by John Szwed
Chapter 4: Travels with Zora Neale Hurston and Mary Elizabeth Barnicle
78 “The oaths of secrecy”: Alan Lomax, “Zora Neale Hurston—A Life of Negro Folklore,” Sing Out! 10 (October/November 1960): 12.
78 “she was no reserved scientist”: Ibid.
78 “Lead Belly that all of us”: Alan Lomax to Robert Hemenway, November 17, 1976, courtesy of Robert Hemenway.
79 Early in 1935: Zora Neale Hurston to Carl Van Vechten, January 5, 1935; Zora Neale Hurston to John A. Lomax, January 5, 1935, AL.
80 “You can’t just sit down and ask people”: Langston Hughes, The Big Sea: An Autobiography (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993 [1940]), 196-97.
81 “And if he asks you what’s my Union”: Alan Lomax, Woody Guthrie, and Pete Seeger, Hard Hitting Songs for Hard-Hit People (New York: Oak Publications, 1967), 84-85.
81 “My Dostoievskyan weight of guilt”: Nat Hentoff, “Profile: Alan Lomax—Surprising the Folk Song,” January 18, 1969, 51-52, unpublished, The New Yorker Records, c. 1924-1984, New York Public Library, Manuscripts and Archives Division, Box 1506, folders 7-8.
81 “I can’t tell you that you can’t live there”: Ibid., 52.
82 “Day by day now”: Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), 196, quoted in Bruce Bastin, A Tribute to Zora Neale Hurston, notes to Flyright-Matchless Library of Congress Series, vols. 3 and 4 (SDM 257 and SDM 258), 1974.
83 Alan had to write his father: Alan Lomax to John A. Lomax, June 22, 1935, AL.
83 Hurston tried to eke out a little funding: Zora Neale Hurston to Ruth Benedict, June 28, 1936, Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters, ed. Carla Kaplan (New York: Anchor, 2003).
83 “Miss Hurston . . . is ambitious”: Alan Lomax to John A. Lomax, n.d., AL.
83 “Miss B. and Miss H. were raging”: Alan Lomax to John A. Lomax, June 22, 1935, AL.
83 “Miss Hurston, who had been”: Alan Lomax to Oliver Strunk, August 3, 1935, AL.
84 “Negro Songs there are probably”: “Folk Lore Student Plans Tour of Bahamas in Search of Songs,” unidentified news clip, AL.
84 “energy patterns and social [work] roles”: Alan Lomax, Notes to Deep River of Song: The Bahamas 1935, Rounder Records 11661-1822-2, 1999.
84 “There were story sessions every night”: Alan Lomax, “Tracking Tradition,” Folk Roots 127/128 (February 1994): 56-57.
85 By the middle of July: Alan Lomax to John A. Lomax. July 15, 1935, AL.
85 “It was an evening out of long ago”: Alan Lomax to John A. Lomax, n.d., AL.
85 “see further than the surface of things”: Zora Neale Hurston to John A. Lomax, August 30, 1935, in Carla Kaplan, Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters, 357.
86 “When she proposed that I go on this trip”: Zora Neale Hurston to John A. Lomax, September 16, 1935, ibid., 359.
86 “she was attracted to him”: Ibid.
87 “the neighbors had asked her to leave”: Nat Hentoff, “Profile: Alan Lomax,” 61.
88 Charles Seeger had already been exposed to hillbilly music: Judith Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger: A Composer’s Search for American Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 346.
88 The next day, there was Aunt Molly’s picture: New York Times, November 21, 1935.
89 “Put any good, ‘authentic,’ traditional singer”: Charles Seeger, “The Folkness of the Nonfolk,” in Folklore and Society: Essays in Honor of Ben Botkin (Hatboro, PA: Folklore Associates, 1966), 5.
89 she replied that she was writing a book: Aunt Molly Jackson to Alan Lomax, September 2, 1939, reprinted in Shelly Romalis, Pistol Packin’ Mama: Aunt Molly Jackson and the Politics of Folksong (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 155.
89 When they later did reach an agreement: The recordings Aunt Molly made for Lomax in New York are described in Shelly Romalis’s Pistol Packin’ Mama as being a source of discord between them, since Aunt Molly claimed she was never told that the recordings were being made for the Library of Congress and assumed they were for Barnicle’s use only. Romalis also accepts Aunt Molly’s statement that she never made a record for Alan Lomax. But Jackson knew who the recordings were for, as Lomax had recorded her for the library six months before, and she continued to record for him for several years after, in November 1937 and again in May 1939. She also appeared on at least one of his radio programs in 1941, and corresponded with him for the rest of her life.
90 “If you aren’t well enough for a while”: Alan Lomax to John A. Lomax, n.d., ca. 1935, AL.
