Alan Lomax

by John Szwed

  146 On March 5, Lead Belly fought over Martha: Nat Hentoff, “Profile: Alan Lomax,” 48.

  146 “from Huddie’s hand to the lawyer’s pocket”: News clipping reprinted in Tiny Robinson and John Reynolds, eds., Lead Belly: A Life in Pictures (Göttingen: Steidl, 2008), 101.

  146 His actions got him a lighter sentence: Charles K. Wolfe and Kip Lornell, The Life and Legend of Leadbelly (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), 212-14.

  147 He wrote Spivacke with these suggestions: Alan Lomax to Harold Spivacke, April 17, 1939, AL.

  147 Spivacke was astonished by Lomax’s ambitious plans: Harold Spivacke to Alan Lomax, April 22, 1939, LC.

  147 But Alan and Hammond had become wary of each other: Alan Lomax to Harold Spivacke, May 28, 1939, AL.

  148 “As you probably know by the papers”: Ibid.

  148 Charles Seeger was put in charge: Rob Neufeld, “Mountain Music and Dance Grown from Many Roots,” Asheville Citizen-Times, July 27, 2002.

  148 “You will have to ‘open cold’ ”: Harold Spivacke to Alan Lomax, June 1, 1939, LC.

  148 “Young Alan Lomax threw back his head”: “Ballad of Old Chisholm Trail Drowns New York’s Subway Roar as Texas Singer Practices for White House Date with King,” Dallas News, June 4, 1939, AL.

  149 The usual protocol was of little help: John Szwed interview with Alan Lomax, 1970.

  149 “One of the young men who had been asked to sing”: Eleanor Roosevelt, This I Remember (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1949), 191.

  150 She told them that he had been arrested: Alan Lomax FBI files, June 30, 1941; February 26, 1942.

  150 When they failed to reply: Alan Lomax FBI files, July 15, 1941; October 3, 1941.

  150 But no one they interviewed said he was a Communist: Ibid.

  150 There was not much that could top an appearance at the White House: “Writers’ Congress,” Time, June 19, 1939.

  150 Alan put music to it: Langston Hughes to Alan Lomax, December 8, 1939; Langston Hughes to Alan Lomax, n.d., ca. 1939; Alan Lomax to Langston Hughes, February 7, 1940, Langston Hughes Papers, Beineke Library, Yale University; Our Singing Country, 328-30. My thanks to Billy Jo Harris.

  152 It would be the most costly production: Lanfranco Rasponi, “Radio in Education,” New York Times, November 17, 1940.

  152 “I thought this was a joke”: Bernard Eisenschitz, Nicholas Ray: An American Journey ( London: Faber and Faber, 1996), 52.

  153 “I recall the day”: Alan Lomax, “Saga of a Folk Song Hunter,” HiFi/Stereo Review 4, no. 5 (May 1960). Reprinted in Alan Lomax: Selected Writings 1934-1997, ed. Ronald D. Cohen (New York: Routledge, 2003), 178.

  154 “They didn’t even listen to me sing”: Four Symposia on Folklore, Indiana University Publications Folklore Series No. 8, 1953, 171.

  154 “I specified that I could have so and so many guests”: Alan Lomax, “Alan Lomax,” in Decade of Destiny, ed. Judith L. Graubart and Alice V. Graubart (Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1979), 316.

  155 By some people’s standards Ives was not an authentic folksinger: Pete Seeger, The Incomplete Folksinger (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975), 9-12.

  155 “We cut past the fancy ballads: Alan Lomax, in Decade of Destiny, 316.

  155 “Lomax, 24-year-old assistant in charge”: CBS Pix 1, no. 13 (August 14, 1939): 1.

  155 But now here he was, standing alone: The orchestra was later conducted by Howard Barlow.

  156 his speaking voice was ragged: John A. Lomax to Alan Lomax, October 2, 1939, AL.

