Editing Alan Lomax (section)

==Biography==

===Early life===
Lomax was born in [[Austin, Texas]], in 1915,<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2015/15-008.html|title=The American Folklife Center Celebrates Lomax Centennial|publisher=Loc.gov|date=January 15, 2015|access-date=September 8, 2015}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.biography.com/people/alan-lomax-21286895|title=Alan Lomax Biography|publisher=Biography.com|access-date=September 8, 2015|archive-date=February 8, 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150208232056/http://www.biography.com/people/alan-lomax-21286895|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref name="cultural" /> the third of four children born to Bess Brown and pioneering [[folklorist]] and author [[John A. Lomax]]. Two of his siblings also developed significant careers studying folklore: [[Bess Lomax Hawes]] and [[John Lomax Jr.]]

The elder Lomax, a former professor of English at [[Texas A&M University]] and a celebrated authority on Texas folklore and [[cowboy songs]], had worked as an administrator, and later Secretary of the Alumni Society, of the [[University of Texas]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Untiedt |first=Kenneth |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/676695891 |title=Celebrating 100 years of the Texas Folklore Society, 1909-2009 |publisher=University of North Texas Press |others=Texas Folklore Society |year=2009 |isbn=978-1-4416-7885-0 |edition=1st |location=Denton, Tex. |oclc=676695891}}</ref>

Due to childhood asthma, chronic ear infections, and generally frail health, Lomax had mostly been home schooled in elementary school. In [[Dallas]], he entered the Terrill School for Boys (a tiny prep school that later became [[St. Mark's School of Texas]]). Lomax excelled at Terrill and then transferred to the Choate School (now [[Choate Rosemary Hall]]) in Connecticut for a year, graduating eighth in his class at age 15 in 1930.<ref>John Szwed, ''Alan Lomax: The Man Who Recorded the World'' (New York: Viking, 2010), p. 20.<!-- ISSN/ISBN needed --></ref>

Owing to his mother's declining health, however, rather than going to [[Harvard University]] as his father had wished, Lomax matriculated at the [[University of Texas at Austin]]. A roommate, future anthropologist [[Goldschmidt Thesis|Walter Goldschmidt]], recalled Lomax as "frighteningly smart, probably classifiable as a genius", though Goldschmidt remembers Lomax exploding one night while studying: "Damn it! The hardest thing I've had to learn is that I'm not a genius."<ref name="Szwed p. 21">Szwed (2010), p. 21.</ref> At the University of Texas, Lomax read [[Nietzsche]] and developed an interest in [[philosophy]]. He joined and wrote a few columns for the school paper, ''The Daily Texan'' but resigned when it refused to publish an editorial he had written on birth control.<ref name="Szwed p. 21"/>

At this time he also he began collecting [[Race record|"race" records]] and taking his dates to black-owned nightclubs, at the risk of expulsion. During the spring term his mother died, and his youngest sister [[Bess Lomax Hawes|Bess]], age 10, was sent to live with an aunt. Although the [[Great Depression]] was rapidly causing his family's resources to plummet, Harvard came up with enough financial aid for the 16-year-old Lomax to spend his second year there. He enrolled in philosophy and physics and also pursued a long-distance informal reading course in [[Plato]] and the [[Pre-Socratic philosophy|Pre-Socratics]] with University of Texas professor Albert P. Brogan.<ref>Szwed (2010), p. 22.</ref> He also became involved in radical politics and came down with pneumonia. His grades suffered, diminishing his financial aid prospects.<ref>Szwed (2010), p. 24.</ref>

