Lomax was extremely nervous throughout the interview."[56]. But now, exactly 15 years after Lomax's death on July 19, 2002, there's likely no person on the planet who's spent more time . . "For the first time," Cultural . [10] He also became involved in radical politics and came down with pneumonia. Recorded in Como, Mississippi, September 21-25, 1959. In a rousing speech recorded at the festival, ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax (1915-2002) refers to the islands as "one of the heartlands of American music." Vigorous performances of spirituals, Gullah folk tales, and improvised blues attest to his assessment. Kulturkreise, Culture Areas, and Chronotopes: Old Concepts Reconsidered for the Mapping of Music Cultures Today, in Britta Sweers and Sarah H. Ross (eds. We all hit it off wonderfully. Update 2/3/20:Congratulations on completing another successful challenge! Scientific study of cultures, notably of their languages and their musics, shows that all are equally expressive and equally communicative, even though they may symbolize technologies of different levels With the disappearance of each of these systems, the human species not only loses a way of viewing, thinking, and feeling but also a way of adjusting to some zone on the planet which fits it and makes it livable; not only that, but we throw away a system of interaction, of fantasy and symbolizing which, in the future, the human race may sorely need. *New online: Manuscripts from the Alan Lomax Collection. Bandcamp New & Notable May 8, 2014, Taste The Quiet Bone (Album) E.P.by The Dirty Diary, supported by 36 fans who also own The Alan Lomax Recordings, I love that hypnotic, pounding sound. Kentucky Alan Lomax Recordings, 1937-1942 These are documentary sound recordings of rural Kentucky music and lore made for the Library of Congress by John Lomax and his son Alan together and separately over about a four year period in the 1930s and early 1940s. Italian Treasury: Piemonte And Valle D'Aosta. When he arrived, he was told by locals that Johnson had died but that another local man, Muddy Waters, might be willing to record his music for Lomax. [69], In his autobiographical, Chronicles, Part One, Dylan recollects a 1961 scene: There was an art movie house in the Village on 12th Street that showed foreign moviesFrench, Italian, German. [41] Collins addressed the perceived omission in her memoir, America Over the Water, published in 2004. In 1952, Lomax traveled to Extremadura, Spain, an isolated region bordering Portugal. To thank volunteers, our partners . But Alan had also not been happy there and probably also wanted to be nearer his bereaved[citation needed] father and young sister, Bess, and to return to the close friends he had made during his first year at the University of Texas. He was, he claimed, 15 at the time he was actually 17 and a college student and he said he had intended to participate in a peaceful demonstration. Scholar and jazz pianist Ted Gioia uncovered and published extracts from Alan Lomax's 800-page FBI files. One especially enthusiastic source exclaims that few sources deserve greater praise than him for "the preservation of America's folk music." Nevertheless, the bureau continued trying vainly to show that in 1932 Lomax had either distributed Communist literature or made public speeches in support of the Communist Party. In withdrawing him (in addition to not being able to afford the tuition), the elder Lomax had probably wanted to separate his son from new political associates that he considered undesirable. The 1944 "ballad opera", The Martins and the Coys, broadcast in Britain (but not the USA) 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. It asks that we recognize the cultural rights of weaker peoples in sharing this dream. The music is enormously varied: from worksongs to Big Brazos, Texas Pnson Recordings, 1933 tunes played on quills, from haunting and 1934 Cajun songs to old British traditional CD, 1826, Rounder, 2000. You can almost hear the creak of the porch swing and smell the wildflowers. "The time has come for Americans not to be ashamed of what we go for, musically, from primitive ballads to rock 'n' roll songs", Lomax told the audience. [48], The dimension of cultural equity needs to be added to the humane continuum of liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and social justice. As host, Lomax sang and presented other performers, including Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Pete Seeger, Josh White, and the Golden Gate Quartet. It is housed at the Fine Arts Campus of Hunter College in New York City and is the custodian of the Alan Lomax Archive. Recordings from this trip were issued under the title Sounds of the South and some were also featured in the Coen brothers' 2000 film O Brother, Where Art Thou?. Fred McDowell's Blues 5. The stuff of folklorethe orally transmitted wisdom, art and music of the people can provide ten thousand bridges across which men of all nations may stride to say, "You are my brother."