90 “I’m going to disobey you straight out”: Alan Lomax to John A. Lomax, n.d., ca. 1935, AL.
91 It was that spring that Alan met Elizabeth Harold Goodman: Bess Lomax Hawes interviewed by John Szwed, California, 2005.
92 When he learned that no one was willing to back him: Alan Lomax to Herbert Halpert, July 11, 1936, AL.
92 “It is much the nicest gift I ever had”: Alan Lomax to John A. Lomax, July 9, 1936, AL.
92 “After all we had been together”: Alan Lomax to John A. Lomax, September 17, 1936, AL.
92 But by September it was clear: Alan Lomax to John A. Lomax, September 8, 1936, AL.
Chapter 5: Honeymoon in Haiti
94 By November 1936: The most complete account of Lomax’s Haitian trip is contained in Alan Lomax in Haiti, 1936-1937: Recordings for the Library of Congress (Harte Records, 2009).
94 The letters to the Haitians: The most complete account of Lomax’s Haitian trip is contained in Alan Lomax in Haiti 1936-1937: Recordings for the Library of Congress, Harte Records, 2009.
94 Hurston had applied for a Guggenheim Fellowship: In her work on hoodoo Hurston would have encountered The Sixth and Seventh Book of Moses, a collection of texts widely used by hoodoo practitioners and Pennsylvania Dutch hex workers that is said to explain the magic Moses used in his Old Testament feats.
94 She wrote Alan from Kingston: Zora Neale Hurston to Alan Lomax, June 7, 1936, AL.
95 She did not speak to either one of them for the rest of their stay: Harold Courlander, “Recollections of Haiti in the 1930s and ’40s,” African Arts 23, no. 2 (April 1990): 60-70.
95 pianist-composer Ludovic Lamothe: A little more than a year later, Lomax would be recording the music of Jelly Roll Morton, whose name at birth was apparently also Lamothe.
96 She had become the toast of the Haitian army: Alan Lomax interviewed by John Szwed, New York, 1970.
96 “Zora is hard enough to fathom by herself ”: Alan Lomax to Elizabeth Harold, n.d., ca. December 20, 1936, AL.
96 he had to submit a request to the library: “Itemized Schedule of Travel and Other Expenses,” January 11, 1937, AL.
96 “Five or six radios going very loud”: Alan Lomax, field notes, December 20, 1936, AL.
97 “We had not walked twenty yards”: Ibid., December 20, 1936, AL.
97 “This country is, so far as my experience goes”: Ibid., December 21, 1936, AL.
98 “The banana and cane plantations”: Ibid., 1936, AL.
98 It was a short step to adapting his abilities: Katherine Dunham, Island Possessed (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994 [1969]), 18-20.
98 “I am so nervous I can scarcely write”: Alan Lomax, field notes, December 29, 1936, AL.
98 “everything is so new here”: Alan Lomax to John Lomax Jr., January 18, 1937, LC.
99 “This land is literally all folklore”: Ibid.
99 “This is the first place I have ever visited”: Alan Lomax to Charles Seeger, January 16, 1937, LC.
100 “Haitian Journey”: Southwest Review 23, no. 2 (January 1938): 125-147.
100 “I am in a rather desperate mess”: Alan Lomax to John A. Lomax, February 7, 1937, AL.
101 “I come to you with an unusual request”: Alan Lomax to Estenio Vincent, February 13, 1937, AL.
101 Living in a hut: Current Biography, September 1941, 46.
102 “In Haiti it is not a good policy”: Alan Lomax, “Pantheon of Vaudou (Plaisance),” n.d., AL.
102 The owner of an American yacht: Alan Lomax to Doc Reiser, May 15, 1937, AL.
103 “It was characteristic of me then to let my father’s work come first”: Nat Hentoff, “Profile: Alan Lomax,” 63.
104 In early April John tried again: John A. Lomax to Alan Lomax, April 10, 1937, AL.
105 “Tell all the colored folks to listen to me”: “Bourgeois Blues,” words and music by Huddie Ledbetter, edited with new additional material by Alan Lomax. Copyright 1959, Folkways Music Publishers, Inc.
106 “Everything local and native”: Alan Lomax to Richard Reuss, n.d., 1971, Indiana University.
106 “The New Deal”: Alan Lomax quoted in Bernard Eisenschitz, Nicholas Ray: An American Journey (London: Faber and Faber, 1996), 40.
107 “It was Tugwell’s idea”: Ibid., 39.
108 “When I met Nick”: Ibid., 44-45.
110 Bess recalled Alan complaining: Bess Lomax Hawes, “Reminiscences and Exhortations,” Ethnomusicology 39, no. 2 (Spring/Summer 1995): 180.
