Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Another View From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 22 Jul 02 - 09:38 PM Better a bit of thread drift than a punch-up at a graveside.
("Why is it that the more U S flags on a car the more aggressive the driver?" Well, maybe if you'd taken the Worlkd Cup a bit more to your heart that wouldn't be true any more. The Flag of St George, the English one - not to be confused with the Union Jack - has quite lost its overtones of nastiness these days, thanks to that.) |
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Another View From: BH Date: 22 Jul 02 - 09:30 PM Exactly---Mike Seeger championed her career. That was the house she worked in. As usual the topic drifts---Bobert thinks the VW thing was important---OK. I have had the "pleasure"of spending time in an orignal "bug". No thanks---until my career as circus clown takes off and I fit into the circus car I will leave the hum or rattle of a VW to those that dear Adolf intended it for----the masses that he abhored...Ach such a dear fellow vas Adolf. It still amazes me that Americans who now love the horrendous SUVs also adored the Nazimobile. A sociologist could have a field day figurint that one out. Another off topic question---why is it that the more U S flags on a car the more aggressive the driver? Bill Hahn
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Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Another View From: Barry Finn Date: 22 Jul 02 - 09:14 PM Shame, the man's grave is still warm. If there's a need to talk ill of the dead at least wait till their family & friends have had the time to respectively grieve their loss. I can recall hitchhiking through the south in the 60's & how the old black man who offered me a ride started to shake with fear when we were stopped & grilled by a state trooper (never mind that I was a longhair). Trying to get into prisons & juke joints during the 40' & 50's to record the music he did had to be a walking nightmare. Ever been in a southern prison? Lydia Parrish (who?) collected songs of the Georgia Sea Islands during the early 40's & treated the music as if she were the only one deemed worthy of collecting it,(& made that known to other collectors) treated the music as if it were a possession, much to the loss of the folk world. How many here are familiar with her work (she did some good too) & how many in comparison to the Lomax's. Thank the stars that there were people like Allen (Child wasn't all that forgiving of the peasant {peons in his eyes?} folk he collected from). Of all his collecting of work songs, ring games (who would know of ring games & athems), blues & etc, etc & more etc, who in folkdom has not benifited? Really if it weren't for him where would the collected music of Saemus Innis, Peter Kennedy or Ewan McColl be, was he a drug dealer or more of the doctor who administered the shot in the arm that traditional music needed, which may at the time been rattling on it's own death bed. If those faults that some are finding in him today were mine I'd have gone on to the other side smiling, feeling that my life was well spent in knowing that the good I did far out shined any of the bad. That ol death bed is a hell of a lot more comfortable when you know you've done your best, you've been loved by others & if you can count among your deeds just one action that has given the world only a grain of good you can be assured that when you rise from the bed of shit that you lay in you'll come up smelling like roses. What was that about tending our gardens? I know that the music I love, because of this man & those like him, would only be a shadow of what it could've been & that the library of Congress's folklore achives may never had existed. Barry |
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Another View From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 22 Jul 02 - 09:00 PM Here's a good site about Elizabeth Cotton, with lots of good stuff.
What's supposed to be wrong with the Seeger's giving Elizabeth a job helping run their household? Is the idea that if you give someone a job in an office that's OK, but if you give them a job in your own home, that's demeaning?
The story is she was working in a shop and she found Peggy Seeger lost and crying and looked after her till her mother was contacted, and after that they found they all liked each other, so the family offered her a job. And then she got back into playing music after 25 years not doing so, and the younger Seegers helped her get the attention and recoignition she deserved.
