John Lomax
Encyclopedia
John Avery Lomax was an American teacher, a pioneering musicologist
and folklorist
who did much for the preservation of American folk songs. He was father to Alan Lomax
, also a distinguished collector of folk music.
to James Avery Lomax and Susan Frances Cooper. In December 1869, the Lomax family traveled by ox cart from Mississippi to Texas. John Lomax grew up in central Texas
, just north of Meridian in rural
Bosque County. His father raised horses and cattle and grew cotton and corn on the 183 acre (0.74057538 km²) of bottomland he had purchased near the Bosque River. The cowboy songs he was exposed to during his childhood influenced him in such a way that his future choice of career already seemed confirmed. About 1876, the nine-year-old Lomax met and became close friends with Nat Blythe, a former slave who had just been hired as a farmhand by James Lomax. The friendship, "which perhaps gave my life its bent," lasted three years, and was crucial to Lomax's early development. Lomax, whose own schooling was sporadic because of the heavy farmwork he was forced to do, taught Blythe to read and write, and Blythe taught Lomax songs like "Big Yam Potatoes on a Sandy Land" and dance steps like "Juba." When Blyth was twenty-one, he took his savings and left. Lomax never saw him again and heard rumors that he had been murdered. For years afterward, he always looked for Nat when he traveled around the South.
When he was about to turn twenty-one, and his legal obligation to work as apprentice on his father's farm was coming to an end, his father permitted him to take the profits from the crops of one of their fields. Lomax used this, along with the money from selling his favorite pony, to pay to further his education. In the fall of 1887, he attended Granbury College in Granbury
and in May 1888, he graduated and eventually became a teacher. He began his first job as a teacher at a country school in Clifton
, southeast of Meridian. As time went on, he grew tired of the low pay and country-school drudgery and he applied for work at Weatherford College in the spring of 1889. He was hired as principal by the school's new president, David Switzer, who previously had been president of Granbury College until it was closed down and he was transferred to Weatherford
. In 1890, after having attended a summer course at Eastman Business College in Poughkeepsie, New York, Lomax returned to Texas where he became head of the Business Department of Weatherford College. Each summer, between 1891 and 1894, he also attended the annual lecture-and-concert series at New York State's Chautauqua Institute, which pioneered adult education (and where Lomax himself would later lecture). According to Porterfield, "There he improved his mathematics, struggled with Latin, listened to music that stirred him (opera and oratorios, light 'classics' of the day), and learned, for the first time, of two poets—Tennyson and Browning—whose work would soon become an integral part of his intellectual equipment."
in Nashville, Tennessee. But he soon realized that he probably would not pass Vanderbilt's tough entrance examinations. In 1895, at the age of 28, Lomax entered the University of Texas at Austin
, majoring in English literature
, and undertaking almost a double course load (including Greek, Latin and Anglo Saxon) and was graduated in two years. With a touch of Texas hyperbole, he later wrote:
Sometime around July 1898 Lomax began an intense relationship with Miss Shirley Green of Palestine, Texas
, whom he had met in 1897. Their friendship had its ups and downs for years until June 1902, when Lomax met Bess Baumann Brown from Dallas
, one of Green's acquaintances. It ultimately emerged that the reason for Miss Green's reluctance to commit herself was that she was mortally ill with tuberculosis. However, he continued to exchange letters with Miss Green until January 1903. She died a month later. In 1903, he accepted an offer to teach English at Texas A&M University
beginning in September In the meantime, Lomax decided to enroll at the University of Chicago for a summer course. Upon his return to Texas he became engaged to Miss Bess Brown and they married on June 9, 1904, in Austin
. The couple settled down at College Station
near the A&M campus. Their first child, Shirley, was born on August 7, 1905.
Lomax, however, driven by consciousness of the inadequacy of his early education, still burned with the desire to improve himself, and on September 26, 1906, he jumped at the chance to attend Harvard University
in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as a graduate student, having previously received a $500 stipend: The Austin Teaching Fellowships. Here he had the opportunity to study under Barrett Wendell
and George Lyman Kittredge
, two renowned scholars who actively encouraged his interest in cowboy songs. Harvard, in fact, was the center of American folklore studies (then viewed as a subsidiary of English literature, itself a novel field of scholarship in comparison with the more traditional study of rhetoric focused on classical languages and geared to preparing lawyers and clergy). Kittredge, in addition to being a well-known scholar of Chaucer and Shakespeare, was the son-in-law of renowned ballad scholar Francis James Child
, whose professorship of English literature he inherited, and who continued Child's work in folklore.
degree in hand, to resume his teaching position at A&M. The two professors even went down to Texas to visit their former pupil, who took them to visit Sunday services in a black church.
Soon after his return to Austin, John Lomax's son, John Jr., was born, on June 14, 1907. Galvanized by Kittredge's advice and support, Lomax had begun collecting cowboy songs and ballads, but his work was interrupted on February 7, 1908, when "The Great A&M Strike" broke out. The strike, caused by student dissatisfaction with the administration, continued even after February 14, 1908, when the University, in a conciliatory gesture, fired some of its administrators. Unable to teach because of the strike, Lomax, decided to see about resuming his collecting of cowboy ballads with a view to publishing them in a book. Encouraged by Wendell, he applied for and was awarded a Sheldon Fellowship grant. In June 1908, Lomax became a full professor at A&M. That August the strike ended when the President of the University resigned.
In June 1910, Lomax accepted an administrative job at the University of Texas as "Secretary of the University Faculties and Assistant Director of the Department of Extension." In November 1910, the result of his collecting labors, the anthology
, Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads, was published by Sturgis and Walton, with an introduction by then-former president Theodore Roosevelt
. Among the songs included were "Jesse James", "The Old Chisholm Trail", "Sweet Betsy From Pike", and "The Buffalo Skinners
" (which George Lyman Kittredge considered "one of the greatest western ballads" and which was praised for its Homeric quality by Carl Sandburg
and Virgil Thomson
.) From the first, John Lomax insisted on the inclusiveness of American culture. Some of the most famous songs in the book — "Git Along Little Dogies", "Sam Bass," and "Home on the Range
" — were credited to black cowboy informants.
Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads emerged as a major collection of Western songs and had "a profound effect on other folk song students.". According to noted folklore scholar, D. K. Wilgus, the book's publication "sparked a great surge of interest in folk songs of all kinds, and in fact, inspired a search for folk material in all regions of the nation." Its success transformed John A. Lomax into a nationally known figure.
co-founded the Texas Folklore Society
, following Kittredge’s suggestion that Lomax establish a Texas branch of the American Folklore Society
. Lomax and Payne hoped that the society would further their own research while kindling an interest in folklore among like-minded Texans. On Thanksgiving Day
, 1909, Lomax nominated Payne as president of the society, and Payne nominated Lomax as first secretary. The two set out to marshal support, and a month later, Killis Campbell, an associate professor at the University, publicly proposed the formation of the Society at a meeting of the Texas State Teachers Association in Dallas
. By April 1910, there were ninety-two charter members.
Lomax then used his prestige as a nationally-known author to travel the country raising money for folklore studies and to establish other state folklore societies. "He was among the first scholars to present papers about American folk songs to the Modern Language Association
, the nation's leading organization of teachers of languages and literature. For the next several years he hit the lecture circuit, traveling so often that his wife, Bess Brown, had to help him with his schedules and even some of his speeches." His lectures on cowboy songs, ballads and poetry took him all across the eastern USA. For example, in December 1911, Lomax made a successful performance at Cornell University, singing and reciting some of the cowboy songs he had collected. Sometimes he would have a chorus of college students dress up as cowboys to add interest to his presentations.
Lomax's abiding interest in African-American folklore was also in evidence, for he had plans to publish another book containing black folk songs within a year. Although the book failed to materialize, he did publish (in the Journal of American Folklore, December 1912) "Stories of an African Prince", a collection of sixteen African stories, which he had obtained through his correspondence with a young Nigerian student, Lattevi Ajayi. In 1912, with the backing of Kittredge, John A. Lomax was elected president of the American Folklore Society
, with Kittredge (himself a former president of the society) as First Vice President. He was re-elected for a second term in 1913. In 1922, J. Frank Dobie
became secretary-treasurer of the Texas Folklore Society, a job he was to hold for 21 years.