Lomax, now 17, therefore took a break from studying to join his father's folk song collecting field trips for the [[Library of Congress]], co-authoring ''American Ballads and Folk Songs'' (1934) and ''Negro Folk Songs as Sung by Lead Belly'' (1936).<ref name="cultural">{{cite web |url=https://www.culturalequity.org/alan-lomax/about-alan |title=About Alan Lomax |website=Cultural Equality |access-date=September 24, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220605103636/https://www.culturalequity.org/alan-lomax/about-alan |archive-date=June 5, 2022}}</ref> His first field collecting without his father was done with [[Zora Neale Hurston]] and [[Mary Elizabeth Barnicle]] in the summer of 1935. He returned to the University of Texas that fall and was awarded a [[Bachelor of Arts]] in philosophy,<ref name="cultural" /> summa cum laude, and membership in [[Phi Beta Kappa]] in May 1936.<ref>Szwed (2010), p. 92.</ref> Lack of money prevented him from immediately attending graduate school at the [[University of Chicago]], as he desired, but he later corresponded with and pursued graduate studies with [[Melville J. Herskovits]] at [[Columbia University]] and with [[Ray Birdwhistell]] at the [[University of Pennsylvania]].

Alan Lomax married [[Elizabeth Lyttleton Sturz|Elizabeth Harold Goodman]], then a student at the University of Texas, in February 1937.<ref>Szwed (2010), p. 91.</ref> They were married for 12 years and had a daughter, [[Anna Lomax Wood|Anne]] (later known as Anna). Elizabeth assisted him in recording in Haiti, Alabama, Appalachia, and Mississippi. Elizabeth also wrote radio scripts of folk operas featuring American music that were broadcast over the [[BBC Home Service]] as part of the war effort.

During the 1950s, after she and Lomax divorced, she conducted lengthy interviews for Lomax with folk music personalities, including [[Vera Hall|Vera Ward Hall]] and the [[Reverend Gary Davis]]. Lomax also did important field work with Elizabeth Barnicle and Zora Neale Hurston in Florida and the Bahamas (1935);<ref name="sampler">{{cite web |url=https://www.loc.gov/folklife/sampler/FLaudio.html |title=National Sampler: Florida Audio and Video Samples and Notes |website=The American Folklife Center |access-date=September 24, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210124191108/https://www.loc.gov/folklife/sampler/FLaudio.html |archive-date=January 24, 2021}}</ref> with [[John Wesley Work III]] and Lewis Jones in Mississippi (1941 and 42); with folksingers Robin Roberts<ref>{{cite magazine|url=http://www.popmatters.com/music/features/020315-stpatrick-stone.html|title=Music Reviews|magazine=PopMatters|access-date=September 8, 2015}}</ref> and [[Jean Ritchie]] in Ireland (1950); with his second wife Antoinette Marchand in the Caribbean (1961); with [[Shirley Collins]] in Great Britain and the Southeastern U.S. (1959); with [[Joan Halifax]] in Morocco; and with his daughter.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://devonandnicohase.com/blog/2016/11/4/joan-halifax-mindfulness-and-the-most-important-thing-1 |title=Joan Halifax, Mindfulness, and the Most Important Thing |last=Hase |first=Nico |date=November 4, 2016 |website=Devon and Nico Hase |access-date=September 24, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220925002506/https://devonandnicohase.com/blog/2016/11/4/joan-halifax-mindfulness-and-the-most-important-thing-1 |archive-date=September 25, 2022}}</ref> All those who assisted and worked with him were accurately credited on the resultant Library of Congress and other recordings, as well as in his many books, films, and publications.<ref name="sampler" />