As for whether it was Pete Seeger's home, he was born in 1919, Elizabeth came to work in 1947. My son's older than thta, and he's got his own place - but this is his home too. (Home is "where, when you go there, they have to let you in"). |
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Another View From: Bobert Date: 22 Jul 02 - 08:58 PM Jerry: Good points, my friend. As we know, those with self serving motives tend to be found out for there is nothing hidden that one day won't be found and no secret kept that one day won't be common knowledge. You know the source... Bobert |
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Another View From: GUEST,Fact Checker Date: 22 Jul 02 - 08:44 PM Member Armen Tanzerian writes: "Hey, look, Pete Seeger is the sweetest guy in the world, and in the '40s, Elizabeth Cotten was a maid in his rather privileged family home. Should we hold that against him? Of course not. I'm sure Pete was the first to celebrate her recognition, and I'm sure he didn't try to finagle royalties for Freight Train." Another Mudcat member spreads false information. Elizabeth Cotten DID NOT work in Pete Seeger's "rather prvilileged home." She worked in the home of his father, Charles Seeger, many years after Pete was grown and gone. By that time, Charles Seeger was long divorced from Pete's mother and remarried with three younger children: Mike, Penny and Peggy. Just because someone is a Mudcat member instead of a guest, doesn't mean they know whatdafuck dey talkin' 'bout. |
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Another View From: Jerry Rasmussen Date: 22 Jul 02 - 08:31 PM Hi, Bobert: I was interested in your obersvations about some white folkses in Richmond who are condescending, and don't realize it. One thing that I've noticed in some white liberals is that they are committed to helping the downtrodden as long as they don't have to get to close to them, or recognize that they are complex humans, with as much cultural richness as they may material poverty. I even read where someone posited that the poor are sometimes almost treated like pets that we take care of in a paternalistic, distant way. I have no idea how Alan looked upon the folks he "discovered." He may indeed have seen them as his discoveries, not as real people with human dignity. But then, maybe he didn't. The best lesson that can be learned from all of this is not whether Alan Lomax explotied or helped poor musicians. It's that we examine ourselves and make sure that we don't help people for our own selfish reasons. We are as capable of doing that as anyone else. Jerry |
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Another View From: DougR Date: 22 Jul 02 - 08:08 PM Seems to me the good far outweighs the bad. Good posts, Art,McGrath. DougR |
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Another View From: Bobert Date: 22 Jul 02 - 08:05 PM Well, first of all the important stuff. Yo Bill Hahn. Frive a VW for two hours on a country road on a cool evening, just listening to the unique sound of the VW engine as go go up and down through the gears and you'll understand the fascination. And let's not forget that Dr. Porsche had tried to have the Italians produce the VW before turining to the receptive Germans. And lets also not forget that if it weren't for the English who occupied Wolfsburg after the war, *and* built the posr war bugs that theu might have died right there in Germany. Now, as for the Lomax. Having lived in Richmond, Va. for a good portion of my life and having just recedntly purchased "The Complete Plantation Recordongs of Muddy Waters" I do have one observation to make. In Richmond there exists a culture of folks who are very paternal, who are condesending and who don't have a clue that they are doing it. No, this doesn't explain the copywrite stuff but does expalain the Lomaxs behavior in dealing with folks, especially black folks. Yes, as Alan Lomax asks Muddy questions on this CD one gets the feeling that he is interrogating the poor man rather than interviewing him. This is the way I felt when I ran into those folks in Richmond. You could hear it in their speech patterns, their accents and the manner in which they carried themselves. But, in the Lomax's defense, it was more cultural than individual. And, I too, felt uncomfortable posting on the other thread for this reason. Bad behavior is bad behavior, irregarless of the reason... Bobert |
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Another View From: Armen Tanzerian Date: 22 Jul 02 - 07:54 PM Hey, look, Pete Seeger is the sweetest guy in the world, and in the '40s, Elizabeth Cotten was a maid in his rather privileged family home. Should we hold that against him? Of course not. I'm sure Pete was the first to celebrate her recognition, and I'm sure he didn't try to finagle royalties for Freight Train.