111 By 1940, three years into her part of the project: Ruth Seeger’s essay was finally published in complete form in 2001 as The Music of American Folk Song, edited by Larry Polansky with Judith Tick (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press).
111 A few weeks later a letter arrived: Archive of American Folk Song memo, August 12, 1937.
112 “The shortest and best road to Harlan”: Alan Lomax to the Acting Chief of the Music Division, Library of Congress, August 16, 1937, AL.
113 “one has to make friends of the people everywhere”: Alan Lomax to Harold Spivacke, September 30, 1937, LC.
113 What should he do?: Alan Lomax to Harold Spivacke, September 19, 1937, LC.
113 “Try to remember”: Harold Spivacke to Alan Lomax, September 23, 1937, LC.
113 “The young people were so shy”: Alan Lomax to Harold Spivacke, September 23, 1937, LC.
113 At the end of October, Alan told the library: Alan Lomax to Harold Spivacke, October 20, 1937, LC.
114 “The mountains have always been poor”: “From the Report of the Assistant in Charge, Mr. Alan Lomax,” in Annual Report of the Librarian of Congress for the Fiscal Year Ended, June 30, 1938, 183-189, LC.
Chapter 6: Doctor Jazz
116 At the end of 1938, for instance: Review of Arthur Palmer Hudson, Folk Songs of Mississippi and Their Backgrounds (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1936), in the Journal of American Folk-lore 51, no. 200 (April-June, 1938): 211-213.
118 But Alan thought the event was of poor quality: Alan Lomax to Harold Spivacke, April 1, 1938. Later, in a report on this era, he gave a much more sanguine account of the festival and the help given him. See Carl Engel, “Archive of American Folk-Song: A History, 1928-1939,” Library of Congress Project, Work Projects Administration, 1940, 58-59.
118 “It was the usual uncritical hash”: Alan Lomax to John A. Lomax, May 26, 1938, AL.
119 “a partial idea of what happened”: Alan Lomax to Harold Spivacke, June 8, 1938, AL.
119 “In sounding folk-lore resources”: Ibid.
119 “job, union duties, teaching”: Alan Lomax to John A. Lomax Jr., n.d., AL.
120 “The whole thing still seems a little bit churlish”: Alan Lomax to John A. Lomax, July 2, 1938, AL.
120 “Modern folksongs are as important as old ones”: Quoted in Jean Fagan Yellin, “Remembering Kay,” Melus (Fall-Winter 2004), 546.
120 In the foreword to Katherine Dealy Newman’s 1995 Never Without a Song: Katherine Dealy Newman, Never Without a Song: The Years and Songs of Jennie Devlin (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1995), xiii-xvi.
122 Among his visitors was William Russell: “Oh, Mister Jelly”: A Jelly Roll Morton Scrapbook, compiled by William Russell (Copenhagen: JazzMedia Aps., 1999).
122 Alistair Cooke, a young British reporter: From An Evening with Alistair Cooke at the Piano, Columbia Records, ML 4970.
122 “He was trying to make a living”: Alan Lomax, “Jelly Roll Morton Symposium,” Dixon Hall, Tulane University, May 7, 1982, unpublished transcript in the Hogan Archives, Tulane University, 37.
123 “I looked at him with considerable suspicion”: Ibid.
123 Alan had intended to make only a few records: Ibid., 37-38.
124 “As I listened to it”: “The Art of the Negro: Mr. Jelly Roll Morton from New Orleans,” BBC Third Programme, October 3, 1951.
124 “I later came to call this process”: Alan Lomax, “Jelly Roll Morton Symposium,” pt. 3, May 7, 1982, 40.
125 Recorded interviews such as Morton’s: Harvey Breit, “Talk with Alan Lomax,” New York Times, July 23, 1950, Book Review, 7.
126 “Jelly Roll had been deeply hurt”: Alan Lomax, “Jelly Roll Morton Symposium,” pt. 3, May 7, 1982, 40.
127 “the most purely Irish colony in the United States”: Alan Lomax to Harold Spivacke, August 27, 1938, AL.
127 Among other things: James P. Leary, “Fieldwork Forgotten as Alan Lomax Goes North,” recording from the Thirty-Third Annual Association for Recorded Sound Collecting Conference, May 30, 1999.
128 He and Nick Ray had also sketched out a play: Alan Lomax to John A. Lomax, November 7, 1938, LC; Alan Lomax to Bess Lomax, November 22, 1938, LC. Orson Welles, possibly inspired by the Morton sessions, was also planning to interview musicians and write and direct The Story of Jazz, a project that was ultimately sidetracked by other films.
128 On his own, Jelly Roll wrote out short accounts: See Danny Barker in Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff, Hear Me Talkin’ to Ya: The Story of Jazz as Told by the Men Who Made It (New York: Rinehart, 1955). Barker describes the dress and games of New Orleans people, and the stylized ways they walked.