Lomax's second son (and third child), Alan, was born on January 15, 1915. In time, Alan Lomax
would prove a worthy successor of his father. A second daughter, Bess
, was born in 1921, and she too had a distinguished career, both as a performer and teacher.
The Texas Folklore Society grew gradually over the next decade, with Lomax steering it forward. At his invitation, Kittredge and Wendell attended its meetings. Other early members were Stith Thompson
and J. Frank Dobie
, who both began teaching English at the university in 1914. In 1915, at Lomax's recommendation, Stith Thompson became the society’s secretary-treasurer. In 1916, Lomax's voluminous encyclopedia, The Book of Texas, which he had written jointly with Harry Yandall Benedict, was published. The same year, Stith Thompson edited the first volume of the Publications of the Texas Folklore Society, which Dobie reissued as Round the Levee in 1935. This publication exemplified the society’s express purpose, and the motivation behind Lomax's own work: to gather a body of folklore before it disappeared, and to preserve it for the analysis of later scholars. These early efforts foreshadowed what would become Lomax’s greatest achievement, the collection of more than ten thousand recordings for the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress
. In the inaugural issue of the Publications of the Texas Folklore Society, John A. Lomax urged the collection of Texas folklore: "Two rich and practically unworked fields in Texas are found in the large Negro and Mexican populations of the state." He adds, "Here are many problems of research that lie close at hand, not buried in musty tomes and incomplete records, but in vital human personalities."
Throughout the next seven years, he continued his research and lecture tours, assisted and encouraged by his wife and children. All this came to an end on July 16, 1917, however, when Lomax was fired along with six other faculty members as the result of a political battle between Governor James Ferguson
and the University President, Dr. R. E. Vinson. Lomax moved to Chicago
to take a job selling bonds at Lee, Higginson, a bond brokerage firm run by the son of his old professor Barrett Wendell. A few months later, Ferguson was impeached and the Board of Regents rescinded its dismissal of the faculty, Lomax who felt some loyalty to the family of Barrett Wendell felt it would be wrong to desert his post at the Chicago brokerage so quickly and remained in Chicago for the duration of the war. He had moved to Chicago to take a job with the brokerage firm of Lee, Higginson and remained there for eighteen months until the war ended. There he struck up a what turned out to be a lifelong friendship with Chicago poet Carl Sandburg
, who frequently mentions him in his book, American Songbag (1927). In 1919, his next book, Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp, an anthology of cowboy poetry, was published by Macmillan. That year Lomax returned to Texas to be secretary of the Texas Exes, which had become financially independent of the University, so as to avoid further interference from politicians. Nevertheless, interference struck, when Ferguson, whom the law prohibited from holding office, ran his wife, Miriam "Ma" Ferguson, as his surrogate. As governor, Mrs. Ferguson was able to pack the board of regents and oust John from his job as editor of the Alcade, which during his tenure was a 100-page long publication. Seeing how the wind was blowing, Lomax resigned his secretaryship and joined the Republic Bank of Dallas in 1925. The economic crash of 1929 presaged bad things for the bank, however.
) serving the senior Lomax as driver and personal assistant. In June 1932, they arrived at the offices of the Macmillan publishing company
in New York
. Here Lomax proposed his idea for an anthology of American ballad
s and folksongs, with a special emphasis on the contributions of African Americans. It was accepted. In preparation he traveled to Washington
to review the holdings in the Archive of American Folk Song of the Library of Congress.
By the time of Lomax’s arrival, the Archive already contained a collection of commercial phonograph
recordings that straddled the boundaries between commercial and folk, and wax cylinder field recordings, built up under the leadership of Robert Winslow Gordon
, Head of the Archive, and Carl Engel
, chief of the Music Division. Gordon had also experimented in the field with a portable disc recorder, but had had neither time nor resources to do significant fieldwork. Lomax found the recorded holdings of the Archive woefully inadequate for his purposes. He therefore made an arrangement with the Library whereby it would provide recording equipment, obtained for it by Lomax through private grants, in exchange for which he would travel the country making field recordings to be deposited in the Archive of the Library, then the major resource for printed and recorded material in the United States
After the departure of Robert Gordon from the Library in 1934, John A. Lomax was named Honorary Consultant and Curator of the Archive of American Folk Song, a title he held until his death in 1948. His work, for which he was paid a salary of one dollar, included fund raising for the Library, and he was expected to support himself entirely through writing books and giving lectures. Lomax secured grants from the Carnegie Corporation and the Rockefeller Foundation
, among others, for continued field recordings. He and Alan recorded Spanish ballads and vaquero
songs on the Rio Grande
border and spent weeks among French-speaking Cajun
s in southern Louisiana
.
Thus began a ten-year relationship with the Library of Congress that would involve not only John but the entire Lomax family, including his second wife, Ruby Terrill Lomax
, Professor of Classics and Dean of Women at the University of Texas, whom he married in 1934. All four of John’s children assisted with his folksong research and with the daily operations of the Archive: Shirley, who performed songs taught to her by her mother; John Jr., who encouraged his father's association with the Library; Alan Lomax
who accompanied John on field trips and who from 1937–42 served as the Archive’s first paid (though very nominally) employee as Assistant in Charge; and Bess, who spent her weekends and school vacations copying song texts and doing comparative song research.
, Lomax was able to set out in June 1933 on the first recording expedition under the Library’s auspices, with Alan Lomax (then eighteen years old) in tow. Then, a disproportionate percentage of African American males were held as prisoners. Robert Winslow Gordon, Lomax's predecessor at the Library of Congress, had written (in an article in the New York Times, c. 1926) that, "Nearly every type of song is to be found in our prisons and penitentiaries" Folklorists Howard Odum and Guy Johnson also had observed that, "If one wishes to obtain anything like an accurate picture of the workaday Negro he will surely find his best setting in the chain gang, prison, or in the situation of the ever-fleeing fugitive." But what these folklorists had merely recommended John and Alan Lomax were able to put into practice. In their successful grant application they wrote, following Odum, Johnson and Gordon's hint, that prisoners, "Thrown on their own resources for entertainment . . . still sing, especially the long-term prisoners who have been confined for years and who have not yet been influenced by jazz
and the radio
, the distinctive old-time Negro
melodies." They toured Texas
prison farm
s recording work songs, reels
, ballad
s, and blues
from prison
ers such as James "Iron Head" Baker, Mose "Clear Rock" Platt, and Lightnin’ Washington. By no means were all of those whom the Lomaxes recorded imprisoned, however: in other communities, they recorded K.C. Gallaway and Henry Truvillion.
In July 1933, they acquired a state-of-the-art, 315 pounds (142.9 kg) phonograph
uncoated-aluminum disk recorder. Installing it in the trunk of his Ford
sedan, Lomax soon used it to record, at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, a twelve-string guitar player by the name of Huddie Ledbetter, better known as "Lead Belly," whom they considered one of their most significant finds. During the next year and a half, father and son continued to make disc recordings of musicians throughout the South.
In contrast to earlier amateur collectors, the Lomaxes were also among the first to attempt to apply scholarly methodology in their work, though they did not adhere to the strict empirical positivism
adopted by the subsequent generation of academic folklorists, who believed in refraining from drawing conclusions about the data they amassed.
The following year (in July 1934), they visited Angola once again. This time Lead Belly begged them to make a recording of a song he had written to take to the Governor requesting parole, which they did. However, unbeknownst to them, Lead Belly was released in August for good time (and because of cost-cutting due to the Depression) and not because of the Lomaxes' recording, which the Governor may not have listened to. In September 1934, Lead Belly wrote to Lomax requesting employment, since he needed to have a job in order not to be sent back to prison. At the urging of John, Jr., Lomax engaged Lead Belly as his driver and assistant and the pair traveled the South together collecting folk songs for the next three months. Then, in December 1934, Lead Belly famously performed illustrating John Lomax's scheduled lecture of folk songs at a smoker and sing-along held at the national MLA meeting in Philadelphia. The result was a sensation and the rest is history (see Lead Belly). Their association continued for three more months—until the following March (1935). In January, Lomax, who knew nothing whatever about the recording business, became Lead Belly's manager and, through a friend, cowboy singer Tex Ritter
, got Lead Belly a recording contract with the famous A&R man Art Satherly
of ARC
records. Satherly had publicity photos made of the singer wearing overalls and sitting on sacks of grain, garb and setting that were customary in commercial publicity photos of country singers in those days. But Lead Belly's recordings, marketed as race music, failed to sell. A filmed re-enactment in early 1935 for The March of Time
newsreel of Lomax's discovery of Lead Belly in prison, led to the myth that John Lomax made Lead Belly perform in prison stripes (which is inaccurate). He did perform in overalls, however. During Lomax's two-week lecture tour with Lead Belly on the eastern College circuit in March 1934 (pre-scheduled by Lomax before teaming up with Lead Belly), the two men quarreled over money and never spoke to one another again.
