by John Szwed
302 “It took me four months,” Alan told journalist Nat Hentoff: Nat Hentoff, “Profile: Alan Lomax,” 93.
303 There were a few gaps in timing: Sing Christmas and the Turn of the Year, Rounder 11661-1850 CD.
303 Yet despite his appearances on the BBC and Granada Television: Financial statement from Baker, Todman Ltd, London, December13, 1957. AL.
303 “In a sense I became more intensely American”: Nat Hentoff, “Profile: Alan Lomax,” 93.
304 It was time to come back: John Faulk to Alan Lomax, June 6, 1958, AL.
304 Muddy Waters’s voice, Alan said, “had coarsened”: Album notes to Shirley Collins, False True Lovers, Folkways Records FG 3564, 1, 1958.
304 “I have to pick my way from task to task”: Alan Lomax, undated note to himself, AL.
304 Even before he left Britain: “Folk Song as It Is,” Newsweek, April 14, 1958, 80.
305 A reporter from Time was there to greet him: “Just Folk,” Time, September 22, 1958, 70.
Chapter 14: The American Campaign Resumed
307 But Pete also offered a stern warning: Pete Seeger, The Incomplete Folksinger, 185 (originally published in Sing Out!, Winter 1958-59).
307 “The ‘Folkniks’ and the Songs They Sing”: Sing Out! 9, no. 1 (Summer 1959): 30-31.
307 “Lomax has suddenly encountered a folk singing development”: John Cohen, Sing Out! 9, no. 1 (Summer 1959): 32-33.
308 “I began to feel as if I was the grandfather of folk music”: Nat Hentoff, “Profile: Alan Lomax—Surprising the Folk Song,” January 18, 1969, 95, unpublished, The New Yorker Records, c. 1924-1984, New York Public Library, Manuscripts and Archives Division, Box 1506, folders 7-8.
309 “There Goes My Baby”: Alan Lomax interviewed by John Szwed, New York, 1970.
309 “I’m sticking up for Rock ’n’ Roll”: Joseph Wershba, “Daily Closeup,” New York Post, March 30, 1959, 18.
309 His defense caused a stir: “The Rocking Rebels,” broadcast May 29, 1961; see also Bob Rolantz, “Alan Lomax Jr. [sic] Interprets R & B,” Billboard clipping in AL, ca. 1961.
309 “to find that New York had gone to sleep”: Alan Lomax interview by Nick Spitzer, July 25, 1990.
310 “It expresses the way I feel tonight”: Script for “Folksong 59” show, AL.
311 He might on one occasion compare it: Robert Shelton, “Bluegrass Style,” New York Times, August 30, 1958.
311 “Folk music in overdrive”: Alan Lomax, “Bluegrass Background: Folk Music with Overdrive,” Esquire 52 (October 1959): 108.
311 He had returned home to the Village: Alan Lomax, unpublished notes, AL.
312 “high-hat and aging”: Alan Lomax, Ballads, Blues, and Bluegrass, TV film, 1962, AL.
312 “A century of isolation in the lonesome hollows”: Alan Lomax, “Bluegrass Background,” 108.
312 “Many rock ’n’ roll recording artists”: Alan Lomax, quoted by Ara Piastro and Harry Altschuller in “The Big Change: He’s International. What Will Happen to Elvis?” Mirror, January 27, 1960, AL.
312 Ed Perl, the founder of the Ash Grove on Melrose in West Los Angeles: “Alan Lomax,” message on Yahoo! Groups, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SocEcJustice/message/620.
313 “I have grown almost to detest ‘Western civilization’ ”: Alan Lomax, The Rainbow Sign (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pierce, 1959), 10-11.
313 Yet southern newspapers like the Chattanooga Times: Christine Noble Govan, “Negro Music,” Chattanooga Times, September 20, 1959; Harry L. Smith, “Two Accounts of Negroes in the South,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, August 30, 1959; R. Henderson Shuffler, “Excursion into Negro Lore Found Authentic, Instructive,” Houston Chronicle, September 20, 1959; Marguerite Cartright, “Rural Southern Folk Character,” The Crisis, August-September 1959.
313 Just as these recordings appeared Alan was asked by RCA: How the West Was Won, RCA Living Stereo LSO-6070, 1960.
314 The concept became further diluted: How the West Was Won, film, 1962.
314 The series continued until they completed ten albums: All of these recordings were issued by Caedmon in the United States in 1961, and later by Topic records in the UK.
314 He now regretted having left Shirley behind in England: This account owes much to Shirley Collins, America, Across the Water (London: SAF Publishing, 2004), and Anna Lomax Wood.
315 When they came on, they were the success that was expected: Lester Flatts, the co-leader of the group, refused to appear when their time slot was changed.