128 When Morton laid out his theory of jazz: The Morton recordings were licensed not by the Library of Congress, but by his estate. Jelly Roll had blacklisted a number of record companies and individuals through his executor before he died, so that none of them would be able to issue any of his recordings after his death. Rudi Blesh’s boutique company Circle was the twelfth recording company to ask for permission to bring out the Library of Congress recordings, and it was the one approved by Morton’s estate. See Rudi Blesh, “An Open Letter to Jazz Record Readers,” Jazz Record, no. 60 (November 1947): 17-18.
128 “Today, however, the divine right”: Blesh, notes to The Saga of Mr. Jelly Lord, Circle Records, 1947.
128 Nick Ray and Alan set to work together: Nick Ray and Alan Lomax to Olin Downes, May 19, 1938, 2, AL.
130 “We suggest these techniques”: Alan Lomax to Olin Downes, June 18, 1938, 3, AL.
131 “the stage [should be] a raised dais”: Ibid., 3-4.
132 “Driven into the back woods”: Ibid., 5.
132 “People come to the fair”: Ibid., 6.
132 “In [folk] festivals a genuine folk singer”: Ibid., 7.
132 One of his suggestions: Ibid., 8.
133 “You may not agree with me”: Alan Lomax to Olin Downes, May 26, 1938, AL.
133 In the end, a series of bureaucratic tangles and turf wars: David Robertson, W. C. Handy (New York: Alfred K. Knopf, 2009), 214.
134 When Morton talked about his problems with Lomax: George W. Kay, “Basin Street Stroller,” Jazz Journal 4, no. 6 (June 1951): 1-3; nos. 7 and 8 (July-August 1951): 1-2; and no. 9 (September 1951): 1-2.
135 The concert was an unqualified success: “Music: Spirituals to Swing,” Time, Jan. 2, 1939. My thanks to Andrew Horowitz for his suggestions.
135 Alan came up from Washington for the 1938 concert: Alan Lomax interviewed by Nick Spitzer, July 25, 1990, for his radio program American Routes.
136 Danny Barker was one of Morton’s staunchest defenders: Alan Lomax, “Jelly Roll Morton Symposium,” pt. 4, 13-14.
137 “I realized that Jelly was telling me the history of jazz”: “The Art of the Negro: Mr. Jelly Roll Morton from New Orleans,” BBC Third Programme, October 3, 1951.
137 “There was as yet no serious jazz criticism”: Alan Lomax,
“Jelly Roll Morton Symposium,” pt. 4, 10.
137 It was not so much the corruption of entertainment: Ibid., pt. 1, 32-34.
138 “New Orleans was the only place in America”: Ibid.
139 “a sort of musical dictionary”: Alan Lomax to Bill Russell, May 16, 1957, AL.
139 “In just a few years”: Preston McClanahan interview of Alan Lomax for a film on New Orleans bassist Chester Zardis, May 5, 1990, AL.
Chapter 7: Bohemian Folklorist
140 In return, he offered an ambitious plan: Alan Lomax to Harold Spivacke, fall 1938, LC.
141 “You’ll get some idea of what TAC would like to do”: “Concert and Opera,” New York Times, February 3, 1939.
142 This way he would develop a discography: Alan Lomax to Harold Spivacke, April 8, 1939, LC.
142 Spivacke informed him: Harold Spivacke to Alan Lomax, February 24, 1939, LC.
142 Spivacke begged Alan to at least listen: Harold Spivacke to Alan Lomax, April 14, 1939, LC.
143 He also talked with J. Mayo “Ink” Williams: Alan Lomax to Harold Spivacke, n.d., ca. March 1939, LC.
143 “My opinion is that the commercial recording companies”: Alan Lomax to Harold Spivacke, March 8, 1939, LC.
143 He had already discussed the prospect: Alan Lomax to Harold Spivacke, March 26, 1939, and April 17, 1939, LC.
143 When he approached the Musicraft Record Company: Alan Lomax to Harold Spivacke, March 26, 1939, LC.
144 After this find, he wanted to go out: Alan Lomax to Harold Spivacke, April 17, 1939, LC.
145 “When we were walking around New York”: Pete Seeger interview with John Szwed, New York, 2008.
145 “He wanted me to listen to banjo pieces”: Ibid.
145 Alan’s long trek through the lists: “List of American Folk Songs on Commercial Records,” in Report of the Committee of the Conference on Inter-American Relations in the Field of Music (Washington, DC: William Berrien, Chairman, Department of State, September 3, 1940), 126-46.
146 “But I have come away from this listening experience”: Unnumbered p. 1 of untitled mimeograph, AL.