Without Lomax, the links between different artists may not have been possible, and the music world would look nothing like the one we know today. “For art criticism we need people who would show the senselessness of looking for ideas in a work of art, and who instead would continually guide readers in that endless labyrinth of linkages that makes up the stuff of art, and bring them to the laws that serve as the foundation for those linkages.” The book’s epigraph contains a quote from a Leo Tolstoy letter: The Anatomy of Influence, a book by Yale literature professor Harold Bloom, seeks to trace and understand the dynamic and complex relationships of art and artists by highlighting the ecosystem of the world’s 30 most iconic writers. Classic jazz, classic rock, folk rock, contemporary classical music, and of course, traditional folk, music fans and artists all have Lomax to thank for his thorough recordings of folk music throughout the US and even in Italy, Spain, and Haiti. Muddy Waters stays in Mississippi never goes to Chicago never meets the great Willie Dixon, who wrote many of Waters’ finest songs while playing bass in Waters’ band and five young Englishmen, having never heard his song “ Rollin’ Stone,” are left without a band name or one of their best early songs.”Īnd, of course, without the Rolling Stones, there would be no Red Hot Chili Peppers, no Nirvana, no Coldplay, no Kings of Leon, no Radiohead, to name a few. “So, in our little game, say there’s no Alan Lomax. In an article honoring Lomax’s 100th birthday for Cuepoint, Soundcheck host John Schaefer writes: So without Lomax, bands like the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin would exist without some of the most important influences or covers that became their biggest hits. Those early recordings, in a ripple effect, came to influence and inspire musicians in the 1950s and 1960s. Lomax was the first to record Muddy Waters, Lead Belly, and Woody Guthrie, as well as hundreds of folk singers and artists whose names aren’t recognizable.
#ALLAN LOMAX ARCHIVE#
Lomax said in 1972, “The dimension of cultural equity needs to be added to the humane continuum of liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and social justice.” Lomax’s dream of a massive music archive was realized in 2012 with the creation of the Global Jukebox, which catalogued the 17,000 tracks he collected over the years. When Congress cut off funding for that part of the library, Lomax continued to independently record people’s stories and songs, fueled by his belief in the idea of “one world,” which is now known as multiculturalism. From 1937 to 1942, Alan Lomax worked in the Archive of Folk Song of the Library of Congress, which he and his father and various collaborators contributed more than 10,000 field recordings. Lomax’s father, John, was a pioneering folklorist who brought along Alan on recording trips throughout the American South when he was a child and then later as a teenager.
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It’s difficult to overstate Alan Lomax's influence on the music world.