John A. Lomax has been accused of paternalism and of tailoring Lead Belly's repertoire and clothing during his brief association with Lead Belly. "But," writes jazz historian Ted Gioia,
.
In his 1942 introduction to the multi-volume "Checklist of Recorded Folk Song in the Library of Congress", Harold Spivacke, Chief of the Library of Congress's Division of Music, wrote:
After 1942, field work of collecting folk songs under government auspices was discontinued due to a shortage of acetate needed for the war effort. But the work had aroused the ire and suspicion of Southern conservatives in Congress who were fearful it could be used as a cover for civil and worker rights agitation, and because of congressional opposition it has never been resumed.
. In 1936, he was assigned to serve as an advisor on folklore
collecting for both the Historical Records Survey
and the Federal Writers' Project
. Lomax's biographer, Nolan Porterfield, notes that the outlines of the famed WPA
State Guides
resulting from this work resemble Lomax and Benedict’s earlier Book of Texas.
As the Federal Writers' Project's first Folklore Editor, Lomax also directed the gathering of ex-slave
narratives and devised a questionnaire
for project fieldworkers to use.
John A. Lomax served as president of the Texas Folklore Society for the years 1940–41, and 1941–42. In 1947 his autobiography Adventures of a Ballad Hunter (New York: Macmillan) was published and was awarded the Carr P. Collins prize as the best book of the year by the Texas Institute of Letters. The book was immediately optioned to be made into a Hollywood movie starring Bing Crosby
as Lomax and Josh White
as Lead Belly, but the project was never realized.
Lomax died of a stroke in January 1948, aged 80. On June 15 of that year, Lead Belly gave a concert at the University of Texas, performing children's songs such as "Skip to my Lou" and spirituals (performed with his wife Martha) that he had first sung years before for the late collector.
In 2010, John A. Lomax was inducted into the Western Music Hall of Fame for his contributions to the field of cowboy music.
Following in his grandfather's footsteps, Lomax's grandson John Lomax III is a nationally published United States
music journalist, author of Nashville: Music City USA (1986), Red Desert Sky (2001) and co-author of The Country Music Book (1988). He is also an artist manager and has represented Townes Van Zandt
, Steve Earle
, Rocky Hill, David Schnaufer
and The Cactus Brothers. He began representing the Dead Ringer Band in 1996.
John Lomax III's son John Nova Lomax also kept up the family tradition. While serving as the former music editor of the Houston Press
, John Nova Lomax won an ASCAP Deems Taylor
award for music journalism for his profile of troubled former country music superstar Doug Supernaw
. John Nova Lomax also helped discover rising country troubadour Hayes Carll
. Since 2008, John Nova Lomax has been a staff writer at the Houston Press. In 2010, 100 years after his great-grandfather published his first book, John Nova Lomax published his own first book: Houston's Best Dive Bars: Drinking and Diving in the Bayou City.
Musicology
Musicology is the scholarly study of music. The word is used in narrow, broad and intermediate senses. In the narrow sense, musicology is confined to the music history of Western culture...
and folklorist
Folklore
Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...
who did much for the preservation of American folk songs. He was father to Alan Lomax
Alan Lomax
Alan Lomax was an American folklorist and ethnomusicologist. He was one of the great field collectors of folk music of the 20th century, recording thousands of songs in the United States, Great Britain, Ireland, the Caribbean, Italy, and Spain.In his later career, Lomax advanced his theories of...
, also a distinguished collector of folk music.
Early life
The Lomax family originally came from England in the 18th century when William Lomax settled in a colony in North Carolina. John Lomax was born in Goodman, MississippiGoodman, Mississippi
Goodman is a town in Holmes County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 1,252 at the 2000 census. It is the birthplace of John A. Lomax , pioneering folklorist, andDavid Herbert Donald , Pulitzer-prize-winning historian....
to James Avery Lomax and Susan Frances Cooper. In December 1869, the Lomax family traveled by ox cart from Mississippi to Texas. John Lomax grew up in central Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
, just north of Meridian in rural
Rural
Rural areas or the country or countryside are areas that are not urbanized, though when large areas are described, country towns and smaller cities will be included. They have a low population density, and typically much of the land is devoted to agriculture...
Bosque County. His father raised horses and cattle and grew cotton and corn on the 183 acre (0.74057538 km²) of bottomland he had purchased near the Bosque River. The cowboy songs he was exposed to during his childhood influenced him in such a way that his future choice of career already seemed confirmed. About 1876, the nine-year-old Lomax met and became close friends with Nat Blythe, a former slave who had just been hired as a farmhand by James Lomax. The friendship, "which perhaps gave my life its bent," lasted three years, and was crucial to Lomax's early development. Lomax, whose own schooling was sporadic because of the heavy farmwork he was forced to do, taught Blythe to read and write, and Blythe taught Lomax songs like "Big Yam Potatoes on a Sandy Land" and dance steps like "Juba." When Blyth was twenty-one, he took his savings and left. Lomax never saw him again and heard rumors that he had been murdered. For years afterward, he always looked for Nat when he traveled around the South.
When he was about to turn twenty-one, and his legal obligation to work as apprentice on his father's farm was coming to an end, his father permitted him to take the profits from the crops of one of their fields. Lomax used this, along with the money from selling his favorite pony, to pay to further his education. In the fall of 1887, he attended Granbury College in Granbury
Granbury, Texas
Granbury is a city in Hood County, Texas, in the United States. As of the 2000 census, the city population was 5,718. It is the county seat of Hood County and the principal city of the Micropolitan Statistical Area....
and in May 1888, he graduated and eventually became a teacher. He began his first job as a teacher at a country school in Clifton
Clifton, Texas
Clifton is the largest city in Bosque County in Central Texas. The city's population was 3,542 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Clifton is located at ....
, southeast of Meridian. As time went on, he grew tired of the low pay and country-school drudgery and he applied for work at Weatherford College in the spring of 1889. He was hired as principal by the school's new president, David Switzer, who previously had been president of Granbury College until it was closed down and he was transferred to Weatherford
Weatherford, Texas
Weatherford is a city in Parker County, Texas, United States, and a western suburb of Fort Worth. The population was 19,000 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Parker County and is part of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex.-Geography:...
. In 1890, after having attended a summer course at Eastman Business College in Poughkeepsie, New York, Lomax returned to Texas where he became head of the Business Department of Weatherford College. Each summer, between 1891 and 1894, he also attended the annual lecture-and-concert series at New York State's Chautauqua Institute, which pioneered adult education (and where Lomax himself would later lecture). According to Porterfield, "There he improved his mathematics, struggled with Latin, listened to music that stirred him (opera and oratorios, light 'classics' of the day), and learned, for the first time, of two poets—Tennyson and Browning—whose work would soon become an integral part of his intellectual equipment."
Early career
By this time, however, his desire for further education made him dream of a degree at a first-rate university, and his first choice was Vanderbilt UniversityVanderbilt University
Vanderbilt University is a private research university located in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. Founded in 1873, the university is named for shipping and rail magnate "Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided Vanderbilt its initial $1 million endowment despite having never been to the...
in Nashville, Tennessee. But he soon realized that he probably would not pass Vanderbilt's tough entrance examinations. In 1895, at the age of 28, Lomax entered the University of Texas at Austin
University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin is a state research university located in Austin, Texas, USA, and is the flagship institution of the The University of Texas System. Founded in 1883, its campus is located approximately from the Texas State Capitol in Austin...
, majoring in English literature
English literature
English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....
