Alan Lomax

by John Szwed

  When Alan heard the colonel’s interpretation of the law, he responded by insisting that the library did need releases from singers, and that the singers should be paid if the recordings were sold. Since the library did not have a policy of compensating performers early on, when the Lomaxes did manage to pay them the funds had to come out of their expenses or from their own money. But even the act of paying could sometimes be a problem:

  In certain cultures, you have to pay, not because you’re a foreigner but because they’re professionals. This is true of gypsies of Andalucía and in much of Negro culture. In a country like Scotland, however, unless the informants are terribly poor, an offer of money would be an insult since the informants sing as a courtesy to a stranger. If their singing is later used on a BBC broadcast, the collector can then send them a contract and pay them, because the music can now become a matter of formal exchange. In American Indian cultures, the singer generally owns his song. If he feels it has magical value, you can’t collect it, but he may sell it. The normal practice is to pay small sums of money. When I was in Washington I managed to get the Library of Congress to set up a standard rate for folk informants which was to equal whatever they were earning per hour in their regular work. Now, after my experiences with how tangled the copyright situation can become, I make contracts with the singers whenever I can so that they know if there are royalties from future recordings, they’ll receive a share.

  Alan was not an expert on copyright, nor was he at that time particularly interested in the need to claim ownership. Neither he nor his father had ever copyrighted individual songs, only their published compilations, a step insisted upon by their publishers for protection against the books being pirated. Even the battle over the rights to the Lead Belly songs was a question of book ownership brought about by the conflict between John and Huddie and the publisher’s demands that there be clarity in the matter for their own protection. (Later it would turn out that the claims of copyright in the book were not properly stated by the publisher and none of the parties involved was protected.)

  When the Weavers recorded “Goodnight Irene” and it became a worldwide hit, Alan was as surprised as everyone else by the mass popularity of a folk song. He may indeed have hoped that these songs he loved would one day be known by everyone, but “Irene” appearing on jukeboxes in every diner, danced to by dreamy teenagers, and becoming for a few months the soundtrack to an entire country was inconceivable to folklorists and record company executives alike. When Alan received his share of the royalties from the Weavers’ hit, he declared it as “unearned income” on his tax return and said that since it came from folklore he would reinvest it in a folklore project. The $3,000 he received paid for the bulk of his first two years in Europe and made the Columbia World Library of Folk and Primitive Music possible. Nevertheless, he thought the huge success of “Irene” was a pop culture anomaly not likely to repeat itself.

  One day while walking through Piccadilly, Alan passed a music store window where he saw a copy of the sheet music to “Bring a Little Water, Sylvie,” composed, it said, by Lonnie Donegan. This was a song he and his father had recorded with Lead Belly. It was the shock of this discovery followed by his learning of Donegan’s claim to having written “Rock Island Line” (and the fact that it reached No. 8 on both the UK and American hit charts) that sent Alan off on a quest to find Kelly Pace, who had taught Lead Belly the song in Arkansas State Penitentiary in 1934, by contacting the superintendent of the prison, the sheriff of Pine Bluff, and the postmasters of several post offices. When he finally located Pace, he sent a letter asking him if he was the composer of “Bring a Little Water, Sylvie,” so he could see that Pace was properly remunerated. It was no surprise when Pace affirmed that he, not Donegan, was the author of the song.

  “When I looked into the story back of this piece of outright knavery,” Alan recalled, “I found myself involved in a tangle of lies, legal chicanery, and outright dishonesty.” Lonnie Donegan, he discovered, was copying Lead Belly’s songs, along with his performance style and introductory remarks, profiting from both his performances of these songs and his claim to being their composer. The publishing company that had acquired the copyright to “Goodnight Irene” in the United States was also copyrighting Lead Belly’s songs and others from the Lomaxes’ book under the name of a British affiliate. Alan’s first impulse was to sue them, but when he sought legal counsel he was advised that it was far more complicated, difficult, and expensive than he thought to protect the rights to these songs, and probably impossible. A dismayed Alan was persuaded that it would be better to work with this same music publishing company rather than against it.

  Alan once sketched out an article in which he stated his view of the issue of copyrighting folk songs, apparently responding to a number of articles and letters that were being exchanged on the subject in Sing Out! in 1959-60. He began by reminding readers that folk song collecting took place within a “free enterprise system,” and so was more complex than most of those concerned with folk music had understood. The process by which a folk song could reach the public included: (1) the folksinger, “more of a creative figure than most city singers like to remember”; (2) the collector, who located the folksinger, recorded the song, sometimes rearranged or edited it, and found a record company to issue it, or a music publisher to publish it, or a book publisher to print the words and music; (3) the “fine arts or pop arranger,” who might find ways to make the songs more palatable to a performer or to a publisher or record company; (4) the performer, who might rerecord the song and possibly change it in doing so; and (5) the publisher and record company. All could make a claim on copyright, depending on how the song was distributed to the public. Alan’s view was that the folklorist who recorded a song in the field was obliged to ensure that the singer was paid for his work, but should also have a share of the royalties in consideration for his or her role as a collector if the record was ever sold commercially. Alan’s reasoning was that composers of folk songs were not likely ever to be recorded nor ever to earn any money from their songs without the help and guidance of someone devoted to the music and its preservation.