===Assistant in charge as well as commercial records and radio broadcasts===
From 1937 to 1942, Lomax was Assistant in Charge of the Archive of Folk Song of the [[Library of Congress]] to which he and his father and numerous collaborators contributed more than ten thousand field recordings.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.loc.gov/collections/john-a-lomax-and-alan-lomax-papers/about-this-collection/ |title=John A Lomax and Alan Lomax Papers: About this Collection |website=Library of Congress |access-date=September 24, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220422185652/https://www.loc.gov/collections/john-a-lomax-and-alan-lomax-papers/about-this-collection/ |archive-date=April 22, 2022}}</ref> A pioneering oral historian, Lomax recorded substantial interviews with many folk, blues, and [[jazz]] musicians, including [[Woody Guthrie]], [[Lead Belly]], [[Jelly Roll Morton]], and [[Big Bill Broonzy]]. On one of his trips in 1941, he went to [[Clarksdale, Mississippi]], hoping to record the music of [[Robert Johnson]]. When he arrived, he was told by locals that Johnson had died, but that another local musician, [[Muddy Waters]], might be willing to record his music for Lomax. Using recording equipment that filled the trunk of his car, Lomax recorded Waters' music; it is said that hearing Lomax's recording was the motivation that Waters needed to leave his farm job in Mississippi to pursue a career as a blues musician full-time, first in [[Memphis, Tennessee|Memphis]] and later in [[Chicago]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Gordon |first1=Robert |title=Can't be Satisfied: the life and times of Muddy Waters |date=2013 |publisher=Canongate |location=Edinburgh |isbn=9780857868695}}</ref>

As part of this work, Lomax traveled through Michigan and Wisconsin in 1938 to record and document the traditional music of that region. Over four hundred recordings from this collection are now available at the Library of Congress. "He traveled in a 1935 [[Plymouth (automobile)|Plymouth]] sedan, toting a Presto instantaneous disc recorder and a movie camera. And when he returned nearly three months later, having driven thousands of miles on barely paved roads, it was with a cache of 250 discs and 8 reels of film, documents of the incredible range of ethnic diversity, expressive traditions, and occupational folklife in Michigan."<ref name="Episode 4 Title: Michigan-I-O">{{cite web|last1=Library of Congress|title=Episode 4 Title: "Michigan-I-O"|url=https://www.loc.gov/podcasts/lomax/pdf/podcast4_michiganio_script.pdf|website=Library of Congress|access-date=March 31, 2018}}</ref>

In late 1939, Lomax hosted two series on CBS's nationally broadcast ''[[The American School of the Air|American School of the Air]]'', called ''American Folk Song'' and ''Wellsprings of Music'', both music appreciation courses that aired daily in the schools and were supposed to highlight links between American folk and classical orchestral music. As host, Lomax sang and presented other performers, including [[Burl Ives]], Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, [[Pete Seeger]], [[Josh White]], and the [[Golden Gate Quartet]]. The individual programs reached ten million students in 200,000 U.S. classrooms and were also broadcast in Canada, Hawaii, and Alaska, but both Lomax and his father felt that the concept of the shows, which portrayed folk music as mere raw material for orchestral music, was deeply flawed and failed to do justice to vernacular culture.

In 1940, under Lomax's supervision, RCA made two groundbreaking suites of commercial folk music recordings: Woody Guthrie's ''[[Dust Bowl Ballads]]'' and Lead Belly's ''[[The Midnight Special and Other Southern Prison Songs]]''.<ref>Colin Scott and David Evans, liner Notes to ''Poor Man's Heaven'' (2003) CD in RCA Bluebird series ''When the Sun Goes Down, The Secret History of Rock and Roll'', ASIN: B000092Q48. ''Midnight Special and Other Prison Songs'' was reissued complete on Bluebird in 2003.</ref> Though they did not sell especially well when released, Lomax's biographer [[John Szwed]] calls these "some of the first concept albums".<ref>Szwed (2010), p. 163.</ref>

In 1940, Lomax and his close friend [[Nicholas Ray]] wrote and produced the 15-minute program ''Back Where I Came From'', which aired three nights per week on CBS and featured folk tales, proverbs, prose, and sermons, as well as songs, organized thematically. Its racially integrated cast included Burl Ives, Lead Belly, Josh White, [[Sonny Terry]], and [[Brownie McGhee]]. In February 1941, Lomax spoke and gave a demonstration of his program along with talks by [[Nelson Rockefeller]] from the [[Pan American Union]], and the president of the [[American Museum of Natural History]], at a global conference in Mexico of a thousand broadcasters CBS had sponsored to launch its worldwide programming initiative. [[Eleanor Roosevelt]] invited Lomax to [[Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site|Hyde Park]].<ref>Szwed (2010), p. 167.</ref>

