Topic: The Lomax Legacy

[Pan]

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

[blueshome]

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.

[Mr.OMuck]

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!

[bnemerov]

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.

[uncle bud]

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.

[Mr.OMuck]

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.

[oddenda]

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.

[Mr.OMuck]

and we all try our best to get along and not hurt anybody

I guess they don't have republicans in Austrilia.

[oddenda]

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.

[Rivers]

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.

[oddenda]

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.