But Lomax made a habit of treating his "discoveries" like musical exhibits and implying that were it not for the Great Alan, none of them would ever have become known. And apparently, an appreciable part of his living consisted of royalties for Goodnight, Irene. These are not the habits of a nice guy. That said, whether or not Muddy Waters got paid for his 1941 Lomax field recording, Muddy said years afterward that listening to the one copy that Lomax left with him was the turning point in his career, because he realized, as he said, "I can do this!" |
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Another View From: Amos Date: 22 Jul 02 - 07:36 PM One of the first passages we all make in our way to adulthood must be to appreciate the difference between raw, complex, volatile reality and the clean little categories we use to corral it into our measured thinking processes. It's a lot harder to face the truth about the raw material than it is to jump around an index of pre-defined categories and use them to face the world with. Unfortunately, it is a lot less fun, and a lot less truthful. As far as the Lomaxes go, I can weep over their sins as much as anyone's, but I can say at the same time that I am very glad they accomplished the good they did in the world. It added something of great worth to my life. I can forgive a passel of SOBs when they do that, and have! A |
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Another View From: BH Date: 22 Jul 02 - 07:32 PM I was not going to get into this can or worms, but after the VW and Autobahn thoughts I had to put my 2 worthless cents in. Certainly Lomax left a positive--in general--legacy. Ron's points are well taken. Overcoming your background/upbringing to the best of your ability is certainly an admirable thing. His legacy is the treasures of music discovered that might otherwise not have been heard of again. The "Guest", however, made a valid point. What then is a "good" person. Philosophers can pontificate for hours (years)---who really knows. They can tell you too that the chair on the table does not exist because chairs are not on tables. Hitler was not a "good" person---the legacy of a VW and a highway is certainly not outweighed by the other historical horrors---Mussolini made the trains run on time---Hooray. Lomax, at the least, left a positive legacy with only some very slight negatives in his character that might preclude him from sainthood. Anyway, I never did know why Americans like the VW. Bill Hahn |
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Another View From: WFDU - Ron Olesko Date: 22 Jul 02 - 07:09 PM Good point Bob. That is one of the reasons Ayn Rand never appealed to me - everything was either black or white, no shades at all. Everyone looks for quick answers and having worked in broadcast news for 12 years (in my other life)you are 100% on the mark. Tell it fast, tell it first, worry about the details later - even though the reporting was supposed to be thoroughly checked first. Too often the real story is clouded by the facts. Ron |
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Another View From: Deckman Date: 22 Jul 02 - 06:37 PM I am truly enjoying these comments. I think that Ron and Art and Big Mick (who makes up these names), and others, have all said some very sensible statements. I'm wondering out loud about something here ... in our present day world of instant news, flash/bang videos, etc., are we all just maybe wanting someone to QUICKLY tell us the "BOTTOM LINE?" Was he, or wasn't he? What's the REAL story? Did he or didn't he? Hmmmm? I 'dunno? CHEERS, Bob |
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Another View From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 22 Jul 02 - 06:29 PM About the things that make you blush inwardly to remember? And you thank God you aren't famous enough to be hounded by the iconoclasts... |
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Another View From: Art Thieme Date: 22 Jul 02 - 06:28 PM Both extremely negative developments. Hot air heating of the passenger compartment with cables that kept breaking so you had to drive around all summer with the heat on. Try checking fluid levels on the various chambers of your battery on the great old VW bus and you'll quickly learn what it neabs ti be a contortionest.----------The only real value to the Interstate Highway system is to get the trucks off the beautiful 2-lane highways I took instead whenever I could. Art |
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Another View From: Peter T. Date: 22 Jul 02 - 06:23 PM Sounds like a cue for another thread -- what was I thinking? yours, Peter T. |