315 A Sunday morning panel discussion: Israel G. Young, “Newport Folk Festival,” Caravan, no. 18 (August-September 1959): 26.
317 Though he found far fewer work song melodies and song leaders: Shirley Collins, America, 127.
317 On the song “Eighteen Hammers”: Alan Lomax’s notes and transcribed texts to Sounds of the South, Atlantic Records, 1993.
318 It was a style of playing that anticipated early blues harmonica: Hear, for instance, Herbie Hancock’s electronic introduction to “Watermelon Man.”
318 “Lord, the 61 Highway”: Shirley Collins, America, 135.
318 “The blues, speaking through Fred”: Alan Lomax, notes to Deep South: Sacred and Sinful, Prestige International 25001, 1960.
319 “folk music was flourishing”: Nat Hentoff, “The Man They Sing To,” Reporter, 1961, 48, 50.
320 Alan was particularly proud of the children’s anthology: Alan Lomax, notes to American Folk Songs for Children, Atlantic 1350, 1960.
320 The New York Times marveled at the depth of the collection: Robert Shelton, “Guide to the Southern Folk-Song Maize [sic],” New York Times, June 4, 1961.
320 Charles Edward Smith in the Saturday Review was equally impressed: Charles Edward Smith, “Cross-Seeding in Southern Songs,” Saturday Review, February 11, 1961, 74.
320 Smith also decried “stereotyped descriptions”: Ibid.
321 Prestige finally settled on a set of twelve albums to be called Southern Journey: The notes and editing for this series were done by Alan, his daughter Anne, and his assistant Carla Rotolo (wrongly identified as “Carlo” on the records). Though these recordings were recorded in stereo, they were issued only in mono by Prestige.
321 Shirley was also authorized to use the tapes: Alan Lomax, “To Whom It May Concern,” January 26, 1960, reprinted in Shirley Collins, America, 181.
322 “Everything I have written or transcribed”: Alan Lomax, self-analysis notes, September 21, 1960, AL.
323 “While I was squirreling round in the past”: Alan Lomax to Guy Carawan, 1960, printed in the album Freedom in the Air, SNCC-101, 1962.
Chapter 15: The Science of Folk Song
324 “He had come with a big manuscript”: Walter Goldschmidt interviewed by John Bishop.
324 Goldschmidt was impressed enough: Alan Lomax, “Folk Song Style: Musical Style and Social Context,” American Anthropologist 61, no. 6 (December 1959): 927-54.
325 The New York Times accurately summarized the most significant part: New York Times, February 9, 1959.
325 The New York Times treated it as such: Margaret Mead, New York Times, Letters to the Editor, February 5, 1961.
325 An Anglo-American nursery song like “Cock Robin”: Alan Lomax, Folk Songs of North America (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1960), 168-70, 181.
326 “In the popular mind a gulf was fixed between pleasure and righteousness”: Ibid., xviii.
326 Meanwhile, just across the tracks: Ibid., xx.
326 “a study of folksong style”: Alan Lomax, ACLS grant proposal, January 6, 1960, AL.
326 Dr. Norman J. Moses: Norman J. Moses, The Voice of Neurosis (New York: Grune and Stratton), 1954.
327 As he wrote to Jack Harrison: Alan Lomax to Jack Harrison, March 14, 1962, AL.
328 Arensberg suggested that Alan might use this approach: Alan Lomax, “The Best Things in Life,” Anthro Watch II, no. 2 (October 1994): 12-13.
328 In May 1961, Alan returned to Philadelphia: See Alan Lomax, “The Adventur
e of Learning, 1960,” American Council of Learned Societies Newsletter 13 (February 1962): 10-14.
329 Edith Trager called the form of analysis they had developed “phonotactics”: Their work was published as “Phonotactique du chant populaire” in L’Homme, Tome IV, no. 1 (January- April 1964): 5-55.
330 “For the first time I had encountered a system”: Alan Lomax, “The Adventure of Learning, 1960,” 13.
330 “The main function of musical style”: Alan Lomax’s notes written from 1954 to 1961, from Anna Lomax Wood.
331 “Musical style changes least of all”: Ibid.
331 “Under the term song style”: Ibid.
331 Alan decided in advance: Alan Lomax to Jack Harrison, Rockefeller Foundation, March 14, 1962, AL.
332 The results were then compared statistically: Victor Grauer, “Cantometrics: Song and Social Culture—A Response,” Musical Traditions, no. 159 (July 24, 2006).
332 “The special task of folklore”: Alan Lomax, “The Adventure of Learning, 1960,” 13-14.
332 “I have hit upon three ways of describing”: Alan Lomax to the Rockefeller Foundation, ca. 1961, AL.