  By the late 1950s there was little or no financial support available for folk song collecting and no official encouragement to collect full-time: the Library of Congress had stopped collecting folk songs after Alan left in 1942; the Mexican government had closed down the folklore section of its Department of Fine Arts; the National Museum of France was now limiting folk collecting to one trip a year; and the BBC had ceased supporting folk music, and had even erased many of its existing tapes because it felt they lacked broadcast interest. Much the same was true for Scotland and Italy. Part of the reason for this shift in interest was that the sudden rush of pop hits based on folk songs led governments and foundations to conclude that folk song collecting had “turned into a trashy branch of the pop song business.”

  But the problem still remained of how to keep people with no connection to the songs from owning them. One solution Alan had proposed was to convince music publishing companies, pop singers, foundations, the composers’ protective societies, and folklore organizations to join together to create a foundation to collect monies from folk song copyrights to pay the folk composers (or what Alan more realistically called the “source singers”) and to use a portion of the money for research and collecting. But since this did not happen, he returned to the idea that the collector should be paid for his or her work.

  Collectors copyrighting folk songs was not that unusual at the time: Carl Sandburg, Zora Neale Hurston, Béla Bartók, Percy Grainger, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Cecil Sharp, even Lawrence Gellert, the most politically leftist of all the collectors, all filed claims for copyright, though none of them shared their earnings with singers. Lomax, however, was the most active and the most publicized collector in the world, and would be criticized by some for what they viewed as his claim that he had written folk songs and, by doing so, denied ownership to the songs’ true cre
ators. Those who examined the BMI list of songwriters did indeed see Alan’s name on hundreds of songs. There are many kinds of copyright, however—for the writer, the arranger, for the recording or the remaster, for the publishing company, and for the performer, among others—but the BMI list is abbreviated and simplified to read “writer.” Alan did not himself file for copyright, but signed Popular Songwriter Contracts that allowed publishers to copyright those songs. On those agreements for folk songs Alan’s name, along with the singer’s, would come under the title “Writer,” but with added language that said, “Collected, adapted, and arranged by.” If the song was original with the singer, it might say that it was “by” the singer and “Adapted and Revised by Alan Lomax.” Lomax’s actual copyrights read, “Traditional song, arranger.” Only one or two songs, such as “Old Man” and “My Baby’s Gone to Texas,” actually read, “Words and Music by Alan Lomax,” and they were songs written and recorded by him. Still, even some of those who knew the truth of the situation would not be satisfied. Charles Seeger, for example, argued that the Lomaxes had the right to claim authorship of their books of folk songs or the songs that they had arranged and adapted, but that it was a fraud to label the latter folk songs. On the other hand, Seeger also said that “the folk song is, by definition and, as far as we can tell, by reality, entirely a product of plagiarism,” thus reminding us that no one had yet come up with a way to determine who was the creator of a folk song.

  After he left the Library of Congress in 1942, Alan made it a rule to pay all of the people that he recorded, and to offer them signed contracts that promised payment of royalties if the recordings were ever commercially issued. He kept account of these finances over the years, though it was difficult to stay current with the recordings, as record companies were sold or went out of business. Doing it himself made it possible to avoid the rough and often sloppy business practices of the record companies, but the downside was constant recordkeeping, checkwriting, unsteady finances, and keeping track of people who were often on the move or had died and had kin who survived them.

  By the late 1950s the skiffle craze was over, but not before it could affect the future of British and even world pop music. Amateur guitar-based bands were now everywhere in Great Britain and Ireland, and youth music was permanently in place. John Lennon’s skiffle band the Quarrymen was beginning its evolution into what would become the Beatles; Mick Jagger, a member of the Chris Barber-Ken Colyer Skiffle Band, would soon meet Keith Richards, connect with him over a Muddy Waters LP, and end up naming their new band after one of the songs on it. (David Bowie’s first band was called the Mannish Boys, after another early Waters song). Graham Nash and Alan Clarke, the core of the Hollies, had both started as a skiffle band called the Two Teens; guitarist Jimmy Page worked in a skiffle band long before he would become part of the Yardbirds and Led Zeppelin; and Van Morrison started his musical career in the Sputniks, a skiffle group that he would revisit in a 1998 session with Lonnie Donegan and Chris Barber. Even Spinal Tap had its beginnings as the Lovely Lads, another washboard and broomstick-and-washtub group.

  Alan lived the life of collector, performer, and broadcaster at full tilt, whether or not he was making money. No one around him could match his pace, his conversation, the songs he knew, the hours he kept, his brashness. Paul Oliver, the British blues scholar, recalled Alan as “the only person who could step into Oxford Street and cross the road at the height of the rush hour without looking at the traffic and relying only on his height, his beard and a white raincoat with a tartan lining to get him across safely.” His BBC friend Bridson said that Alan’s driving on English roads was dreadful: he was often on the wrong side of the road, turned into roundabouts in the wrong direction, and once even bumped into the back of a bobby who was holding back traffic at a light.