, and undertaking almost a double course load (including Greek, Latin and Anglo Saxon) and was graduated in two years. With a touch of Texas hyperbole, he later wrote:
Never was there such a hopeless hodge-pogde, There was I, a Chautauqua-educated country boy who couldn't conjugate an English verb or decline a pronoun, attempting to master three other languages at the same time . . . . But I plunged on through the year, for since I was older than the average freshman, I must hurry, hurry, hurry. I don't think I ever stopped to think how foolish it all was.In his memoir, Adventures of a Ballad Hunter, Lomax recounts how he had arrived at the University of Texas with a roll of cowboy songs he had written down in childhood. He showed them to an English professor, Morgan Callaway, only to have them discounted as "cheap and unworthy," prompting Lomax to take the bundle behind the men’s dormitory and burn it. His interest in folksongs thus rebuffed, Lomax focused his attentions on more acceptable academic pursuits. He joined the fraternity Phi Delta Theta and the Rusk Literary Society, as well as becoming an editor and later the editor-in-chief of the University of Texas Magazine. During the summer of 1896, he attended a summer school program in Chicago studying languages. In 1897, he became an associate editor of the Alcalde, a student newspaper. After graduation in June 1897, he worked at the University of Texas as registrar for the next six years until the spring of 1903. He also had other duties such as being personal secretary to the President of the University, manager of Brackenridge Hall (the men’s dormitory on campus), and serving on the Alumni Scholarship Committee. Lomax joined a campus fraternity known as The Great and Honorable Order of Gooroos receiving the title "Sybillene Priest".
Sometime around July 1898 Lomax began an intense relationship with Miss Shirley Green of Palestine, Texas
Palestine, Texas
Palestine is a city in Anderson County, Texas, in the United States. As of the 2000 census, the city population was 17,598, and 18,458 in the 2009 estimate. It is the county seat of Anderson County and is situated in East Texas...
, whom he had met in 1897. Their friendship had its ups and downs for years until June 1902, when Lomax met Bess Baumann Brown from Dallas
Dallas, Texas
Dallas is the third-largest city in Texas and the ninth-largest in the United States. The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is the largest metropolitan area in the South and fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States...
, one of Green's acquaintances. It ultimately emerged that the reason for Miss Green's reluctance to commit herself was that she was mortally ill with tuberculosis. However, he continued to exchange letters with Miss Green until January 1903. She died a month later. In 1903, he accepted an offer to teach English at Texas A&M University
Texas A&M University
Texas A&M University is a coeducational public research university located in College Station, Texas . It is the flagship institution of the Texas A&M University System. The sixth-largest university in the United States, A&M's enrollment for Fall 2011 was over 50,000 for the first time in school...
beginning in September In the meantime, Lomax decided to enroll at the University of Chicago for a summer course. Upon his return to Texas he became engaged to Miss Bess Brown and they married on June 9, 1904, in Austin
Austin, Texas
Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of :Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in...
. The couple settled down at College Station
College Station, Texas
College Station is a city in Brazos County, Texas, situated in East Central Texas in the heart of the Brazos Valley. The city is located within the most populated region of Texas, near three of the 10 largest cities in the United States - Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio...
near the A&M campus. Their first child, Shirley, was born on August 7, 1905.
Lomax, however, driven by consciousness of the inadequacy of his early education, still burned with the desire to improve himself, and on September 26, 1906, he jumped at the chance to attend Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as a graduate student, having previously received a $500 stipend: The Austin Teaching Fellowships. Here he had the opportunity to study under Barrett Wendell
Barrett Wendell
Barrett Wendell was an American academic known for a series of textbooks including English Composition, studies of Cotton Mather and William Shakespeare, A Literary History of America, The France of Today, and The Traditions of European Literature.He was born in Boston, the son of Jacob and Mary...
and George Lyman Kittredge
George Lyman Kittredge
George Lyman Kittredge was a celebrated professor and scholar of English literature at Harvard University. His scholarly edition of the works of William Shakespeare' as well as his writings and lectures on Shakespeare and other literary figures made him one of the most influential American...
, two renowned scholars who actively encouraged his interest in cowboy songs. Harvard, in fact, was the center of American folklore studies (then viewed as a subsidiary of English literature, itself a novel field of scholarship in comparison with the more traditional study of rhetoric focused on classical languages and geared to preparing lawyers and clergy). Kittredge, in addition to being a well-known scholar of Chaucer and Shakespeare, was the son-in-law of renowned ballad scholar Francis James Child
Francis James Child
Francis James Child was an American scholar, educator, and folklorist, best known today for his collection of folk songs known as the Child Ballads. Child was Boylston professor of rhetoric and oratory at Harvard University, where he produced influential editions of English poetry...
, whose professorship of English literature he inherited, and who continued Child's work in folklore.
It was Kittredge who pioneered modern methods of ballad study, and who encouraged collectors to get out of their armchairs and library halls and to get out into the countryside to collect ballads first hand. When he met John Lomax in 1907, this was what he encouraged him to do; the cowboy songs Lomax had been writing down were glimpses into a whole new world, and Lomax should follow up on his work. "Go and get this material while it can be found," he told the young Texan. "Preserve the words and music. That's your job."Both Wendell and Kittredge continued to play an important advisory role in Lomax's career long after he returned to Texas in June 1907, Master of Arts
Master of Arts (postgraduate)
A Master of Arts from the Latin Magister Artium, is a type of Master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The M.A. is usually contrasted with the M.S. or M.Sc. degrees...
degree in hand, to resume his teaching position at A&M. The two professors even went down to Texas to visit their former pupil, who took them to visit Sunday services in a black church.
Soon after his return to Austin, John Lomax's son, John Jr., was born, on June 14, 1907. Galvanized by Kittredge's advice and support, Lomax had begun collecting cowboy songs and ballads, but his work was interrupted on February 7, 1908, when "The Great A&M Strike" broke out. The strike, caused by student dissatisfaction with the administration, continued even after February 14, 1908, when the University, in a conciliatory gesture, fired some of its administrators. Unable to teach because of the strike, Lomax, decided to see about resuming his collecting of cowboy ballads with a view to publishing them in a book. Encouraged by Wendell, he applied for and was awarded a Sheldon Fellowship grant. In June 1908, Lomax became a full professor at A&M. That August the strike ended when the President of the University resigned.
In June 1910, Lomax accepted an administrative job at the University of Texas as "Secretary of the University Faculties and Assistant Director of the Department of Extension." In November 1910, the result of his collecting labors, the anthology
Anthology
An anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler. It may be a collection of poems, short stories, plays, songs, or excerpts...
, Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads, was published by Sturgis and Walton, with an introduction by then-former president Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States . He is noted for his exuberant personality, range of interests and achievements, and his leadership of the Progressive Movement, as well as his "cowboy" persona and robust masculinity...
. Among the songs included were "Jesse James", "The Old Chisholm Trail", "Sweet Betsy From Pike", and "The Buffalo Skinners
On the Trail of the Buffalo
"The Buffalo Skinners" is a traditional American folk song. It tells the story of an 1873 buffalo hunt on the southern plains. According to Fannie Eckstorm, 1873 is correct, as the year that professional buffalo hunters from Dodge City first entered the northern part of the Texas panhandle...
" (which George Lyman Kittredge considered "one of the greatest western ballads" and which was praised for its Homeric quality by Carl Sandburg
Carl Sandburg
Carl Sandburg was an American writer and editor, best known for his poetry. He won three Pulitzer Prizes, two for his poetry and another for a biography of Abraham Lincoln. H. L. Mencken called Carl Sandburg "indubitably an American in every pulse-beat."-Biography:Sandburg was born in Galesburg,...
and Virgil Thomson
Virgil Thomson
Virgil Thomson was an American composer and critic. He was instrumental in the development of the "American Sound" in classical music...
.) From the first, John Lomax insisted on the inclusiveness of American culture. Some of the most famous songs in the book — "Git Along Little Dogies", "Sam Bass," and "Home on the Range
Home on the Range
"Home on the Range" is the state song of Kansas, U.S.Home on the Range may also refer to:* Home on the Range , a drama directed by Arthur Jacobson* Home on the Range , a Disney animated feature film...
" — were credited to black cowboy informants.
Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads emerged as a major collection of Western songs and had "a profound effect on other folk song students.". According to noted folklore scholar, D. K. Wilgus, the book's publication "sparked a great surge of interest in folk songs of all kinds, and in fact, inspired a search for folk material in all regions of the nation." Its success transformed John A. Lomax into a nationally known figure.