332 His Rockefeller proposal was turned into an article: Alan Lomax, “Song Structure and Social Structure,” Ethnology 1, no. 4 (January 1962): 425-52.
333 “The coding system shows”: Alan Lomax to Jack Harrison, Humanities Division of the Rockefeller Foundation, March 14, 1962, AL.
334 Robert Farris Thompson, a professor of art history at Yale: Robert Farris Thompson interviewed by John Szwed, New Haven, CT, 2008.
335 “When you have to sit through a half-hour song”: Bess Lomax Hawes interviewed by John Szwed, California, 2005.
335 When he tried to interest Geoffrey Bridson at the BBC: Alan Lomax to Geoffrey Bridson, September 22, 1961, AL.
335 RCA showed no interest in his notions: Brad McCuen to Paul Rosen, March 15, 1960, AL.
336 Everything would be filmed with handheld cameras: Alan Lomax, “American Folk Song Films,” January 1960, AL.
336 Its sponsor, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation: A Teachers Manual for Music of Williamsburg was developed in cooperation with the National Educational Association in 1962.
336 “an extremely difficult Negro community to enter”: Expense sheets for Williamsburg film, 1960, AL.
336 Though keeping the film from becoming anachronistic: Carol J. Oja, “Filming the Music of Williamsburg with Alan Lomax,” Institute for Studies in American Music 33, no. 1 (Fall 2003).
337 But Alan took heart: Alan Lomax, notes to Georgia Sea Island Songs, New World Records, NW 278, 1977.
337 “The act of finding linkages”: Alan Lomax quoted in Ray Allen, “Staging the Folk: New York City’s Friends of Old Time Music,” Institute for Studies in American Music 35, no. 2 (Spring 2006), 2.
338 But it was not too small a wedding for the New York Times to ignore: New York Times, August 27, 1961.
338 “Bessie lived with us and that machine was there”: Alan Lomax, from the transcript of an unnamed and undated conference in Detroit, November 26, 1961, AL.
339 Though the interviews were never published, Alan wrote letters: The interviews can be heard at http://research.culturalequity.org/get-audio-ix.do?ix=recording&id=10812&idType=sessionId&sortBy=abc.
339 Alan’s sister Bess, however, did her own interviewing: Bessie Jones and Bess Lomax Hawes, Step It Down (New York: Harper and Row, 1972).
339 They became popular performers at folk festivals: Alan Lomax, liner notes to Georgia Sea Island Songs, New World Records, NW 278, and Southern Journey: Georgia Sea Islands, vols. 1-2, Rounder CDs 1712 and 1713; and Bessie Jones, For the Ancestors: Autobiographical Memories, collected and edited by John Stewart (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983), 137-46.
Chapter 16: To Hear the World in a Grain of Sand
342 Nor was this the romance of folklore collecting: Alan Lomax to Lee Hazen, September 26, 1966, AL.
343 While they were still in Trinidad, CBS Television called: “Local Singers Perform for CBS Television Show,” clipping in AL, no author, source, or date.
343 After six hours of questioning: Alan Lomax to John Lomax Jr. and Family, July 1, 1962, AL.
344 In a book that came out of this work: Alan Lomax, J. D. Elder, and Bess Lomax Hawes, Brown Girl in the Ring: An Anthology of Song Games from the Eastern Caribbean (New York: Pantheon, 1997), xi-xii.
345 “Indeed,” Alan wrote, hinting at future results: Alan Lomax, NIMH 1963-69 grant proposal, AL.
346 In Folk Songs of North America he had made a start: Ibid.
346 “far more significant . . . is the possibility”: Ibid.
347 But it was too late, he explained: Transcript of discussion between Margaret Mead and Alan Lomax, October 13, 1963, AL.
347 It was a modest and very preliminary finding: Victor Grauer, “Some Song Style Clusters—A Preliminary Study,” Ethnomusicology 9, no. 3 (September 1965): 265-71.
349 “For most of them it is their only outlet”: Newport Folk Festival program, 1964, AL.
349 He would return again at Christmas in 1963: Alan Lomax, Charleston News and Courier, January 19, 1964, reprinted in Moving Star Hall Singers and Alan Lomax: Sea Island Folk Festival, Folkways FS 3841, 1965.
349 Alan proposed that the festival hire three staff: Alan Lomax to Newport Folk Foundation, November 5, 1963, AL.
349 At the time, folklore students: Alan Lomax to Charles Seeger, January 21, 1964, AL.
349 Over the next few months he traveled twelve thousand miles: George Wein with Nate Chenin, Myself Among Others: A Life in Music (New York: Da Capo, 2004), 325.
