Alan Lomax: The Man Who Recorded the World

Abstract

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. Lomax began his career making field recordings of rural music for the Library of Congress and by the late 1930s brought his discoveries to radio, including Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Burl Ives. By the 1940s he was producing concerts that brought white and black performers together, and in the 1950s he set out to record the whole world. Lomax was also controversial. When he worked for the government he was tracked by the FBI, and when he worked in Britain, MI5 continued the surveillance. In his last years he turned to digital media and developed technologies that anticipated today's breakthroughs. Featuring a cast of characters from Eleanor Roosevelt to Lead Belly, Carl Sagan to Bob Dylan, Szwed's biography provides an account of an era seen through the life of one extraordinary man.--From publisher description. From Chisholm Trail to Harvard Yard -- Road scholars -- The saga of Lead Belly -- Travels with Zora Neale Hurston and Mary Elizabeth Barnicle -- Honeymoon in Haiti -- Doctor Jazz -- Bohemian folklorist -- A bourgeois town -- The people's war -- The century of the common man -- Living on the black list -- The grand tour -- Skiffle : from folk to pop -- The American campaign resumed -- The science of folk song -- To hear the world in a grain of sand -- The culture war -- The global jukebox : "got the world in a jug, the stopper in my hand."