax or a folk music expert at all. I read the posts that preceded my post, then went and took a listen to the segment regarding Lomax before I posted.
While I have spent a fair amount of time listening to his recordings of African-American music and certainly know how important the collections of recordings he and his father made are, I really don't know much else about either of them.
I suspect my limited knowledge is similar to the vast majority of listeners to NPR (or Mudcat would have an even larger membership than it does:>). And coming from that place, I did not interpret the broadcast to have been slamming Alan Lomax, nor to have called him a racist or segregationalist. I heard it as offering some different perspectives regarding effects on his work, largely stemming from the great stature that work has. I think different perspectives have validity and found the piece interesting but not derogatory of the man or of his work.
The passionately worded defenses of him and his work posted by several folks here are startling to me, as I did not consider the broadcast to be attacking him. But I am a just a hillbilly git and don't know much and maybe my hearing is wrong.
Will also say that while I have read nothing so far that helps me understand why so many people appear to be taking offense to that NPR piece, I still enjoy and appreciate the knowledge, research and perspective many are posting about song collecting and collectors. It is clear that such endeavers do involve passion, so perhaps I shouldn't be so surprised, even if I think the reactions are a bit irrational.
Thanks all.
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
From: GUEST,Fred McCormick
Date: 12 Feb 15 - 07:06 AM
Brian Peters. 'Swanannoa Tunnel' is a version of 'Nine-Pound Hammer' / 'I Got a Bulldog'. So it is. Sorry, but my brain box gets more and more dysfunctional with each day that passes.
"Well yes - and isn't that just what a diligent collector should do?" Of course and it's worth remembering that Sharp collected some songs from an Irish singer in Marylebone workhouse. We know that Sharp's stated aim was to revitalise the musical proclivities of the English - and give them an English voice with which to do it. However, as I previously said, he doubtless came across stuff in the field, which he felt to be significant for one reason or another and noted it rather than let it be lost for evermore.
"Just had an email from Jeff Davis (who is lurking here) to say that 'SSS' is in the 1932 edition of 'English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians', i.e. not removed during Sharp's lifetime." Again, one of the vagaries of memory. I may be thinking of another song. Also, I think I was quoting MK, so where she said it, if she said it all is anybody's guess. Anybody know?
Joseph Scott "Well, he recorded Jelly Roll Morton." Yes, but it's important to take Lomax's own feelings into account here. Morton was rediscovered working in Washington, by a group of jazz enthusiasts, including the BBC's Alistair Cooke. When they asked Lomax to record him, he didn't want to know, saying he wasn't interested in jazz. To be fair, that probably reflects Lomax's ignorance of jazz at the time. This was the thirties after all, when the airwaves were awash with big bands and slick arrangements and crooning singers that were a million miles away from the down home sounds he'd been recording. In fact I'd think it quite possible that all Lomax knew of jazz was the music of the likes of Glen Miller and Benny Goodman, and hadn't realised this older stuff existed. In fact, I've always found Lomax's relationship with jazz problematic. He recorded JRM, compiled a book about him, and got him some recording dates, but that's about it. He was, after all, only a couple of years away from the New Orleans revival when, spearheaded by Bill Russell, a group of enthusiasts started documenting what was left of early new Orleans jazz. So perhaps he felt safest leaving that area of music up to them.
Where was I? Oh yes. The point is that Lomax was prepared to venture into pastures new when he could see a reason, his recordings urban blues and bluegrass being cases in point. Even so, it's important not to see him as too much of a trailblazer in that respect because American academia had also begun to waken up to the fact that a musician like Clarence Ashley played a lot more than just those old-time mountain ballads. Even so, whilst we can see that Sharp wasn't quite the insular collector of pure English songs that he cracked himself up to be, I would find the idea of Sharp recording someone like Forrest City Joe bizarre to put it mildly.
Anyway isn't it amazing, and doesn't it make a strange comparison with a certain thread about Ewan MacColl, that we've got this far without anybody hurling insults and blackening the name of the thread's subject with all kinds of ill founded and irrelevant codswallop.
Jeez. It's grand to be among civilised company.
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
From: Azizi
Date: 12 Feb 15 - 07:15 AM
I'm popping in to thank Joseph Scott for his comments.
I am an African American female and I've had mixed feelings about Alan Lomax since I read comments about what I (and some others) considered patronizing attitudes and actions toward Lead Belly (for instance, Lomax pressuring Lead Belly to perform songs wearing a prison uniform). My feelings were mixed because I didn't like what I thought was Alan LomaxI had mixe feelingsAt the same time, I was and still am very appreciative of the many African American songs and children's rhymes that Alan Lomax collected. I admit that I've not done any research on Alan Lomax, and Joseph Scott's comments were new information for me and have helped me know more about Lomax with regard to African American music.
I posted an excerpt of Joseph Scott's comments about that NPR show (his comment debunking the interviewee's point about there may not have been rock and roll music where it not for Alan Lomax)on this post of my pancocojams blog:
http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2015/02/three-recordings-of-rock-joint-by-jimmy.html
Three Recordings Of "Rock The Joint" by Jimmy Preston, Chris Powell, & Bill Haley
I also posted another excerpt of a comment from Joseph Scott about the rhyme "Down By The Banks Of The Hanky Panky" on http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2012/05/song-sources-for-down-by-banks-of-hanky.html "Song Sources For Down By The Banks Of The Hanky Panky"
[I published that post because my long running cocojams website is no more and therefore the pages about "Down By The Banks Of The Hanky Panky" that I had on that cultural website aren't accessible.]
Thanks again Joseph Scott.
-Azizi Powell
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR
From: Azizi
Date: 12 Feb 15 - 07:37 AM
My apologies for my poor job of editing my comment.
Here's the corrected portion of that comment:
I am an African American female and I've had mixed feelings about Alan Lomax since I read comments about what I (and some others) considered patronizing attitudes and actions toward Lead Belly (for instance, Lomax pressuring Lead Belly to perform songs wearing a prison uniform). At the same time, I was and still am very appreciative of the many African American songs and children's rhymes that Alan Lomax collected. I admit that I've not done any research on Alan Lomax, and Joseph Scott's comments were new information for me and have helped me know more about Lomax with regard to African American music.
-snip-
One good thing about curating my blogs is that I can correct typos and my bad cut and paste mistakes, since I am still so prone to them :o)
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Racist stereotypes&all/NPR