Early in 1942, the government restricted the use of shellac, and blues and gospel releases - at 125 - were half what they had been in '41. In July 1942 the president of the American Federation of Musicians, J.C. Petrillo - worried about the effects of jukeboxes on live music - announced a ban on all recording, and the studios were closed for two years...Although commercial recording of music came to a standstill with the Petrillo ban, one recording concern was unaffected - the Music Division of the Library of Congress. Since 1933 they had been collecting all types of folk music on record to form a permanent reference libary in their Archives. A dedicated group of researchers, led by John A. Lomax, had been combing the countryside with small mobile recording units, concentrating particularly on prison farms and penitentiaries. Over the course of the nine years up to 1942 they had recorded about 4,000 titles by at least 850 black singers, quite apart from their activities in hillbilly and other spheres...Leadbelly was discovered and recorded by Lomax in the State Penitentiary, Angola, Lousiana, in 1933... Source: "Recording The Blues," Robert Dixon, New York, 1970, Stein and Day Publishers.

Mark