Despite its success and high visibility, ''Back Where I Come From'' never picked up a commercial sponsor. The show ran for only twenty-one weeks before it was suddenly canceled in February 1941.<ref>Alan put the blame on CBS president William Paley, who he claimed 'hated all that hillbilly music on his network'" (Szwed [2010], p. 167).</ref> On hearing the news, Woody Guthrie wrote Lomax from California, "Too honest again, I suppose? Maybe not purty enough. O well, this country's a getting to where it can't hear its own voice. Someday the deal will change."<ref>Quoted in [[Ronald D. Cohen]], ''The Rainbow Quest'' (University of Massachusetts Press, 2002), p. 25.</ref> Lomax himself wrote that in all his work he had tried to capture "the seemingly incoherent diversity of American folk song as an expression of its democratic, inter-racial, international character, as a function of its inchoate and turbulent many-sided development."<ref>Alan Lomax "Songs of the American Folk", ''Modern Music'' 18 (Jan.-Feb. 1941), quoted in Cohen (2002), p. 25.</ref>

On December 8, 1941, as "Assistant in Charge at the Library of Congress", he sent telegrams to fieldworkers in ten different localities across the United States, asking them to collect reactions of ordinary Americans to the [[bombing of Pearl Harbor]] the prior day and the subsequent declaration of war by the United States. A second series of interviews, called "Dear Mr. President", was recorded in January and February 1942.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/afcphhtml/afcphhome.html|title=After the Day of Infamy: 'Man-on-the-Street' Interviews Following the Attack on Pearl Harbor|publisher=Memory.loc.gov|date=December 8, 1941|access-date=September 8, 2015}}</ref>

While serving in the [[United States Army]] in [[World War II]], Lomax produced and hosted numerous radio programs in connection with the war effort. The 1944 "ballad opera", ''The Martins and the Coys'', broadcast in Britain (but not the U.S.) by the [[BBC]], featuring Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, [[Will Geer]], [[Sonny Terry]], Pete Seeger, and [[Fiddlin' Arthur Smith]], among others, was released on [[Rounder Records]] in 2000.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Kaufman|first1=Will|title=Woody Guthrie's Modern World Blues|date=2017|isbn=978-0-8061-5761-0|page=265|publisher=University of Oklahoma Press}}</ref>

In the late 1940s, Lomax produced a series of commercial folk music albums for [[Decca Records]] and organized a series of concerts at New York's [[The Town Hall (New York City)|Town Hall]] and [[Carnegie Hall]], featuring blues, [[Calypso music|calypso]], and [[flamenco]] music. He also hosted a radio show, ''Your Ballad Man'', in 1949 that was broadcast nationwide on the [[Mutual Radio Network]] and featured a highly eclectic program, such as [[gamelan]] music; [[Django Reinhardt]]; [[klezmer]] music; [[Sidney Bechet]]; [[Wild Bill Davison]]; jazzy pop songs by [[Maxine Sullivan]] and [[Jo Stafford]]; readings of the poetry of [[Carl Sandburg]]; [[hillbilly music]] with electric guitars; and Finnish brass bands.<ref>See Matthew Barton and Andrew L. Kaye, in Ronald D. Cohen (ed), ''Alan Lomax Selected Writings'', (New York: Routledge, 2003), pp. 98–99.</ref> He also was a key participant in the [[V.D. Radio Project]] in 1949, creating a number of "ballad dramas" featuring country and gospel superstars, including [[Roy Acuff]], Woody Guthrie, [[Hank Williams]], and [[Sister Rosetta Tharpe]] (among others), that aimed to convince men and women suffering from syphilis to seek treatment.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.wnyc.org/shows/vd-radio-project/about |title=V.D. Radio Project {{pipe}} WNYC |access-date=July 5, 2016 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160919072359/http://www.wnyc.org/shows/vd-radio-project/about |archive-date=September 19, 2016 }}</ref>

