CHAPTER 14 | THE RISE OF URBAN FOLK MUSIC 349
THE RISE OF URBAN FOLK MUSIC
During the interwar years, a new generation of folk song collectors extended
their predecessors’ efforts to include groups whose music had been overlooked.
At the same time, radio and phonograph records altered the relationship
between folk singers and their audiences. Finally, from those new audiences
emerged an unprecedented kind of musician: the urban folk singer.JOHN AND ALAN LOMAX AND THE ARCHIVE OF
AMERICAN FOLK SONGThe late 1800s saw a rising interest in uniquely American traditions. In 1888
the American Folklore Society was founded, with the intent of gathering and
publishing songs and stories from Anglo-American, African American, Indian,
Mexican, and French Canadian cultures. After 1900 many state folklore societies
were established, dedicated in large part to collecting and preserving folk songs
from the Old World, especially Child ballads. In 1914 the U.S. Offi ce of Educa-
tion declared a “rescue mission” for folk songs and ballads, in the belief that they
were an endangered species.
By the latter 1920s it was clear to anyone paying heed that the United States
was home to a rich, diverse assortment of music in the traditional sphere. One
symbol of that recognition was the founding in 1928 of the Archive of American
Folk Song at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. The idea seems to have
come from Robert Winslow Gordon, a scholar and collector who was named the
library’s fi rst sound archivist. Gordon, who had an academic background, had
for years been collecting folk songs and writing about them in Adventure, a popu-
lar magazine focused on the out-of-doors.
After Gordon left his post at the archive in 1933, his replacement, John A.
Lomax, turned the archive into a real force on the music scene. Born in 1867,
Lomax grew up in Texas with a deep interest in black music. Graduating from the
University of Texas in 1887, he worked in that school’s administration and taught
English at a Texas college, with time off for master’s degree study at Harvard in
1906–7. Lomax’s interest in cowboy songs led to a published collection in 1910. After
his book appeared, he was elected president of the American Folklore Society and
traveled and lectured widely. By the early 1920s Lomax had left the academic world
for banking, though he continued to collect songs and ballads. In 1932, out of a job at
age sixty-fi ve, he convinced a New York publisher to support his plan for a compre-
hensive collection to be called American Ballads and Folk Songs. He then approached
Carl Engel, chief of the Library of Congress music division, who agreed to furnish
him with portable recording equipment if Lomax would deposit his recordings at
the library. In July 1933 Lomax was named honorary consultant to the Archive of
American Folk Songs for a stipend of one dollar per year.
Knowing that black folk songs were poorly represented in American collec-
tions, Lomax made them the focus of a four-month-long collecting trip that he
and his son Alan, eighteen years old and a college student, began in the summer
of 1933. In their search for African American musicians insulated from white tra-
ditions, they visited Southern penitentiaries and prison camps. In one Louisiana
prison, the Lomaxes found the remarkable singer and guitarist Leadbelly. John
Lomax arranged for his parole, and between 1935 and 1948 Leadbelly recorded
many songs for the Library of Congress archive.K After accompanying
his father, John Lomax, on
a long folk-song-collecting
trip in 1933, Alan Lomax
(1915–2002) devoted
himself to traditional music,
including a 1948 radio
program, Your Ballad Man.172028_14_332-360_r3_ko.indd 349 23/01/13 8:38 PM