Texas Folklore Society
Around the same time, Lomax and Professor Leonidas Payne of the University of Texas at AustinUniversity of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin is a state research university located in Austin, Texas, USA, and is the flagship institution of the The University of Texas System. Founded in 1883, its campus is located approximately from the Texas State Capitol in Austin...
co-founded the Texas Folklore Society
Texas Folklore Society
The Texas Folklore Society is a non-profit organization formed in 1909. John Avery Lomax and Leonidas Warren Payne, Jr., conceived the idea for the Society and served as its first officers....
, following Kittredge’s suggestion that Lomax establish a Texas branch of the American Folklore Society
American Folklore Society
The American Folklore Society is the US-based professional association for folklorists, with members from the US, Canada, and around the world. It was founded in 1888 by William Wells Newell, who stood at the center of a diverse group of university-based scholars, museum anthropologists, and men...
. Lomax and Payne hoped that the society would further their own research while kindling an interest in folklore among like-minded Texans. On Thanksgiving Day
Thanksgiving (United States)
Thanksgiving, or Thanksgiving Day, is a holiday celebrated in the United States on the fourth Thursday in November. It has officially been an annual tradition since 1863, when, during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national day of thanksgiving to be celebrated on Thursday,...
, 1909, Lomax nominated Payne as president of the society, and Payne nominated Lomax as first secretary. The two set out to marshal support, and a month later, Killis Campbell, an associate professor at the University, publicly proposed the formation of the Society at a meeting of the Texas State Teachers Association in Dallas
Dallas, Texas
Dallas is the third-largest city in Texas and the ninth-largest in the United States. The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is the largest metropolitan area in the South and fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States...
. By April 1910, there were ninety-two charter members.
Lomax then used his prestige as a nationally-known author to travel the country raising money for folklore studies and to establish other state folklore societies. "He was among the first scholars to present papers about American folk songs to the Modern Language Association
Modern Language Association
The Modern Language Association of America is the principal professional association in the United States for scholars of language and literature...
, the nation's leading organization of teachers of languages and literature. For the next several years he hit the lecture circuit, traveling so often that his wife, Bess Brown, had to help him with his schedules and even some of his speeches." His lectures on cowboy songs, ballads and poetry took him all across the eastern USA. For example, in December 1911, Lomax made a successful performance at Cornell University, singing and reciting some of the cowboy songs he had collected. Sometimes he would have a chorus of college students dress up as cowboys to add interest to his presentations.
Lomax's abiding interest in African-American folklore was also in evidence, for he had plans to publish another book containing black folk songs within a year. Although the book failed to materialize, he did publish (in the Journal of American Folklore, December 1912) "Stories of an African Prince", a collection of sixteen African stories, which he had obtained through his correspondence with a young Nigerian student, Lattevi Ajayi. In 1912, with the backing of Kittredge, John A. Lomax was elected president of the American Folklore Society
American Folklore Society
The American Folklore Society is the US-based professional association for folklorists, with members from the US, Canada, and around the world. It was founded in 1888 by William Wells Newell, who stood at the center of a diverse group of university-based scholars, museum anthropologists, and men...
, with Kittredge (himself a former president of the society) as First Vice President. He was re-elected for a second term in 1913. In 1922, J. Frank Dobie
J. Frank Dobie
James Frank Dobie was an American folklorist, writer, and newspaper columnist best known for many books depicting the richness and traditions of life in rural Texas during the days of the open range...
became secretary-treasurer of the Texas Folklore Society, a job he was to hold for 21 years.
Lomax's second son (and third child), Alan, was born on January 15, 1915. In time, Alan Lomax
Alan Lomax
Alan Lomax was an American folklorist and ethnomusicologist. He was one of the great field collectors of folk music of the 20th century, recording thousands of songs in the United States, Great Britain, Ireland, the Caribbean, Italy, and Spain.In his later career, Lomax advanced his theories of...
would prove a worthy successor of his father. A second daughter, Bess
Bess Lomax Hawes
Bess Lomax Hawes was an American folk musician, folklorist, and researcher. She was the daughter of John Avery Lomax and Bess Bauman-Brown Lomax, and the sister of Alan Lomax.-Early life and education:...
, was born in 1921, and she too had a distinguished career, both as a performer and teacher.
The Texas Folklore Society grew gradually over the next decade, with Lomax steering it forward. At his invitation, Kittredge and Wendell attended its meetings. Other early members were Stith Thompson
Stith Thompson
Stith Thompson was an American scholar of folklore. He is the "Thompson" of the Aarne-Thompson classification system.- Biography :...
and J. Frank Dobie
J. Frank Dobie
James Frank Dobie was an American folklorist, writer, and newspaper columnist best known for many books depicting the richness and traditions of life in rural Texas during the days of the open range...
, who both began teaching English at the university in 1914. In 1915, at Lomax's recommendation, Stith Thompson became the society’s secretary-treasurer. In 1916, Lomax's voluminous encyclopedia, The Book of Texas, which he had written jointly with Harry Yandall Benedict, was published. The same year, Stith Thompson edited the first volume of the Publications of the Texas Folklore Society, which Dobie reissued as Round the Levee in 1935. This publication exemplified the society’s express purpose, and the motivation behind Lomax's own work: to gather a body of folklore before it disappeared, and to preserve it for the analysis of later scholars. These early efforts foreshadowed what would become Lomax’s greatest achievement, the collection of more than ten thousand recordings for the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
. In the inaugural issue of the Publications of the Texas Folklore Society, John A. Lomax urged the collection of Texas folklore: "Two rich and practically unworked fields in Texas are found in the large Negro and Mexican populations of the state." He adds, "Here are many problems of research that lie close at hand, not buried in musty tomes and incomplete records, but in vital human personalities."
Throughout the next seven years, he continued his research and lecture tours, assisted and encouraged by his wife and children. All this came to an end on July 16, 1917, however, when Lomax was fired along with six other faculty members as the result of a political battle between Governor James Ferguson
James E. Ferguson
James Edward "Pa" Ferguson, Jr. , was a Democratic politician from the state of Texas.- Early life :Ferguson was born to the Reverend James Ferguson, Sr., and Fannie Ferguson near Salado in south Bell County, Texas. He entered Salado College at age twelve but was eventually expelled for...
and the University President, Dr. R. E. Vinson. Lomax moved to Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
to take a job selling bonds at Lee, Higginson, a bond brokerage firm run by the son of his old professor Barrett Wendell. A few months later, Ferguson was impeached and the Board of Regents rescinded its dismissal of the faculty, Lomax who felt some loyalty to the family of Barrett Wendell felt it would be wrong to desert his post at the Chicago brokerage so quickly and remained in Chicago for the duration of the war. He had moved to Chicago to take a job with the brokerage firm of Lee, Higginson and remained there for eighteen months until the war ended. There he struck up a what turned out to be a lifelong friendship with Chicago poet Carl Sandburg
Carl Sandburg
Carl Sandburg was an American writer and editor, best known for his poetry. He won three Pulitzer Prizes, two for his poetry and another for a biography of Abraham Lincoln. H. L. Mencken called Carl Sandburg "indubitably an American in every pulse-beat."-Biography:Sandburg was born in Galesburg,...
, who frequently mentions him in his book, American Songbag (1927). In 1919, his next book, Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp, an anthology of cowboy poetry, was published by Macmillan. That year Lomax returned to Texas to be secretary of the Texas Exes, which had become financially independent of the University, so as to avoid further interference from politicians. Nevertheless, interference struck, when Ferguson, whom the law prohibited from holding office, ran his wife, Miriam "Ma" Ferguson, as his surrogate. As governor, Mrs. Ferguson was able to pack the board of regents and oust John from his job as editor of the Alcade, which during his tenure was a 100-page long publication. Seeing how the wind was blowing, Lomax resigned his secretaryship and joined the Republic Bank of Dallas in 1925. The economic crash of 1929 presaged bad things for the bank, however.