===Move to Europe and later life===
In December 1949, a newspaper printed a story, "Red Convictions Scare [[Fellow traveler|'Travelers{{'"}}]], that mentioned a dinner given by the Civil Rights Association to honor five lawyers who had defended people accused of being Communists. The article mentioned Alan Lomax as one of the sponsors of the dinner, along with [[Calvin Benham Baldwin|C. B. Baldwin]], campaign manager for [[Henry A. Wallace]] in 1948; music critic [[Olin Downes]] of ''The New York Times''; and [[W. E. B. Du Bois]], all of whom it accused of being members of Communist front groups.<ref>Szwed, (2010), pp. 250–51.</ref> The following June, ''[[Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television|Red Channels]]'', a pamphlet edited by former F.B.I. agents which became the basis for the [[Hollywood blacklist|entertainment industry blacklist]] of the 1950s, listed Lomax as an artist or broadcast journalist sympathetic to Communism. (Others listed included [[Aaron Copland]], [[Leonard Bernstein]], [[Yip Harburg]], [[Lena Horne]], [[Langston Hughes]], [[Burl Ives]], [[Dorothy Parker]], [[Pete Seeger]], and [[Josh White]].) That summer, Congress was debating the [[McCarran Internal Security Act|McCarran Act]], which required the registration and fingerprinting of all "subversives" in the United States, restrictions of their right to travel, and detention in case of "emergencies",<ref>Congress passed the Act in Sept. 1950 over the veto of President Truman, who called it "the greatest danger to freedom of speech, press, and assembly since the Alien and Sedition Laws of 1798," a "mockery of the Bill of Rights", and a "long step toward totalitarianism". See [http://trumanlibrary.org/publicpapers/viewpapers.php?pid=883 Harry S. Truman, "Veto of the Internal Security Bill"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070301113033/http://trumanlibrary.org/publicpapers/viewpapers.php?pid=883 |date=March 1, 2007 }}, Harry S. Truman Library website</ref> while the [[House Un-American Activities Committee]] was broadening its hearings. Feeling sure that the Act would pass and realizing that his career in broadcasting was in jeopardy, Lomax, who was newly divorced and already had an agreement with [[Goddard Lieberson]] of [[Columbia Records]] to record in Europe,<ref>Szwed (2010), p. 248.</ref> hastened to renew his passport, cancel his speaking engagements, and plan for his departure, telling his agent he hoped to return in January "if things cleared up". He set sail on September 24, 1950, on board the steamer {{RMS|Mauretania|1938|6}}. Sure enough, in October, FBI agents were interviewing Lomax's friends and acquaintances. Lomax never told his family exactly why he went to Europe, only that he was developing a library of world folk music for Columbia. Nor did he allow anyone to say he was forced to leave. In a letter to the editor of a British newspaper, Lomax took a writer to task for describing him as a "victim of [[McCarthyism|witch-hunting]]," insisting that he was in the UK only to work on his Columbia Project.<ref>Szwed (2010) p. 251.</ref>

Lomax spent the 1950s based in London, from where he edited the 18-volume ''Columbia World Library of Folk and Primitive Music'', an anthology issued on newly invented LP records. He spent seven months in Spain, where, in addition to recording three thousand items from most of the regions of Spain, he made copious notes and took hundreds of photos of "not only singers and musicians but anything that interested him – empty streets, old buildings, and country roads", bringing to these photos, "a concern for form and composition that went beyond the ethnographic to the artistic".<ref name="Szwed p. 274">Szwed (2010), p. 274.</ref> He drew a parallel between photography and field recording:

