085: Presenting the Alan Lomax Collection, by Various Artists

Various Artists (USA)
Presenting the Alan Lomax Collection (2004)
12 tracks, 46 minutes
This particular compilation wasn’t anywhere to play online, and most of the tracks aren’t on Spotify either. I made a YouTube playlist of most of the tracks for you (the last track wasn’t on there, grrr)

…having said that, all of Alan Lomax’s recordings are now in the public domain, and they’re all searchable and listenable via the Cultural Equity website – thousands of hours of recordings from all over the world, go nuts!

This is a compilation of music recorded by Alan Lomax on three of his journeys across the Deep South of the USA, between the late 40s and 1960. Most of the recordings are from Mississippi, but there’s also some from Virginia, Georgia and Arkansas too. These tracks were chosen because they were the ones that were remixed as part of the Tangle Eye project, where they were mixed up with all sorts of beats and other nu-blues accoutrements. That album is really disappointing. If you want the good stuff, turn to the originals.

Lomax recorded so much material on his southern journeys that the compilers must have been spoilt for choice. As a result, all of the tracks are wonderful. There’s quite a range presented here too, from the delta blues to spirituals to pieces based on English (or possibly Eastern European) folk songs.

The most spine-tingling of them, though, are the ones recorded in the Mississippi State Penetentiary, also known as Parchman Farm (you can see which tracks were recorded where and when on Discogs). Inmates of Parchman Farm were treated in conditions that amounted basically to legalised slavery, and the practice of chain-gangs was still going strong. The songs sang there are heavy with world-weariness. They are work songs and chanties, some even sang in that context, chopping wood, for example. They are beautiful, if haunting – the high-pitched voice of Henry Jimpson Wallace singing ‘No More, My Lord’ is heavenly, but full of sadness.

But then there’s also the very short track, ‘Jim and John’ by the Young family of Ed, Lonnie Young and Lonnie Jr. It’s the only fife-and-drum music included in this collection, and it’s one of my favourite tracks on it. It doesn’t have the aching quality of the chain-gang songs – in fact, it sounds joyous. The fife is just so bluesy, but drums are begging you to dance. Really, I could go through every track on this album and say why I love it.

As tempting as it is, it’s hard to really call this music the roots of the blues – after all, blues was in full swing by this point. In fact, the post-bop era of jazz was already in its prime for most of these, and the British blues boom was starting to come together. But there is something about recording these musicians in their homes – or jails – that captures the real essence of all the different types of folk music that the urban blues styles drew upon. This is music with deep roots, and far-reaching branches.