[50]. [12] Lack of money prevented him from immediately attending graduate school at the University of Chicago, as he desired, but he would later correspond with and pursue graduate studies with Melville J. Herskovits at Columbia University and with Ray Birdwhistell at the University of Pennsylvania. He was a musicologist, writer, producer, and musician and spent much of his life gathering field recordings of folk music. He played a key role in the development of the Center's work. Alan Lomax: The Man Who Recorded the World By John Szwed (New York: Viking, 2010 Pp 438, acknowledgments, notes, and index $2000 paper)The late Alan Lomax, doyen of folklore throughout the world, was a unique individual on many levels Alan and I worked together for approximately ten months at the Library of Congress listening to all the African American music found in the holdings of the . The Alan Lomax Recordings by Fred McDowell, released 04 June 2021 1. Brian Eno wrote of Lomax's later recording career in his notes to accompany an anthology of Lomax's world recordings: [He later] turned his intelligent attentions to music from many other parts of the world, securing for them a dignity and status they had not previously been accorded. See. Its racially integrated cast included Burl Ives, Lead Belly, Josh White, Sonny Terry, and Brownie McGhee. In 1983, Lomax founded The Association for Cultural Equity (ACE). Alan Lomax Collection and Lomax Digital Archive, permissions. . Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. On August 24, 1997, at a concert at Wolf Trap, Vienna, Virginia, Bob Dylan had this to say about Lomax, who had helped introduce him to folk music and whom he had known as a young man in Greenwich Village: There is a distinguished gentlemen here who came I want to introduce him named Alan Lomax. An FBI report dated July 23, 1943, describes Lomax as possessing "an erratic, artistic temperament" and a "bohemian attitude." Thanks for putting it on bandcamp! In March 2004, the material captured and produced without Library of Congress funding was acquired by the Library, which "brings the entire seventy years of Alan Lomax's work together under one roof at the Library of Congress, where it has found a permanent home. The Service took the view that Lomax' work compiling his collections of world folk music gave him a legitimate reason to contact the attach, and that while his views (as demonstrated by his choice of songs and singers) were undoubtedly left wing, there was no need for any specific action against him. On Friday recordings, photographs, video and documents are to be donated to the public library in Como, Miss., where in September 1959 Lomax made the first recordings of the blues guitarist Fred . . A copy of the repatriation catalog can be found here. Of the many important recordings Alan Lomax made in his trips through the American South in 1959, perhaps none of the artists he documented were as destined to make as much of an impact on the world of popular music as Mississippi Fred McDowell. Then, as late as 1979, an FBI report suggested that Lomax had recently impersonated an FBI agent. The Complete Plantation Recordings, subtitled The Historic 1941-42 Library of Congress Field Recordings, is a compilation album of the blues musician Muddy Waters' first recordings collected by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress in 1941-42 and released by the Chess label in 1993. 5 - Bad Man Ballads 1997 Midnight Special: The Library of Congress Recordings, Vol. A second series of interviews, called "Dear Mr. President", was recorded in January and February 1942. Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more. McLeish wrote to Hoover, defending Lomax: "I have studied the findings of these reports very carefully. Sure enough, in October, FBI agents were interviewing Lomax's friends and acquaintances. Lomax spent the last 20 years of his life working on an interactive multimedia educational computer project he called the Global Jukebox, which included 5,000 hours of sound recordings, 400,000 feet of film, 3,000 videotapes, and 5,000 photographs. Colin Scott and David Evans, liner Notes to. According to Izzy Young, the audience booed when he told them to lay down their prejudices and listen to rock 'n' roll. Mary Bragg sings "Trouble So Hard" as part of the Lomax Challenge. Alan Lomax (1915-2002) was a major figure in folklore and ethnomusicology, known for his theoretical work, cultural advocacy, and seminal public programs. Alan Lomax married Elizabeth Harold Goodman, then a student at the University of Texas, in February 1937. A gold-plated copper disc that contains sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth. To mark the 100th birthday of influential folklorist and musician Alan Lomax (1915-2002), who collected songs from musicians like Muddy Waters, Lead Belly, Aunt Molly Jackson and Woody Guthrie, Folk Alliance International joined the American Folklife Center to create the Lomax Challenge. . 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". It's surprising that Atlantic Records made that leap of faith because the series is sort of outside of their paradigm. He enrolled in philosophy and physics and also pursued a long-distance informal reading course in Plato and the Pre-Socratics with University of Texas professor Albert P. This same source adds that he suspected Lomax's peculiarity and poor grooming habits came from associating with the "hillbillies" who provided him with folk tunes. Popular culture is in most cases far more effective at erasing distinctions between one place or society and another. [34] He drew a parallel between photography and field recording: Recording folk songs works like a candid cameraman. 12" black vinyl LP with double-sided insert with historical information. Bandcamp Album of the Day Jun 10, 2020, Cerebral palsy curbed his ability to play guitar the conventional way, so Nagoda learned double slide, this is his debut LP. It was very last minute that the Ertegun brothers at Atlantic gave us the cash and we were gone within days of getting that money. That summer, Congress was debating the McCarran Act, which would require the registration and fingerprinting of all "subversives" in the United States, restrictions of their right to travel, and detention in case of "emergencies",[31] while the House Un-American Activities Committee was broadening its hearings. O well, this country's a getting to where it can't hear its own voice. Along with 10 CDs of recordings of Haitian musicians, the set also includes two books. Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning 4. Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for PETE STEELE Pay Day At Coal Creek + J M HUNT 1941 Alan Lomax Library of Congress at the best online prices at eBay! In June 1942 the FBI approached the Librarian of Congress, Archibald McLeish, in an attempt to have Lomax fired as Assistant in Charge of the Library's Archive of American Folk Song. . Good Morning Little Schoolgirl 3. Caught the train out to San Francisco from Chicago, which was an incredible experience. Remastered from 24-bit digital transfers of Alan Lomax's original tapes, and annotated by Arhoolie Records' Adam Machado and the Alan Lomax Archive's Nathan Salsburg, they are an illustration of the mind-blowing revelation that was Fred McDowell. Alan had wanted to do it earlier, but there was just no money to do it with. I hold the mike, use my hand for shading volume. Sapphista, supported by 50 fans who also own The Alan Lomax Recordings, Years ago, being broke and hopeless, I listened to a shitty vinyl rip of this all the time. Thank you Brittany Haas for the wonderful fiddle! Going Down To The River 8. The Lomax Digital Archive (formerly the Online Alan Lomax Archive) provides free access to audio/visual collections compiled across seven decades by folklorist Alan Lomax (1915-2002) and his father John A. Lomax (1867-1948). I believe this is one of the most important books ever written about music, in my all time top ten. Blue jeans, fast food, rock music, and American television serials have been sweeping the world for years. Alan's field recordings and his collaborations with like-minded scholars in England, Scotland, Ireland, Italy, Spain, and . Ethnomusicologist and archivist Alan Lomax's contribution to the preservation and continued flourishing of American folk music is inestimable. He was dismayed that mass communications appeared to be crushing local cultural expressions and languages. . 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). He was always living hand to mouth. 