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Country Blues => Weenie Campbell Main Forum => Topic started by: Pan on February 06, 2008, 06:08:32 PM

Title: The Lomax Legacy
Post by: Pan on February 06, 2008, 06:08:32 PM
Hi all.

I was just yesterday very fortunate to spot a small add on a local Helsinki newspaper, and thus hurriedly attend to a 1,5 hour lecture by Ph.D. Anna Lomax Wood and Ph.D. Todd Harvey, staged by the American Resources Center, the Finnish National Library, and the U.S. Embassy. The title of this lecture was Seeking the roots ? the Lomax Legacy.

Anna Lomax Wood is the daughter of Alan Lomax, Ph.D, Director, Association for Cultural Equity (ACE), Hunter College, New York City.

Todd Harvey is a Ph.D., Folklife Specialist and Curator of the Alan Lomax, The Center for American Folklife of the Library of Congress.

The event took place in a small auditorium in the Helsinki University's National Library. Among yours truly, some half a dozen scholars or blues enthusiasts were present. This event surely could have been promoted better!

The presentation was very good with ample sound, photograph, and video samples played on a small screen.

There were a great many samples of recordings done by both John and Alan Lomax, beginning from 1935 prison songs like ?Go Down, Old Hannah?, up to R.L. Burnside. I need not to go into detail on this forum, to cite all the artists the Lomax?s have documented. Apart from the American Continent, they collected songs worldwide, and presented the ideas of universal ?folk song families? and ?dance music families? to the ethnomusicologists.

The music samples alone were very good, and the presentation was very sympathetic. I know that the Lomax family has a mixed reputation among scholars, but I for one, am very pleased to have met the daughter of Alan Lomax, she was a very sweet person, and seemed to be genuinely interested in artists copyrights, among other things. The family?s? contribution in collecting American folk music is invaluable anyway.

To make this post worthwhile to others, here are the latest internet links I could gather:

The American Folkife Center: http://www.loc.gov/folklife/

The Association for Cultural Equity: http://www.culturalequity.org/index.html

Alan Lomax Collection: http://www.loc.gov/folklife/lomax/alan/alanlomax.html

Pan

Edit: specifying the links, typos
Title: Re: The Lomax Legacy
Post by: CF on February 06, 2008, 06:48:33 PM
John brought us the music of Leadbelly & Alan recorded Son House in 1941 & 1942. For that I am grateful.
Title: Re: The Lomax Legacy
Post by: Kokomo O on February 06, 2008, 07:57:03 PM
Thomas Jefferson didn't own slave?
Title: Re: The Lomax Legacy
Post by: Parlor Picker on February 07, 2008, 01:22:04 AM
Also check out:

http://www.shirleycollins.com/aotw.htm

English folksinger, Shirley Collins, gives an excellent multi-media talk about her travels with Alan Lomax in the late 1950s which I have seen twice.  The description of discovering Mississippi Fred McDowell really fires the imagination.  Apparently at the time, Lomax wrote one word in his notebook: "Perfect!".

There is also a book entitled "America Over The Water" which I don't doubt is also available over the water in North America.
Title: Re: The Lomax Legacy
Post by: Rivers on February 08, 2008, 10:36:36 PM
The Leadbelly bio clarified it for me. To get a bit 'deep' for a second, we are all victims of our own time, some of us push the limits. John did his best to advance the cause as he saw it, and so did Alan. Everything has to be viewed through the perspective of that particular time in human history. The value we feel for what we've inherited in the present day, and our knowledge of the history, is all we need to be able to pass judgment. Thank God for the Lomaxes, is what I say.
Title: Re: The Lomax Legacy
Post by: Mr.OMuck on February 08, 2008, 11:19:11 PM
Just read a section of Elijah Wald's wonderful Josh White Bio  dealing with Lomax, and I have to concur.
Title: Re: The Lomax Legacy
Post by: Prof Scratchy on February 09, 2008, 04:03:24 AM
Just echo what Parlor Picker just said: if you get a chance to the Shirley Collins presentation of her travels with Alan Lomax, don't miss it. Wonderful photographs, sounds, acting, and above all great and vivid memories from a comfortably mature and grounded lady recalling the long summer days of a youthful love affair. See it!
Title: Re: The Lomax Legacy
Post by: Chris A on February 06, 2009, 09:50:45 AM
I understand the admiration and appreciation given the Lomaxes, but I think both legacies should be borne in mind. When deeds are good by default, how good are they?
Title: Re: The Lomax Legacy
Post by: oddenda on February 06, 2009, 05:47:17 PM
One may disagree with John or Alan Lomax's methods, but who else is/was there doing that s**t at those points in time. They did the best they knew how with the tools at hand. They also should not be lumped together quite so readily, being two vastly different generations apart... maybe more! I will make mention here that I worked for/with Alan one year of my life at the LofC and found him a monomaniacal polymath who often irritated others, but who accomplished an incredible body of work around the world in his six decades of "work". He may have been difficult and opinionated, but could be bent to other possibilities if a strong enough case could be presented. This I know from personal experience; we parted as friends and remained so until his death.