  Alan summed up his own life at this point in a letter he wrote to Johnny Faulk:

  I lost weight, grew a beard, grew up somewhat, and in the midst of so many real new troubles forgot some of my imaginary ones.... This period of being abroad and completely dependent on my own efforts and my own name has been awfully good for me. I’ve at last almost emerged completely from my father’s shadow, which I now realize always hung over me in America.... You must all remember that during the last five years I have been really pioneering, doing advanced research without help of any fellowship or the support of any institution, making my way as a freelance, living mostly in cheap hotels and furnished rooms and working like a dog. There’s been no time or energy left over, but someday I think you’ll all be pleased with how things have turned out.

  He requested an extended stay from the Aliens Department of the Home Office on January 13, 1956, in order to remain in the country for twelve more months to do freelance work. Once it was approved, Elizabeth and Herbert Sturz moved into Alan’s flat so that the two of them could work together on their book, and Anne could be with both her parents. Because Elizabeth and Herbert had returned from Spain without money, Alan was supporting all five of them. Anne, especially, found the situation difficult. She had been brought to London to live with her father for the first time since she was a baby, and was now effectively a serving girl, caring for adults who were all busy working on their books. Their flat was in a lower-middle-class neighborhood, and when Anne played with other children she was obliged to fabricate to explain their unusual household arrangement to their respectable neighbors: Shirley was Alan’s secretary, and Herbert was her mother’s brother.

  At one point Peggy Seeger also moved in with them, working as one of the editors on his books, and later described his work habits and life in the house:

  His enthusiasm and initiative had spread to record companies, publishing houses, folksong societies, individuals. He talked incessantly. Everything interested him. At the time he was living in a tiny basement flat in Chelsea, the artists’ section of London. When I first went into his flat I thought I was in a warehouse. The hall was loaded with tapes from his trips to Spain, Italy, Ireland, Scotland and God knows where else. Tape-ends dribbled from boxes everywhere. Records, books, and coffee cups lay on the floor like underbrush in a forest through which only Alan could find his way.

  This is where he worked. Groups crowded in for rehearsals and parties; books and radio programs were begun here; and most inconceivable of all, daily living was carried out amidst the rubble.... Later I lived at his home, a half-house, in Highgate. It was more spacious than the Chelsea establishment, but the only difference between the two dwellings was that the chaos spread itself further in the larger house. While I was acting as music editor of one of his books [The Folk Songs of North America], other people were also involved in the project, each disrupting his neighbor’s system of classification, carrying piles of manuscript and typing from room to room, eating meals in whatever was available, all with much laughter, singing and good humor.

  When Alan’s article on the concept of song style and song families—“Nuova ipotesi sul canto folkloristico italiano”—was accepted by Nuovi Argomenti, a journal founded by Alberto Moravia and Alberto Carocci, he was pleased to be published by such distinguished intellectuals, not to mention appearing in the same issue with Moravia and Pier Paolo Pasolini. His article, “A New Hypothesis,” was actually packed with many hypotheses. Beginning with a critical analysis of the established musicological approaches, he questioned the value of music notation for understanding the world’s musics. Too much was left out with this approach, and the system that notation presented led to false confidence. Instead, he proposed the idea of music style, including in the discussion elements that had seldom been considered by musicologists: the body’s role in making and responding to music, its link to the emotions, how such things are learned in making music, the role of music in the life and survival of the individual, the group, and the community. A preliminary mapping of broad families of the world’s music making was proposed: Euroasiatic, ancient Euroasiatic, colonial American, Pygmoid, African, Australian, Melanesian, Polynes
ian, and Amerindian. His classification of these song styles was radically different from those that preceded him: they were not grouped by nationality or race, and even geography was seen to be only loosely connected. (The singing of the Pygmies and the Bushmen of Africa, for example, were grouped together by their use of closely woven hocketing and yodeling, even though there was no apparent history of their having been in contact, and those in the world closest to them in style were not all Africans.) His work on Spain, Italy, and the United States was offered as evidence of how these stylistic features could be studied comparatively, in different musical groupings. In his conclusion he suggested some of the possibilities offered by these concepts:

  First of all, by using the musical style as a diagnostic instrument we can study the emotional and aesthetic story of the nations of the world. Secondly, by using the musical style as an instrument of synthesis we can reconstruct the emotional character of past and ancient societies. Thirdly, we can start to understand the deep emotional factors in the evolutionary processes of cultures. Fourthly, by using the analysis of the musical style as an instrument of prediction, we can start to formulate some hypothesis and to test them in the picture of the current transformations of the societies around us. Maybe by this way we could reach a technique of cultural planning. Finally, considering that the musical style seems an exterior and symbolic image of extremely deep and ancient formative, emotional and aesthetic currents, it may give us a key to the study of the creative forces which operate in the human society for a time as long as the social, technical and economic forces which we have started to understand in the last two centuries.