Alan Lomax, who has died aged 87, created an archive of some of the most influential American folk and blues music, and was the first to record such artists as Muddy Waters, Leadbelly and Woodie Guthrie.
The pieces he collected have had an enormous influence on the development of popular music, from Bob Dylan to the dance musician Moby, whose recent album Play included three songs using Lomax's recordings.
Lomax collected folk music in Spain, Italy, the Caribbean and Britain. But most of his work was done in the Deep South and West of America; the Archive of American Folk Song, which he and his father compiled for the Library of American Congress, contains 15,000 songs from all over the country.
The above has been taken from a much longer article in today's Daily Telegraph 22 July 02Nigel
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