Love them or hate them, our world would be much more barren without either's contributions to our knowledge of "folk" music; in Alan's case, around the world. The fact that John A. Lomax took interest in African American folkways was something tremendously daring for one of his generation. His son took the ball and ran even further with it. Both could not help reflect the racial attitudes of each other's time; Alan, in his way, tried to go against them. I know it's hard not to judge them by the mores of today or the recent past, but it does them a dis-service to do so.

yrs,
     Peter B.

p.s. - Read Nolan Porterfield's bio of JAL; John F. Szwed is working on one on Alan.
Title: Re: The Lomax Legacy
Post by: Bunker Hill on February 07, 2009, 01:50:27 AM
p.s. - Read Nolan Porterfield's bio of JAL; John F. Szwed is working on one on Alan.
Click the John Lomax tag at the foot of this thread for a link to read a review of The Last Cavalier.
Title: Re: The Lomax Legacy
Post by: CF on February 07, 2009, 06:32:24 AM
I will say this, it was very confusing to me when I started buying Leadbelly CDs & I saw the name Lomax in the song credits. Whether this was a just action on their part it does seem to have been a standard way for producers to make money off of their efforts back in the day . . . & they did have to make some money. Otherwise, nothing or very little may have been achieved. Of course I don't know all the details so I'll step back from a definite judgement.
Title: Re: The Lomax Legacy
Post by: Chris A on February 07, 2009, 09:29:04 AM
I also recall a RCA Leadbelly album that credited Lomax. No acceptable explanation?these are not mistakes, just plain theft and exploitation. Louis' second wife, Lil Hardin Armstrong, received a cheque for $500 when her tune, "Just For the Thrill" was revived by Ray Charles and picked up by a number of well-known artists. She caught the first thing smoking and went to New York (from Chicago), the people at Southern Music (I think that's who they were) realized that they were not dealing with a dummy, made up some excuse about there not having been tim to tabulate, and gave her a far more realistic cheque.

There was now also a second name in the credits (Don Raye), a guy who actually existed (some didn't) and was getting half of her royalties for adding a verse that nobody used. This sort of thing is who many artists started setting up their own publishing company.

I think the accomplishments of the Lomaxes?while they are certainly important?are seriously eroded by their shameless exploitation and downright racism. Has anyone here sen the March of Time film in which Leadbelly and Lomax portray themselves? If you have any doubt about John Lomax's racism, it and the outtakes from it will revise your thinking.
Title: Re: The Lomax Legacy
Post by: Bunker Hill on February 07, 2009, 09:39:56 AM
There was now also a second name in the credits (Don Raye), a guy who actually existed (some didn't) and was getting half of her royalties for adding a verse that nobody used.
Sidetracking somewhat, wasn't Raye's main claim to fame the fact that he wrote "Down The Road A Piece" which I have by Harry 'The Hipster' Gibson, Amos Milburn and Chuck Berry?
Title: Re: The Lomax Legacy
Post by: dj on February 07, 2009, 10:14:17 AM
Quote
If you have any doubt about John Lomax's racism...

I don't.  But then, I don't expect that any white person who was born in Mississippi in 1867 and raised in Texas would be free of racism.  If he had been born and raised in the same places 120 years later, his racial outlook would have been much different.  This is not to excuse his racism, just to put it in the context of his time and place.  We can certainly appreciate the music that Lomax preserved for posterity without that approval signifying every corner of Lomax's personality.   

As for

Quote
getting half of her royalties for adding a verse that nobody used...

Again, that's coming from a time and a place where values, and concepts of authorship, were very different from ours, and whose circumstances are lost to history.  It could have been some greedy publisher adding a composer credit to dip his hand into the till, but it could just as easily have been the publishing company feeling they needed an extra verse or two for the sheet music and going to someone easily at hand to get that material.  We'll never know.  I prefer to just note the facts and refrain from passing judgment.   