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Another View From: Big Mick Date: 22 Jul 02 - 06:17 PM Leave it to the village idiot (GUEST), to follow up well written and well thought out commentary with drivel such as above. Thanks, Art & Ron & Kevin, for the perspectives you have given. These complex men have always left me with alpha and omega feelings. In the end the question, it seems to me, is "Is the world a better place for their having been here?". It would appear, this site is testament to this, that the world is much better for their having trod the path. We all have our quirks and we all have things that we would rather no one knew. Hell, I attended a Ronald Reagan rally once. But don't tell anyone, OK? 1975. Not sure what the hell I was thinking. Oh well............................... |
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Another View From: GUEST Date: 22 Jul 02 - 06:04 PM Doing something 'good' doesn't make a good person. Adolf Hitler could be credited with the VW Beetle and the freeway/motorway system. |
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Another View From: Mudlark Date: 22 Jul 02 - 05:52 PM Thanks to all for these postings. This is, in large part, what makes Mudcat a favorite part of my day. |
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Another View From: Ron Olesko Date: 22 Jul 02 - 05:44 PM Well put Art. Everyone is entitled to work out problems and become a better person. I think the legacy that Alan Lomax left us is extraordinarily positive. None of us would be on a website devoted to folk music if it weren't for the work of Alan Lomax and others like him. Ron |
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Another View From: Art Thieme Date: 22 Jul 02 - 05:22 PM Alan Lomax talked about his other side in Land Where The Blues Began---about the racism inherant in his being a product of southern culture. He also spoke to those same aspects of his father's character. He, after recognizing these downsides, sought to purge them from his personality. Joseph Campbell, for all his good work, was also quite antisemitic. It took me a while to get just part way past allowing that sad fact to color my feelings about the man. I'm still working on that one. But I choose to appreciate and give for all the monumental collecting work that the Lomax family has done. As I said in the other Lomax thread, It just doesn't matter that he put a copyright on trad stuff he found. There was no alternative precedent then and there was no ethical negative judgment tied to doing what they did. When the Weavers saw that doing it was possibly somewhat unfair and shady, you never saw the name PAUL CAMPBELL (their chosen group pseudonym) on traditional material ever again. Michael Cooney now sends royalties on his recordings of traditionbal songs to the Library Of Congress Folk Culture division because he feels everyone who records those songs ought to support more collecting work. The things noted here in this thread by it's originators might be strictly true but it's of no more real importance than fining out that the greatest pitcher in baseball history often threw a spitter. If the catcher didn't mind getting spit on his glove (and never got too bent out o' shape over it), then what the hell? And don't give me that crap about truth being an absolute----because it isn't. One guys freedom fighter is the other woman's rapist. Art Thieme |
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Another View From: katlaughing Date: 22 Jul 02 - 04:34 PM This is really interesting to someone who never knew that much about them except what John had collected in the way of cowboy songs. I appreciate the different perspectives and education provided. Thanks, kat |
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Another View From: Ron Olesko Date: 22 Jul 02 - 04:18 PM I also understand that Lead Belly learned Good Night Irene from his uncle. There is also the story that Lead Belly pulled on a knife on John Lomax. It is true that Lead Belly did spend some time as driver for the Lomaxes, but John also booked Lead Belly into some decent concerts and secured a home for Lead Belly. After the split, I understand that Lead Belly had difficulty booking his own concerts. I'm not trying make excuses, but I think we need to put things in perspective. In 2002 things would be different, perhaps people would even give credit to John Lomax for helping an ex-con find decent work. Alan and John Lomax were businessman, and that is an important fact to remember. That doesn't make them criminals or evil people. The "folk process" is never easy, especially when commercial aspects take hold. |
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Another View From: McGrath of Harlow Date: 22 Jul 02 - 04:01 PM Without Alan Lomax we'd have lost most of the legacy of the people whom he's supposed to have exploited. Thanks to him we can learn to appreciate them, and learn from them.
Ewan MacColl had his dark side, and so did Woody Guthrie. So do we all, if the truth were told, but mostly it's well hidden, or there's no reason for anyone to go round digging it up and putting it on show.