Archive of American Folk Song
Tragedy struck the Lomax family in 1931 when Lomax's beloved wife Bess Brown died at the age of fifty, leaving four children (the youngest, Bess, only ten years old). In addition, the Dallas bank at which Lomax worked failed: he had to phone his customers one by one to announce that their investments were all worthless. In debt and unemployed and with two school-age children to support, the sixty-five year old went into a deep depression. In hope of reviving his father's spirits, his oldest son, John Lomax Jr. encouraged him to begin a new series of lecture tours. They took to the road, camping out by the side of the road to save money, with John Jr. (and later Alan LomaxAlan Lomax
Alan Lomax was an American folklorist and ethnomusicologist. He was one of the great field collectors of folk music of the 20th century, recording thousands of songs in the United States, Great Britain, Ireland, the Caribbean, Italy, and Spain.In his later career, Lomax advanced his theories of...
) serving the senior Lomax as driver and personal assistant. In June 1932, they arrived at the offices of the Macmillan publishing company
Macmillan Publishers (United States)
Macmillan Publishers USA, also known as Macmillan Publishing, is a privately held American publishing company owned by the Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. It has offices in 41 countries worldwide and operates in more than 30 others....
in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
. Here Lomax proposed his idea for an anthology of American ballad
Ballad
A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of British and Irish popular poetry and song from the later medieval period until the 19th century and used extensively across Europe and later the Americas, Australia and North Africa. Many...
s and folksongs, with a special emphasis on the contributions of African Americans. It was accepted. In preparation he traveled to Washington
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
to review the holdings in the Archive of American Folk Song of the Library of Congress.
By the time of Lomax’s arrival, the Archive already contained a collection of commercial phonograph
Phonograph
The phonograph record player, or gramophone is a device introduced in 1877 that has had continued common use for reproducing sound recordings, although when first developed, the phonograph was used to both record and reproduce sounds...
recordings that straddled the boundaries between commercial and folk, and wax cylinder field recordings, built up under the leadership of Robert Winslow Gordon
Robert Winslow Gordon
Robert Winslow Gordon was born September 2, 1888 in Bangor, Maine. Educated at Harvard, he joined the English faculty at the University of California at Berkley in 1918. He was the founding head of the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress in 1928, later the Archive of Folk...
, Head of the Archive, and Carl Engel
Carl Engel
Carl Engel was a French-born American pianist, musicologist and publisher from Paris. He was also a writer on music for The Musical Quarterly, and chief of the Music Division of the Library of Congress.- Works :...
, chief of the Music Division. Gordon had also experimented in the field with a portable disc recorder, but had had neither time nor resources to do significant fieldwork. Lomax found the recorded holdings of the Archive woefully inadequate for his purposes. He therefore made an arrangement with the Library whereby it would provide recording equipment, obtained for it by Lomax through private grants, in exchange for which he would travel the country making field recordings to be deposited in the Archive of the Library, then the major resource for printed and recorded material in the United States
After the departure of Robert Gordon from the Library in 1934, John A. Lomax was named Honorary Consultant and Curator of the Archive of American Folk Song, a title he held until his death in 1948. His work, for which he was paid a salary of one dollar, included fund raising for the Library, and he was expected to support himself entirely through writing books and giving lectures. Lomax secured grants from the Carnegie Corporation and the Rockefeller Foundation
Rockefeller Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation is a prominent philanthropic organization and private foundation based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The preeminent institution established by the six-generation Rockefeller family, it was founded by John D. Rockefeller , along with his son John D. Rockefeller, Jr...
, among others, for continued field recordings. He and Alan recorded Spanish ballads and vaquero
Cowboy
A cowboy is an animal herder who tends cattle on ranches in North America, traditionally on horseback, and often performs a multitude of other ranch-related tasks. The historic American cowboy of the late 19th century arose from the vaquero traditions of northern Mexico and became a figure of...
songs on the Rio Grande
Rio Grande
The Rio Grande is a river that flows from southwestern Colorado in the United States to the Gulf of Mexico. Along the way it forms part of the Mexico – United States border. Its length varies as its course changes...
border and spent weeks among French-speaking Cajun
Cajun
Cajuns are an ethnic group mainly living in the U.S. state of Louisiana, consisting of the descendants of Acadian exiles...
s in southern Louisiana
Louisiana
Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...
.
Thus began a ten-year relationship with the Library of Congress that would involve not only John but the entire Lomax family, including his second wife, Ruby Terrill Lomax
Ruby Terrill Lomax
Ruby Terrill Lomax was born and raised in Denton, Texas, just outside of Dallas, Ruby Terrill earned degrees at state colleges, setting a record at the University of Texas at Austin for the highest grade average yet achieved by a woman at the university...
, Professor of Classics and Dean of Women at the University of Texas, whom he married in 1934. All four of John’s children assisted with his folksong research and with the daily operations of the Archive: Shirley, who performed songs taught to her by her mother; John Jr., who encouraged his father's association with the Library; Alan Lomax
Alan Lomax
Alan Lomax was an American folklorist and ethnomusicologist. He was one of the great field collectors of folk music of the 20th century, recording thousands of songs in the United States, Great Britain, Ireland, the Caribbean, Italy, and Spain.In his later career, Lomax advanced his theories of...
who accompanied John on field trips and who from 1937–42 served as the Archive’s first paid (though very nominally) employee as Assistant in Charge; and Bess, who spent her weekends and school vacations copying song texts and doing comparative song research.
Field recordings
Through a grant from the American Council of Learned SocietiesAmerican Council of Learned Societies
The American Council of Learned Societies , founded in 1919, is a private nonprofit federation of seventy scholarly organizations.ACLS is best known as a funder of humanities research through fellowships and grants awards. ACLS Fellowships are designed to permit scholars holding the Ph.D...
, Lomax was able to set out in June 1933 on the first recording expedition under the Library’s auspices, with Alan Lomax (then eighteen years old) in tow. Then, a disproportionate percentage of African American males were held as prisoners. Robert Winslow Gordon, Lomax's predecessor at the Library of Congress, had written (in an article in the New York Times, c. 1926) that, "Nearly every type of song is to be found in our prisons and penitentiaries" Folklorists Howard Odum and Guy Johnson also had observed that, "If one wishes to obtain anything like an accurate picture of the workaday Negro he will surely find his best setting in the chain gang, prison, or in the situation of the ever-fleeing fugitive." But what these folklorists had merely recommended John and Alan Lomax were able to put into practice. In their successful grant application they wrote, following Odum, Johnson and Gordon's hint, that prisoners, "Thrown on their own resources for entertainment . . . still sing, especially the long-term prisoners who have been confined for years and who have not yet been influenced by jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
and the radio
Radio
Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
, the distinctive old-time Negro
Negro
The word Negro is used in the English-speaking world to refer to a person of black ancestry or appearance, whether of African descent or not...
melodies." They toured Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
prison farm
Prison farm
A prison farm is a large correctional facility where penal labor convicts are put to economical use in a 'farm' , usually for manual labour, largely in open air, such as in agriculture, logging, quarrying, etc...
s recording work songs, reels
Reel (dance)
The reel is a folk dance type as well as the accompanying dance tune type. In Scottish country dancing, the reel is one of the four traditional dances, the others being the jig, the strathspey and the waltz, and is also the name of a dance figure ....
, ballad
Ballad
A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of British and Irish popular poetry and song from the later medieval period until the 19th century and used extensively across Europe and later the Americas, Australia and North Africa. Many...
s, and blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
from prison
Prison
A prison is a place in which people are physically confined and, usually, deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Imprisonment or incarceration is a legal penalty that may be imposed by the state for the commission of a crime...
ers such as James "Iron Head" Baker, Mose "Clear Rock" Platt, and Lightnin’ Washington. By no means were all of those whom the Lomaxes recorded imprisoned, however: in other communities, they recorded K.C. Gallaway and Henry Truvillion.
In July 1933, they acquired a state-of-the-art, 315 pounds (142.9 kg) phonograph
Phonograph
The phonograph record player, or gramophone is a device introduced in 1877 that has had continued common use for reproducing sound recordings, although when first developed, the phonograph was used to both record and reproduce sounds...
uncoated-aluminum disk recorder. Installing it in the trunk of his Ford
Ford Motor Company
Ford Motor Company is an American multinational automaker based in Dearborn, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. The automaker was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. In addition to the Ford and Lincoln brands, Ford also owns a small stake in Mazda in Japan and Aston Martin in the UK...
sedan, Lomax soon used it to record, at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, a twelve-string guitar player by the name of Huddie Ledbetter, better known as "Lead Belly," whom they considered one of their most significant finds. During the next year and a half, father and son continued to make disc recordings of musicians throughout the South.