I learned to cut historical figures a bit of slack while reading Barry Lopez's Arctic Dreams years ago.  He described the captain of a whaling ship in the arctic shooting a mother polar bear's twin cubs, then laughing at the mother's distress for a while before finally shooting the mother.  I was outraged, then realized that, given the year under discussion, there was about a 1 in 5 chance that the despicable captain was my great grandfather.  In fact, given the fact that my great grandfather's log books are the most complete set of journals to survive from the last days of arctic whaling, the chances are probably considerably better than that.  This made me sit down and think long and hard about how we need to place the actions of historical figures within the context of their cultures, not ours. 

In the end, judgment is up to each individual.  But, absent any indication of actual evil, I prefer to think "If he/she had been born today, his/her actions and attitudes would have been different" and leave it at that.     
Title: Re: The Lomax Legacy
Post by: Chris A on February 07, 2009, 12:05:16 PM
dj: "Again, that's coming from a time and a place where values, and concepts of authorship, were very different from ours, and whose circumstances are lost to history.  It could have been some greedy publisher adding a composer credit to dip his hand into the till, but it could just as easily have been the publishing company feeling they needed an extra verse or two for the sheet music and going to someone easily at hand to get that material.  We'll never know.  I prefer to just note the facts and refrain from passing judgment."

We are talking about New York in the 1960's, hardly a time and place where values and concepts of authorship were any different than they are today. Theft is theft and the time element does not alter that. Equally unrealistic is the notion that "it could just as easily have been the publishing company feeling they needed an extra verse or two for the sheet music and going to someone easily at hand to get that material." Lil recorded "Just For the Thrill" for Decca in 1936 and all subsequent recordings use the same lyrics, with no additional verse. In fact, Lil was never able to find that mysterious verse?it was probably on a music sheet tucked away in the publisher's files.

So, this is not a matter of "passing judgement" as much as it is stating the facts. Ergo, we do know. Yes, we can look the other way and join the exploiters in saying to hell with the creative people. That just does not work for me?I have known too many creative people who were the victims of unscrupulous people on the business side of music, and, to be fair, that includes some who themselves were artists/composers.

It is very generous to give these publishing companies the benefit of one's doubt, but I'm afraid that reality speaks louder.
Title: Re: The Lomax Legacy
Post by: Pan on February 07, 2009, 04:12:39 PM
Normally I try to stay away from these kinds of discussions, but since I've had the misfortune of starting this one, I feel compelled to response.
 
First, I'd like to say that my intention was not to overlook racism in any way. If I did so, I apologize. I have seen the film footage with Leadbelly and John Lomax, and my reaction to it is, what I believe any normal human beings' would be.

Maybe I was being naive when I posted about my enthusiasm towards the material provided on this lecture. But it is simply too important to ignore. The world simply needs these recordings, even if they were acquired by wrongdoing. I'll thank Chris A. for reminding us for the fact. Chris, I really appreciate your standing up for the original artists, and your knowledge and experience of the mechanisms of the show business.

I wonder, if these lectures are being given in the U.S.A. too, and if they receive much criticism?

Respectfully yours

Pan

Title: Re: The Lomax Legacy
Post by: blueshome on February 08, 2009, 03:34:57 AM
It is very generous to give these publishing companies the benefit of one's doubt, but I'm afraid that reality speaks louder.

Just look at the battle recently in the courts (in London because the US doesn't recognise Cuba) over the Peer's "ownership" of the rights to Cuban musicians songs.
Title: Re: The Lomax Legacy
Post by: Mr.OMuck on February 08, 2009, 09:44:02 AM
Its certainly true that there were other people out there getting field recordings, mostly after the Lomax's who weren't turning it into a family business with a "screw the artist" policy. According to one first hand source who worked with Alan, he seemed to go out of his way to avoid or actively deny legitimate petitions from some of the people he recorded, for some modest compensation. That is unforgivable in my opinion, but in the larger scheme of things the Lomax's did provide a conduit from the isolated regional venues available to these people to the larger world, which is why we are even discussing this issue now. Would someone else have done it if they hadn't? Who knows, maybe, probably not though. The context in which to view this I think is the same as that which includes artworks and artifacts in museums acquired through questionable means. I am not here including Nazi plunder, which comprises a separate category imo. Perhaps every piece of pre-Columbian pottery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art did not arrive there with the most pristine  provenance but I for one am glad that large numbers of people get to see it and learn from it. I would not however argue with the legitimate demands for return from the governments of the countries of origin. Plunder, legitimate compensation or rip-off compensation these are the questions.
But why exclude ourselves from complicity here? Having known about this situation for forty years or more how many of us, the target consumers for the Lomax's output have been moved to do the legwork to track down the artists involved and send them a check for ten or twenty bucks? I just thought of this right now.
The most tragic case I've heard of was that of Solomon Linda the composer of Mubube, or as Pete Seeger called it Wemoweh or in its more popular and horrible incarnation The Lion Sleeps Tonight which made a gazillion flucking bucks. Died penniless in need of medical care in a hut. ...shit!
Title: Re: The Lomax Legacy
Post by: bnemerov on February 08, 2009, 11:11:46 AM
Or, Mr. O'M, Big Boy Crudup who (with some help from...was it Waterman?) came very close to a good payday for "That's All Right Mama"  almost 40 years after the record hit.
Pete S would never rip anyone knowingly---he heard a record, misunderstood the title, the group fools around with it in rehearsal; makes a recording....ooopps it's a hit. Decca (not Pete) didn't follow due diligence (oxymoron in the the music biz) in finding the real, copyright behind Pete's mistaken folk-song notion of the tune.