<blockquote>Recording folk songs works like a candid cameraman. I hold the mike, use my hand for shading volume. It's a big problem in Spain because there is so much emotional excitement, noise all around. Empathy is most important in field work. It's necessary to put your hand on the artist while he sings. They have to react to you. Even if they're mad at you, it's better than nothing.<ref name="Szwed p. 274" /></blockquote>

When Columbia Records producer [[George Avakian]] gave jazz arranger [[Gil Evans]] a copy of the Spanish World Library LP, [[Miles Davis]] and Evans were "struck by the beauty of pieces such as the '[[Saeta (flamenco)|Saeta]]', recorded in Seville, and a panpiper's tune ('Alborada de Vigo') from Galicia, and worked them into the 1960 album ''[[Sketches of Spain]].''"<ref>Szwed (2010), p. 275.</ref>

For the Scottish, English, and Irish volumes, he worked with the BBC and folklorists [[Peter Douglas Kennedy]], Scots poet [[Hamish Henderson]], and with the Irish folklorist [[Séamus Ennis]],<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01h666r/The_First_LP_in_Ireland/ |title=BBC Radio 4 – The First LP in Ireland |publisher=Bbc.co.uk |date=May 10, 2014 |access-date=September 8, 2015}}</ref> recording among others, [[Margaret Barry]] and the songs in Irish of [[Elizabeth Cronin]]; Scots ballad singer [[Jeannie Robertson]]; and [[Harry Cox]] of Norfolk, England, and interviewing some of these performers at length about their lives.  In 1953 a young [[David Attenborough]] commissioned Lomax to host six 20-minute episodes of the BBC TV series ''The Song Hunter'', which featured performances by a wide range of traditional musicians from all over Britain and Ireland, as well as Lomax himself.<ref>{{cite web|author=Gareth Huw Davies |url=http://www.garethhuwdavies.com/uncategorized/david-attenborough-talks-about-his-early-years-making-a-musical-series/|title=David Attenborough talks about his early years – making a music series |date=April 7, 2013 |access-date=May 18, 2016}}</ref> In 1957, Lomax hosted a folk music show on BBC's Home Service titled ''A Ballad Hunter'' and organized a [[skiffle]] group, Alan Lomax and the Ramblers (who included [[Ewan MacColl]], [[Peggy Seeger]], and [[Shirley Collins]]), which appeared on British television. His ballad opera ''Big Rock Candy Mountain'' premiered December 1955 at [[Joan Littlewood]]'s Theatre Workshop and featured [[Ramblin' Jack Elliot]]. In Scotland, Lomax is credited with being an inspiration for the [[School of Scottish Studies]], founded in 1951, the year of his first visit there.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://thecroft.wordpress.com/2010/02/06/alan-lomax-the-gaels/ | title=Alan Lomax & The Gaels | website=The Croft |date=February 6, 2010 | access-date=February 21, 2019}}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine | url=http://www.leopardmag.co.uk/feats/29/alan-lomax | title=The Gatherer of Songs | first=Tom | last=McKean | date=November 2002 | magazine=Leopard | location=[[Aberdeen|Aberdeen, Scotland]] | url-status=dead | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090629064207/http://www.leopardmag.co.uk/feats/29/alan-lomax | archive-date=June 29, 2009 | access-date=February 21, 2019}}</ref>
 
Lomax and [[Diego Carpitella]]'s survey of [[Italian folk music]] for the ''Columbia World Library'', conducted in 1953 and 1954, with the cooperation of the BBC and the [[Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia]] in Rome, helped capture a snapshot of a multitude of important traditional folk styles shortly before they disappeared. The pair amassed one of the most representative folk song collections of any culture. From Lomax's Spanish and Italian recordings emerged one of the first theories explaining the types of folk singing that predominate in particular areas, a theory that incorporates work style, the environment, and the degrees of social and sexual freedom.