  156 his choice of singers completely wrong: John A. Lomax to Alan Lomax, May 4, 1939, AL.

  156 His job description at the archive: “Duties of Alan Lomax in Connection with his work in the Archive of American Folk Song,” n.d., LC.

  156 As he prepared to leave: Nancy-Jean Ballard Seigel, “Helen Hartness Flanders: The Green Mountain Songcatcher,” Voices 29 (Fall-Winter 2003).

  157 “Woody was on the show”: American Roots Music, “Oral Histories: Alan Lomax,” http://www.pbs.org/americanrootsmusic/pbs_arm_oralh_alanlomax.html.

  158 “Woody came up in a frontier place”: Ibid.

  159 Once when he came into Alan’s apartment: Bess Lomax Hawes interview by John Szwed, California, 2005.

  159 “Their music has grabbed the attention of the world”: American Roots Music, “Oral Histories: Alan Lomax,” http://www.pbs.org/americanrootsmusic/pbs_arm_oralh_alanlomax.html.

  159 “The guy in back of the glass there”: Ibid.

  161 It was not purity of tradition that he wanted: Alan Lomax interviewed by Richard Reuss, August 29, 1966, Indiana University Library.

  161 “When did you make that one up, Woody?”: “Chain Around My Leg,” in Woody Guthrie, Library of Congress Recordings, vol. 2, Rounder Records 1041/2/3, 1988, track 7.

  161 After a night at a borrowed typewriter: Alan Lomax interviewed by Michael O’Rourke, July 7, 1987, AL.

  161 Woody could write out all the songs he knew: Alan Lomax to Woody Guthrie, July 26, 1940, LC.

  162 “a testament to an unknown America”: Alan Lomax, Woody Guthrie, and Pete Seeger, Hard Hitting Songs for Hard-Hit People (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1999 edition), 366.

  162 The keystone of the albums: Alan Lomax interviewed by Michael O’Rourke, July 7, 1987, AL.

  163 “These albums are not a summer sedative”: Quoted in Joe Klein, Woody Guthrie: A Life (New York: Ballantine, 1982 [1980]), 163-64.

  163 Even though they crossed into popular and blues territory: R. P. Wetherald to Alan Lomax, April 4, 1940, LC.

  163 “learned these songs from Lead Belly by rote”: Alan Lomax quoted in notes to The Midnight Special and Other Prison Songs, RCA P-50, reprinted in the notes to Take This Hammer, Bluebird 82876-50957 CD, 2000.

  164 They hoped to get the Rockefeller Foundation: John A. Lomax to Archibald MacLeish, April 4, 1940, AL.

  165 “a commercial possibility”: Alan Lomax to John A. Lomax, n.d., ca. July 1940.

  165 “We had Adam, we had Noah”: Bernard Eisenschitz, Nicholas Ray, 56.

  165 “Hear you fellas talk”: http://www.geocities.com.Nashville/3448/dustyold2html (no longer available).

  166 “When a woman’s blue she hangs her little head and cries”: “Back Where I Come From,” September 25, 1940, 1-2, AL.

  166 From there the cast went on to sing: Ibid.

  166 The subject might be anything: Bernard Eisenschitz, Nicholas Ray, 58.

  167 Alan managed to talk Nick into a compromise: Alan Lomax to Woody Guthrie, November 1, 1940, LC.

  167 He chatted with Sam Goldwyn: Alan Lomax to John A. Lomax, October 12, 1940, AL.

  Chapter 8: A Bourgeois Town

  168 “I need not overstress my opinion”: Alan Lomax to Harold Spivacke, August 1940, LC.

  169 And why not have them recorded by pop singers: Ibid.

  169 Archibald MacLeish loved the idea: Archibald MacLeish to Alan Lomax, August 30, 1940.

  170 “I hope you will be ready now to listen”: Alan Lomax, “Reels and Work Songs,” in 75 Years of Freedom: Commemoration of the 75th Anniversary of the Proclamation of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1943), 27-36; Ronald Cohen, ed., Alan Lomax: Selected Writings 1934-1997 (New York: Routledge, 2003), 76; Freedom: The Golden Gate Quartet and Josh White at the Library of Congress, Bridge CD 9114, 2002.