But back to the Lomaxes, father and son. Over the last few years I've become entagled in the affairs of these two, and because they're both dead and are spoken for by surviving family, the dialog has too often strayed from the facts.
I have to agree with Chris A---theft is theft. Alan was trained by his father who 1st put the Lomax name on others  creative work. (See Leadbelly's additional verse to the "Boweavil' song for his take on this issue). Alan, as he matured, tried to pull away from his father's orbit, I think. But financial desperation, too often, made him fudge the ethics once he left his salaried job at the LoC.

Which brings up: should we overlook Lomaxian personal failures in gratitude for the recordings made? My thought has always (long before "Lost Delta Found") been that the Lomaxes monopolized the field. The LoC---and we---would've been better served to have many folks using Presto recorders in their regions, recording all types of music. we've mostly got what the Lomaxes though important or had access to! This last is important. When the Atlanta History project sent out fieldworkers to interview elders, blacks interviewed blacks, whites whites, and so on. The detail gathered is astonishing. There is a book from this material that's a fabulous read. Lots of musicians (Riley Puckett's widow Blanche; a bunch of the Decatur St. crew, etc.) represented here with very little BS or romanticism.

Sorry for the digression. Back to the Lomax/LoC enterprise. I think others would have been happy to record music in their regions---much like the WPA writer's project in the 30s. But the Archive of Folksong was such small potatos---and the Lomaxes held it so closely---that few others got a chance.

Of course we can't know what might have been, but I've always loved the recordings made in Texas by John henry Faulk, especially those of African-Americans. He seemed to have a much better understanding and affinity for the black folks, and it shows in the recordings....so maybe if ????

Ah well.
Title: Re: The Lomax Legacy
Post by: uncle bud on February 08, 2009, 01:39:49 PM
Normally I try to stay away from these kinds of discussions, but since I've had the misfortune of starting this one, I feel compelled to response.
 
First, I'd like to say that my intention was not to overlook racism in any way. If I did so, I apologize. I have seen the film footage with Leadbelly and John Lomax, and my reaction to it is, what I believe any normal human beings' would be.

Maybe I was being naive when I posted about my enthusiasm towards the material provided on this lecture. But it is simply too important to ignore. The world simply needs these recordings, even if they were acquired by wrongdoing. I'll thank Chris A. for reminding us for the fact. Chris, I really appreciate your standing up for the original artists, and your knowledge and experience of the mechanisms of the show business.

I wonder, if these lectures are being given in the U.S.A. too, and if they receive much criticism?

Respectfully yours

Pan

Pan, not to worry, I see no reason to apologize. Looks like a good discussion has generated from it all to me, with some tough points being made all around.
Title: Re: The Lomax Legacy
Post by: Mr.OMuck on February 08, 2009, 02:34:08 PM
Quote
Pete S would never rip anyone knowingly---he heard a record, misunderstood the title, the group fools around with it in rehearsal; makes a recording....ooopps it's a hit. Decca (not Pete) didn't follow due diligence (oxymoron in the the music biz) in finding the real, copyright behind Pete's mistaken folk-song notion of the tune.