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. Our focus here will be on the recordings made by four men John A. Lomax, Herbert Halpert, Alan Lomax, and Bill Ferris at Parchman Farm between 1933 and 1969. Nor would he ever allow anyone to say he was forced to leave. These field recordings are the source material that sparked the American folk revival in the 1950s and 1960s. Nor had Lomax's Harvard academic record been affected in any way by his activities in her defense. Sagan later wrote that it was Lomax "who was a persistent and vigorous advocate for including ethnic music even at the expense of Western classical music. It says: "He has a tendency to neglect his work over a period of time and then just before a deadline he produces excellent results." I listen to one side then flip it over and listen to the other then flip it back over and listen again. After 1942, when Congress terminated the Library of Congress's funding for folk song collecting, Lomax continued to collect independently in Britain, Ireland, the Caribbean, Italy, and Spain, as well as the United States, using the latest recording technology, assembling an enormous collection of American and international culture. It took quite a long time to get the money together; it kept falling through. Throughout his six decades of pivotal work, Lomax travelled all over the read more. The hardest thing I've had to learn is that I'm not a genius. The person who reported the incident to the FBI said that the man in question was around 43, about 5 feet 9inches and 190 pounds. It remains astounding that a rural blues performer of such talent, already in his mid-fifties when Lomax came across him, had not previously recorded . Alan LOMAX ENGLAND World Library of Folk & Primitive Music Columbia SL206 . He devoted much of the latter part of his life to advocating what he called Cultural Equity, which he sought to put on a solid theoretical foundation through to his Cantometrics research (which included a prototype Cantometrics-based educational program, the Global Jukebox). Brogan. This set gathers recordings made by folklorist Alan Lomax in 1959, by which time the little-known Fred McDowell was well into his 50s. (Others listed included Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Yip Harburg, Lena Horne, Langston Hughes, Burl Ives, Dorothy Parker, Pete Seeger, and Josh White.) Free for commercial use, no attribution required. The remarkable life and times of the man who popularized American folk music and created the science of song Folklorist, archivist, anthropologist, singer, political activist, talent scout, ethnomusicologist, filmmaker, concert and record producer, Alan Lomax is best remembered as the man who introduced folk music to the masses. ), South Carolina - Got The Keys To The Kingdom, Bahamas 1935, Volume 2: Ring Games And Round Dances, World Library Of Folk & Primitive Music: France, Southern Journey Volume 1: Voices From The American South - Blues, Ballads, Hymns, Reels, Shouts, Chanteys And Work Songs, Southern Journey Volume 2: Ballads And Breakdowns (Songs From The Southern Mountains), Southern Journey Volume 3: 61 Highway Mississippi - Delta Country Blues, Spirituals, Work Songs & Dance Music, Southern Journey Volume 4: Brethren, We Meet Again - Southern White Spirituals, Southern Journey Volume 5: Bad Man Ballads (Songs Of Outlaws And Desperadoes), Southern Journey Volume 6: Sheep, Sheep Don'tcha Know The Road - Southern Music, Sacred And Sinful, Southern Journey Volume 7: Ozark Frontier - Ballads And Old-timey Music From Arkansas, Southern Journey Volume 8: Velvet Voices - Eastern Shores Choirs, Quartets, And Colonial Era Music, Southern Journey Volume 9: Harp Of A Thousand Strings - All Day Singing From The Sacred Harp, Southern Journey Volume 10: And Glory Shone Around - More All Day Singing From The Sacred Harp, Southern Journey Volume 11: Honor The Lamb, Southern Journey Volume 12: Georgia Sea Islands - Biblical Songs And Spirituals, Southern Journey Volume 13: Earliest Times - Georgia Sea Islands Songs For Everyday Living, Prison Songs Historical Recordings From Parchman Farm 1947-48 Volume One: Murderous Home. His cautions about "universal popular culture" (1994: 342) sound remarkably like Alan's warning in his "Appeal for Cultural Equity" that the "cultural grey-out" must be checked or there would soon be "no place worth visiting and no place worth staying" (1972). Thanks for putting it on bandcamp! In a letter to the editor of a British newspaper, Lomax took a writer to task for describing him as a "victim of witch-hunting," insisting that he was in the UK only to work on his Columbia Project.