But without them we would be a lot poorer, and so would the world. (And that "assault against Bob Dylan's sound system at Newport" never happened the way it's been written up in folk legend anyway, as I understand - though I wouldn't gve a monkeys' if it had anyway; whatever happened didn't do Dylan any harm - in fact the reverse once it got recycled into legend.) |
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Another View From: Giac Date: 22 Jul 02 - 03:28 PM Thanks, Armen, and Bill. Having heard such accounts for years, I, too, declined to post on the other thread. Likewise, this is not to devalue the man's work, but it is in protest of the denial of credit and remuneration to those who deserved it. Mary |
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Another View From: Big Mick Date: 22 Jul 02 - 03:06 PM Well said, Bill. And thanks, Arman, for posting that. |
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Another View From: catspaw49 Date: 22 Jul 02 - 03:02 PM Excellent post Bill. The bitter and the sweet are often packaged together. Spaw |
Subject: RE: Alan Lomax: Another View From: Bill D Date: 22 Jul 02 - 02:56 PM ummmm...I avoided posting on the other thread, because I have met/seen Lomax twice, and I got the distinct impression that the general tone of the above was true. *sigh*.. The words 'pompous' and 'condescending' come to mind. I do not wish to detract from what he accomplished, nor malign the recently departed, I just know from my own experience that I doubt I would have been able to be civil to Mr. Lomax, had I dealt with him on a daily basis. People come as a package...you get the good and the bad together. I respect what he did that was good, while hoping that his shortcomings are avoided by future folkloreists and compilers. 'nuff said.... |
Subject: Alan Lomax: Another View From: Armen Tanzerian Date: 22 Jul 02 - 02:31 PM A friend recently passed along the following. I am not acquainted with the author, but I find myself agreeing more than not. I have heard a couple of stories of Lomax's behavior at Newport -- standing up two somewhat mystified Mississippi Delta bluesman in front of a largely white audience and instructing them to conduct a "carving session", for instance -- that have more than a tinge of paternalism, not to say racism, about them. MR. BIG STUFF Dave Marsh
Seeing Alan Lomax's obituary on the front page of the New York Times irked the hell out of me. Harry Smith syndrome all over again-the Great White "Discoverer" as the axis of cultural genesis. Lomax, wrote Jon Pareles, "advocated what he called 'cultural equity: the right of every culture to have equal time on the air and equal time in the classroom.'"
He did?
In 1993, when Lomax published The Land Where the Blues Began, his memoir of blues research in the deep South, Peter Bochan invited him to do a WBAI interview. Bochan ventured to Lomax that Elvis Presley stood as a great product of the Southern folk cultures. Lomax firmly denied this, and said that Bochan couldn't even know that Presley had listened as a boy to Sister Rosetta Tharpe's gospel radio show because "You weren't there." He said this so persistently and adamantly-with all the stupid "folklorist" purism that ruined the folk music revival-that Bochan went home and intercut Lomax's prissy voice and dumb assertions with excerpts from Beavis and Butthead. It aired that way.
Even sticking to the blues, Lomax cut a dubious figure. As a veteran blues observer wrote me, "Don't get too caught up in grieving for Alan Lomax. For every fine musical contribution that he made, there was an evil venal manipulation of copyright, publishing and ownership of the collected material."
The most notorious concerns "Goodnight Irene." Lomax and his father recorded Leadbelly's song first, so when the song needed to be formally copyrighted because the Weavers were about to have a huge hit with it, representatives of the Ledbetter family approached him. Lomax agreed that this copyright should be established. He adamantly refused to take his name off the song, or to surrender income from it, even though Leadbelly's family was impoverished in the wake of his death two years earlier.
Lomax believed folk culture needed guidance from superior beings like himself. Lomax told Bochan what he believed; nothing in poor people's culture truly happened unless someone like him documented it. He hated rock'n'roll-down to instigating the assault against Bob Dylan's sound system at Newport in '65-because it had no need of ediation by experts like himself.
The nature of the expert mattered, too. 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. He eliminated Work from his second Mississippi trip. He also burned Muddy Waters for the $20 he promised for making the records.
Maybe the fact that Lomax served as a folk music "missionary" (to use Bob Dylan's term) offsets all this. Provided that it doesn't turn out that Lomax used and discarded ethnic workers worldwide the way he used Work, I guess there's a case to be made. But I do hope that people understand that when Pareles says that "Mr. Lomax wasn't interested in simply discovering stars," part of the meaning is that he didn't want them to get in the way of his self-importance. Sometime soon, we need to figure out why it is that, when it comes to cultures like those of Mississippi black people, we celebrate the milkman more than the milk. Meanwhile, every sentence that will be uttered about Lomax this week-including these-would be better used to describe the great musicians he recorded in the U.S., the Bahamas, and elsewhere. Reading Gordon's book serves as a good corrective.
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