  170 “Alan was pretty hard-hitting”: Quoted in Nat Hentoff, “Profile: Alan Lomax—Surprising the Folk Song,” January 18, 1969, 16, unpublished, The New Yorker Records, c. 1924-1984, New York Public Library, Manuscripts and Archives Division, Box 1506, folders 7-8.

  171 It was an event that John Lomax would not soon forget: The “Spirituals to Swing” concert had been dedicated to Bessie Smith by John Hammond.

  171 John doubted the story: Later research confirmed John Lomax’s account. See Chris Albert-son, Bessie, rev. and exp. ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 265-67; and Sally Grimes, “The True Death of Bessie Smith,�
� Esquire 71, no. 6 (June 1969): 112-13.

  171 Alan and Brown apparently met to talk about it: Alan Lomax to Sterling Brown, October 16, 1941, LC.

  171 But even fifty years later: Alan Lomax, The Land Where the Blues Began (New York: Pantheon, 1993), 61.

  171 Alan was sent to talk with Mrs. Roosevelt: “Folk Music in the Roosevelt Era,” transcription of interview by Ralph Rinzler, in Folk Music in the Roosevelt White House: A Commemorative Program (Washington, DC: Office of Folklife Programs, Smithsonian Institution, 1982), 14-17.

  172 The next day MacLeish asked Alan to prepare a memo for him: Ibid.

  172 With the war in Europe intensifying: Archibald MacLeish to Alan Lomax, February 24, 1941, AL.

  172 “He’d get so excited”: Hentoff, “Profile: Alan Lomax,” 3.

  173 Next, the publishers announced that because manufacturing costs had gone up: Nolan Porterfield, Last Cavalier: The Life and Times of John A. Lomax (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1996), 438-39.

  173 The book itself argued for understanding folk art as Art: This section was aided by Judith Tick’s introduction to the Dover edition of Our Singing Country: Folk Songs and Ballads (Mineola, NY, 2000), “Rediscovering Our Singing Country,” xiii-xviii; and Judith Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger: A Composer’s Search for American Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).

  174 Alan’s talk at the Thirteenth Amendment celebration: “The History of the Fort Valley State College Folk Festival,” The Peachite 2, no. 2 (March 1944): 1.

  175 The day after the performance: Alan Lomax to Harold Spivacke, n.d., ca. May 1941; Alan Lomax memorandum, n.d., ca. mid-September 1941, 1, LC. The Fisk/Library of Congress project was the basis of a book edited by Robert Gordon and Bruce Nemerov, Lost Delta Found: Rediscovering the Fisk University-Library of Congress Coahoma County Study, 1941-1942 (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2005), which gathered together several parts of the project that never reached print. However, the editors never found, or chose not to use, all of the relevant correspondence and documentation from this project available in the Library of Congress and the Alan Lomax Archive in New York City, and consequently developed a very different narrative from the one presented here. Gordon and Nemerov see Lomax as having downplayed or perhaps even hidden the work of his black colleagues. A number of articles and reviews of their book found irresistible this story of a southern white man who built a career in part by using his black coauthors’ work. For other commentaries and reviews challenging the book’s research and conclusions, see Matthew Barton’s review in Western Folklore, Summer 2007, and John Cowley’s “Commentary” in Blues & Rhythm, March 2006.

  175 Even though Alan’s Back Where I Come From had been canceled: “South of the Border,” New York Times, August 10, 1941; Alan Lomax to Harold Spivacke, n.d., ca. May 1941, LC.

  176 The Library of Congress would furnish sound equipment: Alan Lomax to Charles Johnson, July 7, 1941, AL.

  176 “The agreed upon study”: Alan Lomax Library of Congress memorandum, September 18, 1941, LC.