In contrast to earlier amateur collectors, the Lomaxes were also among the first to attempt to apply scholarly methodology in their work, though they did not adhere to the strict empirical positivism
Positivism
Positivism is a a view of scientific methods and a philosophical approach, theory, or system based on the view that, in the social as well as natural sciences, sensory experiences and their logical and mathematical treatment are together the exclusive source of all worthwhile information....
adopted by the subsequent generation of academic folklorists, who believed in refraining from drawing conclusions about the data they amassed.
The following year (in July 1934), they visited Angola once again. This time Lead Belly begged them to make a recording of a song he had written to take to the Governor requesting parole, which they did. However, unbeknownst to them, Lead Belly was released in August for good time (and because of cost-cutting due to the Depression) and not because of the Lomaxes' recording, which the Governor may not have listened to. In September 1934, Lead Belly wrote to Lomax requesting employment, since he needed to have a job in order not to be sent back to prison. At the urging of John, Jr., Lomax engaged Lead Belly as his driver and assistant and the pair traveled the South together collecting folk songs for the next three months. Then, in December 1934, Lead Belly famously performed illustrating John Lomax's scheduled lecture of folk songs at a smoker and sing-along held at the national MLA meeting in Philadelphia. The result was a sensation and the rest is history (see Lead Belly). Their association continued for three more months—until the following March (1935). In January, Lomax, who knew nothing whatever about the recording business, became Lead Belly's manager and, through a friend, cowboy singer Tex Ritter
Tex Ritter
Woodward Maurice Ritter , better known as Tex Ritter, was an American country music singer and movie actor popular from the mid-1930s into the 1960s, and the patriarch of the Ritter family in acting...
, got Lead Belly a recording contract with the famous A&R man Art Satherly
Art Satherly
Art Satherly - actually Spelt SATHERLEY - still has family in Bristol, Somerset and South Wales, United Kingdom. was a record producer and A&R man, who was born in England but spent most of his career in the United States.Satherley moved to Wisconsin in the 1910s, and took a job in the 1920s as a...
of ARC
American Record Corporation
ARC, the American Record Company, also referred to as American Record Corporation, or as ARC Records, was a United States based record company...
records. Satherly had publicity photos made of the singer wearing overalls and sitting on sacks of grain, garb and setting that were customary in commercial publicity photos of country singers in those days. But Lead Belly's recordings, marketed as race music, failed to sell. A filmed re-enactment in early 1935 for The March of Time
The March of Time
The March of Time is a radio series, and companion newsreel series, that was broadcast on CBS from 1931 to 1945 and shown in movie theaters from 1935 to 1951. It was created by Time, Inc. executive Roy Edward Larsen, and was produced and written by Louis de Rochemont and his brother Richard de...
newsreel of Lomax's discovery of Lead Belly in prison, led to the myth that John Lomax made Lead Belly perform in prison stripes (which is inaccurate). He did perform in overalls, however. During Lomax's two-week lecture tour with Lead Belly on the eastern College circuit in March 1934 (pre-scheduled by Lomax before teaming up with Lead Belly), the two men quarreled over money and never spoke to one another again.
John A. Lomax has been accused of paternalism and of tailoring Lead Belly's repertoire and clothing during his brief association with Lead Belly. "But," writes jazz historian Ted Gioia,
few would deny the instrumental role he played in the transformation of the one-time convict into a commercially successful performer of traditional African American music. The turnabout in his life was rapid and profound: Lead Belly was released from prison on August 1, 1934; his schedule for the last week of December that year included performances for the MLA gathering in Philadelphia, for an afternoon tea in Bryn Mawr, and for an informal gathering of professors from Columbia and NYU. Even by the standards of the entertainment industry . . . this was a remarkable transformation.After his three-months as a performer illustrating John A. Lomax's lectures, Lead Belly went on to a fifteen-year career as an independent artist, championed and assisted intermittently (but not managed) by Alan Lomax
Alan Lomax
Alan Lomax was an American folklorist and ethnomusicologist. He was one of the great field collectors of folk music of the 20th century, recording thousands of songs in the United States, Great Britain, Ireland, the Caribbean, Italy, and Spain.In his later career, Lomax advanced his theories of...
.
The scope of the collection
The Archive of American Folk Song of the Library of Congress contains songs collected in thirty-three states of the Union and certain parts of the West Indies, the Bahamas, and Haiti. As Curator and Assistant in Charge of the Folk Song Collection John and Alan Lomax supervised and worked with many other folklorists, musicologists, and composers, amateur and professional, all over the country, amassing over ten thousand records of vocal and instrumental music on aluminum and acetate discs along with many pages of written documentation.In his 1942 introduction to the multi-volume "Checklist of Recorded Folk Song in the Library of Congress", Harold Spivacke, Chief of the Library of Congress's Division of Music, wrote:
Many hard-working and expert folklorists cooperated in the accumulation of this material, but in the main the development of the Archive of American Folk Song represents the work of two men, John and Alan Lomax. Starting in 1933, the Lomaxes, father and son, traveled tens of thousands of miles, endured many hardships, exercised great patience and tact to win the confidence and friendship of hundreds of singers in order to bring to the Library of Congress records of the voices of countless interesting people they met on the way. Very much remains to be done to make our Archive truly representative of all the people, but the country owes a debt of gratitude to these two men for the excellent foundation laid for future work in this field.... The Lomaxes received much help in their expeditions from many interested folklorists, some of whom have made important contributions to the Archive as a result of independent expeditions of their own. To these the Library wishes to take this opportunity to express its deep gratitude. They include Gordon Barnes, Mary E. Barnicle, E. C. Beals, Barbara Bell, Paul Brewster, Genevieve Chandler, Richard Chase, Fletcher Collins, Carita D. Corse, Sidney Robertson CowellSidney Robertson CowellSidney Robertson Cowell was an American ethnographer and the wife of the composer Henry Cowell. She was born at San Francisco, California....
, Dr. E. K. Davis, Kay Dealy, Seamus Doyle, Charles Draves, Marjorie Edgar, John Henry FaulkJohn Henry FaulkJohn Henry Faulk from Austin, Texas was a storyteller and radio show host. His successful lawsuit against blacklisters of the entertainment industry helped to bring an end to the Hollywood blacklist.-Early life:...
, Richard Fento, Helen Hartness Flanders, Frank Goodwin, Percy GraingerPercy GraingerGeorge Percy Aldridge Grainger , known as Percy Grainger, was an Australian-born composer, arranger and pianist. In the course of a long and innovative career he played a prominent role in the revival of interest in British folk music in the early years of the 20th century. He also made many...
, Herbert Halpert, Melville Herskovits, Zora Neale HurstonZora Neale HurstonZora Neale Hurston was an American folklorist, anthropologist, and author during the time of the Harlem Renaissance...
, Myra Hull, George Pullen JacksonGeorge Pullen JacksonGeorge Pullen Jackson was an American educator and musicologist.Jackson was a native of Monson, Maine. He was a pioneer in the field of Southern hymnody. Many consider him the "most diligent scholar of fasola singing" in the 20th century and one of the foremost musicologists of American folk songs...
, Stetson KennedyStetson KennedyWilliam Stetson Kennedy was an American author and human rights activist. One of the pioneer folklore collectors during the first half of the twentieth century, he is remembered for having infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan in the 1940s, exposing its secrets to authorities and the outside world...
, Bess LomaxBess Lomax HawesBess Lomax Hawes was an American folk musician, folklorist, and researcher. She was the daughter of John Avery Lomax and Bess Bauman-Brown Lomax, and the sister of Alan Lomax.-Early life and education:...
, Elizabeth Lomax, Ruby Terrill LomaxRuby Terrill LomaxRuby Terrill Lomax was born and raised in Denton, Texas, just outside of Dallas, Ruby Terrill earned degrees at state colleges, setting a record at the University of Texas at Austin for the highest grade average yet achieved by a woman at the university...
, Eloise Linscott, Bascom Lamar LunsfordBascom Lamar LunsfordBascom Lamar Lunsford was a lawyer, folklorist, and performer of traditional music from western North Carolina. He was often known by the nickname "Minstrel of the Appalachians."- Early life :...
