July
31, 2002 8:45 a.m. Taps
for Mr. Lomax
The
man who made folk respectable.
mericans
who play or listen to folk music lost a great champion the other week
when Alan Lomax ascended to the great song circle in the sky. Lomax, formerly
of New York City, was officially known as a musicologist, and is best
known for tramping through the rustic regions to record local talent,
whether in cotton fields, on front porches, in juke joints, and the occasional
jail cell. Besides putting the work of obscure musicians on the public
record, he created a foundation of songs and acceptance for subsequent
generations of folkies (along with jazz and blues players). He also no
doubt heard a lot of really bad singing in the process, yet was undeterred,
which is why some of us really like Alan Lomax.
Mr.
Lomax is said to have been a poor singer himself, but he had a good ear
for hearing songs with staying power, even when those songs were sung
by people who couldn't shoot their way into Julliard. Many might sing
a bit off key; some could sing in all keys, simultaneously. But the songs
had two elements that can't be taught: heart, and the perspective unique
to the artist. These weren't tunes ginned up for radio play, an interesting
process by which an English major living in Philadelphia will pen a first-person
account of chopping cotton in Alabama, circa 1913.
This
was the real stuff. When these musicians sang about slicing a throat,
they knew of what they spoke. Ditto for slaving away in the hot sun, getting
by on hope and rainwater, living like a dog, living with the dogs, and
eating everything on the hog "except the squeal," as the old
line goes. Were it not for Mr. Lomax and other field recorders, many of
these real songs by real people would have often died with the performers.
Mr.
Lomax's father got the ball rolling. His 1910 book Cowboy Songs and
Other Frontier Ballads included the now-classic "Home on the
Range. The Lomaxes would later put Woody Guthrie, Huddie "Lead Belly"
Ledbetter, "Jelly Roll" Morton, Muddy Waters, and Son House
on record. Lead Belly, as it happens, was discovered at the Angola prison
farm in Louisiana; he was in on a murder rap. He sang his way out of that
fix, though was later jailed for a lesser assault. The Lomaxes, being
good liberals (and very actively so) helped spring the poor man and hired
him on as their chauffeur. America being a magical land, Lead Belly became
a hero to a new generation of singers, including Bonnie Raitt, formerly
of Radcliff. She also had round heels for Son House.
Indeed,
Mr. Lomax helped make folk singing respectable far beyond the fields and
cellblocks. As Pete Seeger put it, he let the world know that there was
an immense number of songs out there that would never get on the radio,
but which were good, and which — I might add — people with modest
talents can sing and play. For those of us with a song in our hearts but
not much moxie in our vocal chords, he provided not only materials, but
cover.
Mr.
Lomax, to be sure, thought of his subjects as great musicians and singers,
and while few may have spent long hours running scales and perfecting
arpeggios, some trouble was taken in maintaining the sensibility reflected
in their music. Woody Guthrie, who visited Mr. Lomax from time to time,
offers an example: "He wouldn't sleep on in a bed," Mr. Lomax
recalled. "He said he didn't want to get soft, because he was on
the road at that time, and he didn't want to get used to sleeping in beds.
And he wouldn't eat from the table; he ate out of the sink. He said he
didn't want to get softened up by civilization." Mr. Guthrie, of
course, wrote a few folk classics, including "This Land is Your Land,"
which may not ever get on the Clear Channel radio play list, but will
probably be around a lot longer than 95 percent of the songs that do.
This
is not to discount the large role radio, and other budding technology,
played in the development of folk and other types of American "roots"
music. When papa Lomax went about collecting the material for his cowboy
collection, recording was fairly new — Thomas Edison patented the
cylinder-playing phonograph in the late 1870s — and commercial radio
was just around the corner (it was launched in Pittsburgh, by Westinghouse,
in 1920). Radio was a business from the get-go: Sears, the Chicago retailing
giant, owned WLS (World's Largest Store), while Nashville's WSM (We Shield
Millions) was owned by the National Life and Accident Insurance Company.
Radio needed listeners; music filled that bill.
Mr.
Lomax could be a bit of a purist. When Bob Dylan went electric at the
Newport Folk Festival in 1965, for example, Mr. Lomax and Pete Seeger,
otherwise a very public pacifist, attempted to chop the amplifier cords
with an ax. That will endear him to some of the music police, who wish
the chopping had proceeded to Mr. Dylan's neck. But we have no time to
waste on pedants. Their day is largely done, thanks in no small part to
Mr. Lomax. A round of taps for the gentleman, in tune or otherwise.
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mericans
who play or listen to folk music lost a great champion the other week
when Alan Lomax ascended to the great song circle in the sky. Lomax, formerly
of New York City, was officially known as a musicologist, and is best
known for tramping through the rustic regions to record local talent,
whether in cotton fields, on front porches, in juke joints, and the occasional
jail cell. Besides putting the work of obscure musicians on the public
record, he created a foundation of songs and acceptance for subsequent
generations of folkies (along with jazz and blues players). He also no
doubt heard a lot of really bad singing in the process, yet was undeterred,
which is why some of us really like Alan Lomax. 