  176 But as time went by and Alan heard nothing from Work, the two exchanged letters: Alan Lomax to John W. Work III, July 17, 1941; John W. Work III to Alan Lomax, July 24, 1941; Alan Lomax to John W. Work III, July 30, 1941, LC.

  176 He would meet up with Work: Charles Johnson to Alan Lomax, August, 11, 1941, LC.

  176 But preparations for war were beginning to intrude: “Report on Preliminary Work in Clarksdale, Mississippi,” 1941, AL.

  177 Johnson suggested that as an alternative plan: Charles Johnson to Alan Lomax, September 18, 1941, LC.

  177 “It would be worth-while: to ask singers”: Alan Lomax to Chief of the Music Division of Florida Folklife, August 31, 1939. LC.

  177 “The interview technique does seem to run a little slow”: Alan Lomax to Carita Doggett Corse, [Florida] Statewide Writers’ Project, October 15, 1939, LC.

  177 “My personal opinion”: Alan Lomax to John A. Lomax, July 17, 1940, LC.

  180 “Mister Ledford and the TVA”: Alan Lomax, “Mister Ledford and the TVA,” in Radio Drama in Action: Twenty-Five Plays of a Changing World, ed. Eric Barnouw (New York: Rinehart, 1945), 47-58.

  180 Later, Alan wrote MacLeish: Matthew Barton, “Arthur Miller—A View from the Field,” Folklife Center Notes, nos. 1-2 (Winter/Spring 2005): 5.

  181 When he picked up his guitar: Alan Lomax, The Land Where the Blues Began, 18.

  181 “And with him the sorrow of the blues”: Ibid.

  181 “Well, I got up this mornin’ ”: Son House, “The Jinks Blues,” Library of Congress CC08-A3.

  181 “Waters was bare-footed in raggedy overalls”: “The Art of the Negro: “Blues in the Mississippi Night,” BBC, November 20, 1951, 3/1.

  182 “He was not a composer”: Alan Lomax, undated, untitled field note, LC.

  182 “Muddy’s song departed from the rigid AAB”: Alan Lomax, The Land Where the Blues Began, 407.

  182 “full and fascinating”: Charles Johnson to Alan Lomax, September 18, 1941, LC.

  183 “Sixteen years have passed since I first picked cotton”: Lewis Jones to Alan Lomax, n.d., AL.

  184 “Alan had a way of making proclamations and value judgments”: Pete Seeger interviewed by John Szwed, 2006.

  184 “Naturally the Negro looks at the South with different eyes”: Alan Lomax to John A. Lomax, October 3, 1941, LC.

  184 “the seminar yielded, I note”: Charles Johnson to Alan Lomax, September 29, 1941, LC.

  186 “Your work sounds extremely interesting”: Alan Lomax to Harry Partch, October 24, 1941, LC.

  188 “It was a wonderful opportunity”: Nat Hentoff, “Profile: Alan Lomax,” 64.

  Chapter 9: The People’s War

  189 “I am perplexed as to why”: Alan Lomax FBI files, April 3, 1942.

  189 When Archibald MacLeish received two reports: Alan Lomax FBI files, July 2, 1942.

  189 A week later even J. Edgar Hoover: Alan Lomax FBI files, July 11, 1942.

  190 “good old countrified name”: Alan Lomax to Woody Guthrie, January 21, 1942, LC.

  190 He also asked for permission: Alan Lomax to Harold Spivacke, January 20, 1942, LC; January 22, 1942, LC.

  191 One of the first major academic meetings on the study of folklore: The proceedings of the conference were published as “Conference on the Character and State of Studies in Folklore,” Journal of American Folklore, October-December 1946, 495-527.

  191 But Alan was not easily flattered: Alan Lomax to Stith Thompson, November 12, 1941, LC; July 14, 1941, LC.

  191 “She told us of her son”: Alan Lomax, Mississippi notebooks, AL.