Agreed. Pete's no exploiter. There was a big article in the Times not that far back about the whole miserable affair, and pete expressed deep regret over having missed this.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/22/international/africa/22lion.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=solomon%20Linda&st=cse

PS. After rereading the article I see that it was Linda's daughter who died from not being able to afford medical care not Linda himself. Memory...ya know...old timers disease.
Title: Re: The Lomax Legacy
Post by: oddenda on February 08, 2009, 11:31:38 PM
Fellow Weenies -

I only knew Alan Lomax personally, and he was a difficult but brilliant monomaniacal polymath. The problem is, had the Lomaxes not existed, NOBODY would have done equal quality, dedicated work, no matter how romantically folks here think the opposite. Hell, I'm considered the world authority on Black secular music of the SE states BY DEFAULT. (George Mitchell came back to GA/AL after heading out to TN/MS about the time my decade was up - his initial GA recordings were Buddy Moss, and Peg Leg Howell, but then he headed West.) NOBODY ELSE GAVE A DAMN for the longest time (and most still don't), and so Bastin and I had free reign for a decade... for better or worse. This work of ours DID stimulate Kip Lornell, and Glenn Hinson in the region with Tim Duffy coming along much later. I do not disagree that John, and Alan, did things in ways I do not agree with. John A. was on a $1.00/per annum stipend from the LofC Archive with the loan of the recorder and discs... which he had to beg for time and again. He wasn't in it for the money, nor was his son.

NONE of us are/were - I certainly didn't flee to Australia with Robert Lockwood's earnings, no matter what he (or Annie, more to the point) thought! "My" stuff didn't sell for shit... Robert maybe 2500 copies (expecting 10,000), but I had many an album sell 200! Not the way to run a railroad. Chris A. is correct in what he says, but that was then, not now and that must be taken into account, no matter what our hearts and minds think at the present. People did what they did to the best of their ability at the time they did it. MUSICALLY, we are the better for it and it's really about the music, isn't it?! Muddy always had good things to say about Alan in our casual talks over the years, and said that Alan's sending him copies of some of his LofC sides got him thinking, "Hey, I can DO this." This was years before I worked with Alan. Think about all the people we know about who never made commercial recordings but who recorded for field recordists like the Lomaxes, no matter how much our biases disagree with their biases. Without them, our "outsider" knowledge would be limited to the commercial output alone. Easy on the knee-jerking, please. Even later, many a recordist had little to no money to spread around... if my dead grandmother (a D.A.R. member) only knew what I had done with "her" money! Basically, I burned out after a decade and ran out of "spare" monies.

We are all racists in some way or another, whether we know it or not... we are humans. It's an unfair world and we all try our best to get along and not hurt anybody - we often succeed, often not. Such is life.

May the farce be with you.

yrs,
     Peter B.
Title: Re: The Lomax Legacy
Post by: Mr.OMuck on February 09, 2009, 05:34:53 AM
Quote
and we all try our best to get along and not hurt anybody

I guess they don't have republicans in Austrilia. ;)
Title: Re: The Lomax Legacy
Post by: oddenda on February 09, 2009, 06:19:52 PM
Mr. O -

Actually, they do - but the meaning is different. Republicans want to end the British Queen/King being the official government head. Like Greg House said to his Australian cohort in the first season, "You've got the Queen on your money... you're English". Republicans here want Australia to be just that - a republic! It is the Liberal Party/National Party Coalition that is the equivalent of the US Republican Party. W's good buddy John Howard was the head of that (and government) for eleven years, +. Current head of government is Kevin Rudd and the Labour Party. The system owes much to the British... naturally!

My final generalizations were not Australia-centric at all, but applied to EVERYbody, including the US of A (which I left in 1995).

Peter B.
Title: Re: The Lomax Legacy
Post by: Rivers on February 12, 2009, 08:17:33 PM
Fascinating thread. I was wondering if there was any link between the Melrose Bros., however tenuous, and Lomax Sr. The methodology has a lot in common, though Lester Melrose didn't have the academic connections, which you could portray as an 'enhanced laundry opportunity', beyond entertainment, I suppose.

Massive irony throughout, without the business angle there would be less or no surviving artistic angle.
Title: Re: The Lomax Legacy
Post by: oddenda on February 14, 2009, 05:01:25 PM
rivers -

          Innit, though. Without the commercial companies attempts, we'd be mainly in the dark concerning the "folk" music of the US during a very important time in its history. Without them, the Lomaxes, and the few other field researchers... we'd know sweet f**k all - we should be glad with what we DO have. With my own small contribution I try not to bemoan what I could not do/get to for whatever reasons and be satisfied with the 300 reels of tape that I DID get (and all the other good things that transpired in my decade). It's easy to criticize others, but damned difficult to actually DO the necessaries... it's time and soul consuming hard yakka that is fraught with difficulties.

Peter B.
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