Okay, now I'm really pissed off at Marsh. I decided to look at The Land Where The Blues Began and see what Lomax said about the discovery of Muddy Waters. Marsh's claim is:

Lomax's obit made the front page mainly because he "discovered" Son House and Muddy Waters. But in "Can't Be Satisfied", his new Muddy Waters biography, Gordon shows that Lomax's discoveries weren't the serendipitous events the great white hunter portrayed. Lomax was led to House and then Waters by the great Negro scholar, John Work III of Fisk University. Gordon even shows Lomax plagiarizing Work, and not on a minor point. (See page 51) In his book, Lomax offers precisely one sentence about Work.

In The Land Where the Blues Began, Lomax clearly states that "people told us we must hear...Muddy Waters." In other words, he was led there. He does not make it seem serendipitous that he found MW, or make himself out to be a great White hunter.

Who is the "us?" Himself and John Work! In other words, the "one sentence" he offers about Work is precisely to say that "Work and I were led to Muddy Waters together by a third party." If this is inaccurate, so be it. But it doesn't seem to be grandstanding, or claiming "I discovered MW all by myself!"

Finally, Marsh is downright dishonest in claiming there is only one sentence about John Work. There are two. The second is the very first sentence of the book's acknowledgements, which runs: "I have many people to thank for contributions on fieldwork data--Samuel Adams, John Work, and mainly Louis Jones..." Later on Lomax gets to thanking less important people, like his father! Anyone who thinks Work did not get his due is not reading very carefully.

I think Marsh is just pissed off because Lomax didn't like Elvis. Well, guess what? At Lomax's funeral, one of Elvis's producers, Steve Belmont, recounted Elvis's enthusiasm at learning a song called "Lordy, Lordy, Lordy." Elvis asked Belmont to guess where he'd gotten it. When Belmont guessed that it must have come from a 50s group like the Comets, Elvis replied "No, that was recorded in the 1930s by two geniuses: John and Alan Lomax."

Amen, Elvis!