  192 It would have changed the direction: Alan Lomax to Son House, December 24, 1941; January 28, 1942; February 10, 1942; Son House to Alan Lomax, January 4, 1942, AL.

  192 His memory blurred by time and nervousness: Alan Lomax, The Land Where the Blues Began (New York: Pantheon, 1993), 18-23.

  192 Elizabeth also recalled a pistol: Undated, untitled note, AL.

  192 Alan was arrested again later: Boris Weintraub, “The Folklore of Alan Lomax: Library Marks Anniversary of Archive of Folk Song,” Washington Star, undated clipping from AL.

  192 Even before Alan returned to Washington: Harold Spivacke to Alan Lomax, July 11, 1942, LC.

  192 “for morale with teachers, musicians, Negroes”: Alan Lomax to Harold Spivacke, n.d., AL.

  192 “I have been in a territory”: Alan Lomax to Harold Spivacke, August 7, 1942, LC.

  193 “I have had more trouble with local whites”: Ibid.

  193 a Library of Congress memo: Ben Botkin to Harold Spivacke, October 27, 1942, LC.

  193 The library proposed that John Work clear whatever he did: Ibid.

  194 In addition, they said: Memo from Eri Douglass to Jeroma Sage, WPA: “Data for Mr. Lomax,” October 30, 1942.

  194 Work later wrote the library staff: John W. Work III to Ben Botkin, November 5, 1943, LC; and Ben Botkin to John W. Work III, November 10, 19
43, LC.

  194 President Jones told Harold: President Thomas E. Jones to Harold Spivacke, n.d., ca. October or November 1943, LC, AL.

  194 President Jones said he would come to Washington: President Thomas E. Jones to Duncan Emrich, December 26, 1943, LC, AL.

  194 Work replied that he needed to know: John W. Work III to Alan Lomax, December 28, 1947; Alan Lomax to John W. Work III, January 2, 1948, AL.

  194 “In 1941 and 1942”: Alan Lomax, “Report to NIMH,” 1969, AL.

  194 In a series of letters back and forth: Alan Lomax to Lewis Jones, February 10, 1954, AL.

  194 Jones replied that Charles Johnson: Lewis Jones to Alan Lomax, February 16, 1954, AL.

  195 The increase to the budget: Alan Lomax, “Saga of a Folksong Hunter,” 177.

  195 The bibliography was divided into the regions of America: Alan Lomax and Sidney Robertson Cowell, American Folk Song and Folk Lore: A Regional Bibliography (New York: Progressive Education Association, 1942).

  195 Also completed were the three volumes: The Check-List of Recorded Music in the English language in the Archive of American Folk Songs to July, 1940 (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1942).

  195 “I expect to make this material”: Alan Lomax to James Putnam, The Macmillan Company, December 26, 1942.

  196 When his application was received: Alan Lomax FBI files, May 28, 1943.

  197 “All the things I’d learned about as a folklorist”: Nat Hentoff, “Profile: Alan Lomax,” 65.

  197 “It is these folk artists that I hope”: Memo, “Plans for Reaching Folk Groups with War Information,” from Alan Lomax to Bryson and Hinsaker, October 27, 1942, AL.

  198 At what he called the “United Nations level”: Ibid.

  198 “As a final mark of indifference”: John A. Lomax to Alan Lomax, ca. December 1943, AL.

  199 “They will contain topical songs”: Alan Lomax to Lewis Cowan, January 25, 1943, AL.

  199 He also wanted to compile a songbook of fighting songs: Alan Lomax to Lewis Cowan, Robert Blakely, Douglas Meservey, and Archibald MacLeish, January 25, 1943; Alan Lomax to Alan Cranston and Lee Falk, February 4, 1943, AL.

  199 Instead of his campaign to reach people: Nat Hentoff, “Profile: Alan Lomax,” 65.