, Walter McClintock, Alton Morris, Juan B. Rael, Vance RandolphVance RandolphVance Randolph was a famous folklorist who studied the folklore of the Ozarks in particular. He wrote a number of books on topics including the Ozarks, Little Blue Books, and juvenile fiction....
, Helen Roberts, Domingo Santa Cruz, Charles SeegerCharles SeegerCharles Seeger, Jr. was a noted musicologist, composer, and teacher. He was the father of iconic American folk singer Pete Seeger .-Life:...
, Mrs. Nicol Smith, Robert Sonkin, Ruby Pickens Tartt, Jean Thomas, Charles Todd, Margaret Valliant, Ivan Walton, Irene Whitfield, John Woods, and John W. Work III.
This checklist has been prepared as a result of countless requests . . . Its appearance at this time is indeed appropriate since it is natural for a nation at war to try to evaluate and exploit to the fullest its own cultural heritage. In our folk song may be found some of the profoundedst currents that have run through
American history. A mere glance at the titles listed here will be sufficient to show the variety and complexity of the democratic life of our country.
After 1942, field work of collecting folk songs under government auspices was discontinued due to a shortage of acetate needed for the war effort. But the work had aroused the ire and suspicion of Southern conservatives in Congress who were fearful it could be used as a cover for civil and worker rights agitation, and because of congressional opposition it has never been resumed.
Legacy
John A. Lomax’s contribution to the documentation of American folk traditions extended beyond the Library of Congress Music Division through his involvement with two agencies of the Works Progress AdministrationWorks Progress Administration
The Works Progress Administration was the largest and most ambitious New Deal agency, employing millions of unskilled workers to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads, and operated large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects...
. In 1936, he was assigned to serve as an advisor on folklore
Folklore
Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...
collecting for both the Historical Records Survey
Historical Records Survey
The Historical Records Survey was a project of the Works Progress Administration New Deal program in the United States. Originally part of the Federal Writers' Project, it was devoted to surveying and indexing historically significant records in state, county and local archives...
and the Federal Writers' Project
Federal Writers' Project
The Federal Writers' Project was a United States federal government project to fund written work and support writers during the Great Depression. It was part of the Works Progress Administration, a New Deal program...
. Lomax's biographer, Nolan Porterfield, notes that the outlines of the famed WPA
Works Progress Administration
The Works Progress Administration was the largest and most ambitious New Deal agency, employing millions of unskilled workers to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads, and operated large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects...
State Guides
American Guide Series
The American Guide Series was a group of books and pamphlets published under the auspices of the Federal Writers' Project , a Depression-era works program in the United States. The American Guide Series books were compiled by the FWP, but printed by individual states, and contained detailed...
resulting from this work resemble Lomax and Benedict’s earlier Book of Texas.
As the Federal Writers' Project's first Folklore Editor, Lomax also directed the gathering of ex-slave
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
narratives and devised a questionnaire
Questionnaire
A questionnaire is a research instrument consisting of a series of questions and other prompts for the purpose of gathering information from respondents. Although they are often designed for statistical analysis of the responses, this is not always the case...
for project fieldworkers to use.
The WPA project to interview former slaves assumed a form and a scope that bore Lomax's imprint and reflected his experience and zeal as a collector of folklore. His sense of urgency inspired the efforts in several states. And his prestige and personal influence enlisted the support of many project officials, particularly in the deep South, who might otherwise have been unresponsive to requests for materials of this type. One might question the wisdom of selecting Lomax, a white Southerner to direct a project involving the collection of data from black former slaves. Yet whatever racial preconceptions Lomax may have held do not appear to have had an appreciable effect upon the Slave Narrative Collection. Lomax's instructions to interviewers emphasized the necessity of obtaining a faithful account of the ex-slave's version of his or her experience. "It should be remembered that the Federal Writers' Project is not interested in taking sides on any question. The worker should not censor any materials collected regardless of its nature." Lomax constantly reiterated his insistence that the interviews be recorded verbatim, with no holds barred. In his editorial capacity he closely adhered to this dictum.Upon Lomax's departure this work was continued by Benjamin A. Botkin, who succeeded Lomax as the Project's folklore editor in 1938, and at the Library in 1939, resulting in the invaluable compendium of authentic slave narratives: Lay My Burden Down: A Folk History of Slavery, edited by B. A. Botkin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1945).
John A. Lomax served as president of the Texas Folklore Society for the years 1940–41, and 1941–42. In 1947 his autobiography Adventures of a Ballad Hunter (New York: Macmillan) was published and was awarded the Carr P. Collins prize as the best book of the year by the Texas Institute of Letters. The book was immediately optioned to be made into a Hollywood movie starring Bing Crosby
Bing Crosby
Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby was an American singer and actor. Crosby's trademark bass-baritone voice made him one of the best-selling recording artists of the 20th century, with over half a billion records in circulation....
as Lomax and Josh White
Josh White
Joshua Daniel White , better known as Josh White, was an American singer, guitarist, songwriter, actor, and civil rights activist. He also recorded under the names "Pinewood Tom" and "Tippy Barton" in the 1930s....
as Lead Belly, but the project was never realized.
Lomax died of a stroke in January 1948, aged 80. On June 15 of that year, Lead Belly gave a concert at the University of Texas, performing children's songs such as "Skip to my Lou" and spirituals (performed with his wife Martha) that he had first sung years before for the late collector.
In 2010, John A. Lomax was inducted into the Western Music Hall of Fame for his contributions to the field of cowboy music.
Following in his grandfather's footsteps, Lomax's grandson John Lomax III is a nationally published United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
music journalist, author of Nashville: Music City USA (1986), Red Desert Sky (2001) and co-author of The Country Music Book (1988). He is also an artist manager and has represented Townes Van Zandt
Townes Van Zandt
John Townes Van Zandt , best known as Townes Van Zandt, was an American Texas Country-folk music singer-songwriter, performer, and poet...
, Steve Earle
Steve Earle
Stephen Fain "Steve" Earle is an American singer-songwriter known for his rock and Texas Country as well as his political views. He is also a producer, author, a political activist, and an actor, and has written and directed a play....
, Rocky Hill, David Schnaufer
David Schnaufer
David Schnaufer was an American folk musician. He is widely credited with restoring the popularity of the Appalachian dulcimer....
and The Cactus Brothers. He began representing the Dead Ringer Band in 1996.
John Lomax III's son John Nova Lomax also kept up the family tradition. While serving as the former music editor of the Houston Press
Houston Press
The Houston Press is an alternative weekly newspaper published in Houston, Texas, United States. It is headquartered in Downtown Houston....
, John Nova Lomax won an ASCAP Deems Taylor
Deems Taylor
Joseph Deems Taylor was a U.S. composer, music critic, and promoter of classical music.-Career:Taylor initially planned to become an architect; however, despite minimal musical training he soon took to music composition. The result was a series of works for orchestra and/or voices...
award for music journalism for his profile of troubled former country music superstar Doug Supernaw
Doug Supernaw
Douglas Anderson "Doug" Supernaw is an American country music artist. After several years performing as a local musician throughout the state of Texas, he signed with BNA Records in 1993, releasing his debut album that year.Supernaw has released four studio albums: Red and Rio Grande , Deep...
. John Nova Lomax also helped discover rising country troubadour Hayes Carll
Hayes Carll
Joshua Hayes Carll , known as Hayes Carll, is a Texas Country singer-songwriter from The Woodlands, Texas ....
. Since 2008, John Nova Lomax has been a staff writer at the Houston Press. In 2010, 100 years after his great-grandfather published his first book, John Nova Lomax published his own first book: Houston's Best Dive Bars: Drinking and Diving in the Bayou City.
External links
- "Lomax, John Avery" in the Handbook of Texas Online
- The Defenders, 1913–1926: The Association Saves the University from an Educational Infanticide.", The Alcade (January 2010).
- Biography of John A. Lomax at the Library of Congress website
- 1939 Southern Recording Trip Fieldnotes, at the Library of Congress
- Notes on the John and Ruby Lomax 1930 Southern States Recording Trip, at the Library of Congress
- Lead Belly and the Lomaxes: Myths and Realities
- Books by John A. and Alan Lomax
- Biography of John A. Lomax from the Western Music Hall of Fame
- Discovering Keepers of Folk Music. Article by Michael Corcoran in Austin Statesman about John A. Lomax and the Gant family of Austin, Texas