Alan Lomax | Artist

Alan Lomax was an American ethnomusicologist born 1915 in Austin Texas. He was best known for his numerous field recordings of blues and folk music of the early 20th century. He was also a musician himself, as well as a folklorist, archivist, writer, scholar, political activist, oral historian, and film-maker. Lomax produced recordings, concerts, and radio shows in the US and in England, which played an important role in preserving folk music traditions in both countries, and helped start both the American and British folk revivals of the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s. He collected material first with his father, folklorist and collector John Lomax and later alone and with others, Lomax recorded thousands of songs and interviews for the Archive of American Folk Song, of which he was the director, at the Library of Congress on aluminium and acetate discs. Lomax's greatest legacy is in preserving and publishing recordings of musicians in many folk and blues traditions around the US and Europe. Among the artists Lomax is credited with discovering and bringing to a wider audience include blues guitarist Robert Johnson, protest singer Woody Guthrie, folk artist Pete Seeger, country musician Burl Ives, Scottish Gaelic singer Flora McNeil, and country blues singers Lead Belly, Muddy Waters and Son House, among many others. Lomax released countless album compilations on the Rounder Records, Folkways and Columbia Records labels. Lomax spent the last 20 years of his life working on an interactive multimedia educational computer project he called the Global Jukebox, which included 5,000 hours of sound recordings, 400,000 feet of film, 3,000 videotapes, and 5,000 photographs.

Artist Website: wikipedia/Alan_Lomax, Global Jukebox

Featured Albums: Alan Lomax

Related Artists: Woody Guthrie, Muddy Waters, Lead Belly, Son House