[33]. [9], At this time he also he began collecting "race" records and taking his dates to black-owned night clubs, at the risk of expulsion. Some, such as Richard Dorson, objected that scholars shouldn't act as cultural arbiters, but Lomax believed it would be unethical to stand idly by as the magnificent variety of the world's cultures and languages was "grayed out" by centralized commercial entertainment and educational systems. The Alan Lomax Collection: Southern Journey, Vol. [6] His first field collecting without his father was done with Zora Neale Hurston and Mary Elizabeth Barnicle in the summer of 1935. In late 1939, Lomax hosted two series on CBS's nationally broadcast 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. In the place of the old master was the . The "World Music" phenomenon arose partly from those efforts, as did his great book, Folk Song Style and Culture. Alan Lomax and the Voyager Golden Records. Allison Hussey. Astoundingly, none of the material in the entire Lomax Collection contains any maps. Nathan Salsburg never met Alan Lomax, the famed American musicologist. 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. Together we moved the number of completed pages in the Alan Lomax Campaign from 1,732 to over 3,000 to celebrate Alan Lomax's 105th birthday. Folk Delta Blues Americana. Mastered in Portland, Oregon. In the United States, he was responsible for priceless recordings of Leadbelly (who Lomax first recorded in prison), Woody Guthrie, Jelly Roll Morton and many others. Lomax' passion didn't spring up out of nowhere. " Sounds of the Earth includes 115 images, a variety of natural sounds, 90-minutes of musical selections from different cultures and eras . Lomax also did important field work with Elizabeth Barnicle and Zora Neale Hurston in Florida and the Bahamas (1935);[14] with John Wesley Work III and Lewis Jones in Mississippi (1941 and 42); with folksingers Robin Roberts[15] 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 US (1959); with Joan Halifax in Morocco; and with his daughter. 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. It's not a matter of the blind leading the blind it's a matter of stupid people in large numbers that creates the bullshit! [57] Lomax had been charged with disturbing the peace and fined $25. On one of his trips in 1941, he went to Clarksdale, Mississippi, hoping to record the music of Robert Johnson. [68] The album went on to be certified platinum in more than 20 countries. Lomax left Harvard, after having spent his sophomore year there, to join John A. Lomax and John Lomax, Jr. in collecting folk songs for the Library of Congress and to assist his father in writing his books. [26], While serving in the army in World War II, Lomax produced and hosted numerous radio programs in connection with the war effort. Alan Lomax (/lomks/; January 31, 1915 July 19, 2002) was an American ethnomusicologist, best known for his numerous field recordings of folk music of the 20th century. Cerebral palsy curbed his ability to play guitar the conventional way, so Nagoda learned double slide, this is his debut LP. (SACD, Hybrid, Multichannel, Album, Comp), Songs of Christmas (From the Alan Lomax Collection), The Spanish Recordings: Mallorca: The Balearic Islands, Gaelic Songs Of Scotland - Women At Work In The Western Isles, Singing In The Streets: Scottish Children's Songs, Caribbean Voyage: East Indian Music In The West Indies, Caribbean Voyage: Trinidad: Carnival Roots, Caribbean Voyage: Saraca: Funerary Music of Carriacou, Caribbean Voyage: Tombstone Feast (Funerary Music Of Carriacou), World Library Of Folk & Primitive Music: Spain, World Library Of Folk & Primitive Music, V: Yugoslavia, World Library of Folk and Primitive Music Romania, The Spanish Recordings: Ibiza & Formentera: The Pityusic Islands, Classic Ballads Of Britain And Ireland Volume 1, Classic Ballads Of Britain And Ireland Volume 2, Italian Treasury, Folk Music And Song From Italy, A Sampler, Italian Treasury, The Trallaleri Of Genoa, Black Texicans (Balladeers And Songsters Of The Texas Frontier), Deep River Of Song - Bahamas 1935 - Chanteys And Anthems From Andros And Cat Island, Black Appalachia - String Bands, Songsters And Hoedowns, Deep River Of Song - Mississippi Saints & Sinners - From Before The Blues And Gospel, Mississippi: The Blues Lineage - Musical Geniuses Of The Fields, Levees, And Jukes, Big Brazos (Texas Prison Recordings, 1933 And 1934), Virginia And The Piedmont (Minstrelsy, Work Songs, And Blues), The Classic Louisiana Recordings Cajun & Creole Music 1934/1937, The Classic Louisiana Recordings Cajun & Creole Music II 1934/1937, The Complete Library Of Congress Recordings By Alan Lomax, Italian Treasury: Liguria: Baiardo And Imperia, Italian Treasury: Liguria: Polyphony of Ceriana, Louisiana (Catch That Train And Testify! [17] A pioneering oral historian, Lomax recorded substantial interviews with many folk and jazz musicians, including Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Jelly Roll Morton and other jazz pioneers, and Big Bill Broonzy. . The FBI file notes that Lomax stood 6 feet (1.8m) tall, weighed 240 pounds and was 64 at the time: Lomax resisted the FBI's attempts to interview him about the impersonation charges, but he finally met with agents at his home in November 1979. NOW TAKE MY MONEY a.bezu, supported by 48 fans who also own The Alan Lomax Recordings, Get In Unionby Bessie Jones and the Georgia Sea Island Singers, This album highlights traditional Black American folk and gospel songs from Americas coastal South. Over four hundred recordings from this collection are now available at the Library of Congress. Alan Lomax was an American ethnomusicologist, best known for his numerous field recordings of folk music of the 20th century. Musicologist, writer, and producer Alan Lomax (b. Austin, Texas, 1915) spent over six decades working to promote knowledge and appreciation of the world's folk music. Lomax produced recordings, concerts, and radio shows in the US and in England, which played an important role in preserving folk music traditions in both countries, and helped start both the American and British folk revivals of the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s. And it can make their adjustment to a world society an easier and more creative process. He began making field recordings with his father, a fellow folklorist, John Lomax, of American folk music for the Library of Congress' Archive of American Folk Song. The Lomaxes attended Lead Belly's wedding to Martha Promise in Wilton, Connecticut. Lomax's greatest legacy is in preserving and publishing recordings of musicians in many folk and blues traditions around the US and Europe. Thanks, Alan. For questions about permissions and licensing contact: Alan Lomax Collection and Lomax Digital Archive, permissions. Upon his return to New York in 1959, Lomax produced a concert, Folksong '59, in Carnegie Hall, featuring Arkansas singer Jimmy Driftwood; the Selah Jubilee Singers and Drexel Singers (gospel groups); Muddy Waters and Memphis Slim (blues); Earl Taylor and the Stoney Mountain Boys (bluegrass); Pete Seeger, Mike Seeger (urban folk revival); and The Cadillacs (a rock and roll group). 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. A partial list of books by Alan Lomax includes: Collins: He was on the dockside with Anne, his daughter. He was a musician himself, as well as a folklorist, archivist, writer, scholar, political activist, oral historian, and film-maker. Michael Taft of the American Folklife Center explains some of the milestones in field recording technology during Lomax's time. This is a song that transports the listener back to a time and place where songs were how stories were told. He spent more than a half century recording the folk music and customs of the world. Between 1933 and 1939, John Lomax would record nearly 250 songs from Parchman inmates, male and female; and not just the group work songs and field hollers, but also game songs, blues, ballads, toasts, and many sacred performances. [53] Though Alan Lomax's appeals to anthropology conferences and repeated letters to UNESCO fell on deaf ears, the modern world seems to have caught up to his vision. He denied that he'd been involved in the matter but did note that he'd been in New Hampshire in July 1979, visiting a film editor about a documentary. Yes, he's here, he's made a trip out to see me. Still gives me goosebumps and a good laugh. Through a grant from the American Council of Learned Societies, Lomax was able to set out in June 1933 on the first recording expedition under the Library's auspices, with 18-year-old Alan Lomax in tow. . Shirley Collins/Courtesy of Alan Lomax Archive hide caption "[9] At the University of Texas Lomax read Nietzsche and developed an interest in philosophy. He collected material first with his father, folklorist and collector John Lomax, and later alone and with others, Lomax recorded thousands of songs and interviews for the Archive of American Folk Song, of which he was the director, at the Library of Congress on aluminum and acetate discs. A roommate, future anthropologist Walter Goldschmidt, recalled Lomax as "frighteningly smart, probably classifiable as a genius", though Goldschmidt remembers Lomax exploding one night while studying: "Damn it!