350 The performers ranged from Seamus Ennis: Robert Shelton, “Newport Begins Its Folk Festival,” New York Times, July 24, 1964; Ted Holmberg, “Exotic Sounds Waft Over Freebody Park,” Providence Journal, July 24, 1964.
350 “every folk song in the Western world”: Alan Lomax on Studs Terkel’s radio show.
350 Alan had just ended an affair: “Sued Mate Says Wife Is Folklorn,” New York Post, February 28, 1964, 36.
351 “Collectors were looking for the oldest songs they could find”: Pete Seeger, “The Incomplete Folksinger,” 275 (originally published in Sing Out!, July 1965).
353 Dance reinforces human adaptive patterns: Alan Lomax, “Choreometrics and Ethnographic Filmmaking,” Filmmakers Newsletter 4, no. 4 (February 1971): 1-14.
354 Likening the blues to the Italian stornella: Robert Shelton, “Folklorists Give Talks at Newport,” New York Times, July 24, 1965, 12.
354 The story of Pete Seeger’s anger: Joe Boyd, White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s (London: Serpent’s Tail, 2006): 98-100, 103-8; Pete Seeger interviewed by John Szwed.
354 “I was trying to tell Dylan”: Michael Hall, “Mack McCormick Still Has the Blues, Texas Monthly, April 2002, reprinted in Da Capo Best Music Writing 2003, ed. Matt Groening and Paul Bresnick (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo, 2003), 107-121 (quote on 115).
355 Two of these filmed sessions: Devil Got My Woman: Blues at Newport, Vestapol DVD 13049, 2002; Delta Blues/Cajun Two-Step: Music from Mississippi & Louisiana, Newport Folk Festival, 1966, Vestapol VHS 13050, 1997.
355 A third film: Billy in the Lowlands: Old Time Music from the Newport Folk Festival, 1966, Vestapol VHS 13051, 1997.
356 So when a deficit turned up for the year 1966: George Wein, Myself Among Others, 335-36.
356 He did, however, manage to finish Folk Song Style and Culture: Alan Lomax, Folk Song Style and Culture (Washington, DC: American Association for the Advancement of Science, Publication no. 88, 1968).
357 “The first period of cross-cultural style research”: Application to extend an NIMH grant for a further four years, 1970-74, AL.
358 A few of the harshest reviewers admitted: See, for example, Elli Köngäs-Maranda, “Deep Significance and Surface Significance: Is Cantometrics Possible?” Semiotica 2, no. 2 (1970): 173-84; and Steven Feld, “Sound Structure and Social Structure,” Ethnomusicology 28, no. 3 (September 1984):
393-409.
Chapter 17: The Culture War
360 “The more I think about it”: Alan Lomax to Paul Rosen, February 2, 1968, AL.
361 “a few token specials and Sunday afternoon shows”: Alan Lomax to Editor, New York Times, April 13, 1968, not published.
361 He recalled the moment in Black Boy: Richard Wright, Black Boy (New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2008 [1945]), 35.
363 Alan liked the idea of his band: Alan Lomax, The Land Where the Blues Began (New York: Pantheon, 1993), 431.
363 “Like all other humanists during the last five years”: Alan Lomax, “Progress Report” prepared June 1969 for an NIMH 1963-69 final report, AL.
364 “The Black Identity Project was conceived in the spring of 1968”: Alan Lomax, “Narrative Report on the Black Identity Project,” n.d., AL.
365 Titled 3000 Years of Black Poetry: Alan Lomax and Raoul Abdul, eds., 3000 Years of Black Poetry (NY: Dodd, Mead and Co.), 1970.
366 “It was as if we were back in Bishop Percy’s time”: Nat Hentoff, “Profile: Alan Lomax—Surprising the Folk Song,” January 18, 1969, 68, unpublished, The New Yorker Records, c. 1924-1984, New York Public Library, Manuscripts and Archives Division, Box 1506, folders 7-8.
366 “The present generation are the creators”: Alan Lomax, “Application to the Center for the Study of Urban and Metropolitan Problems at NIMH,” December 3, 1969, AL.
367 “I hope Jelly Roll and Bunk Johnson and King Oliver haunt you”: Alan Lomax to Matt Vetton Sr., July 15, 1970, AL.
367 he testified at the hearings of the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare: Washington Post, May 18, 1970.
368 The Rockefeller proposal was an example: Alan Lomax, “Presenting America’s Musical Heritage,” Washington Post, February 11, 1975.
368 “I continually find the black diaspora presentations extremely disappointing”: Alan Lomax, “Report and Recommendations from Alan Lomax Subsequent to His Observations of the ’75 Festival and His Continuing Relation as a Folklore Consultant,” ca. 1975, AL.