John Avery Lomax (September 23, 1867 – January 26, 1948) was an American teacher, a pioneering musicologist, and a folklorist who did much for the preservation of American folk music. He was the father of Shirley Mansell, John Avery Lomax, Jr., Alan Lomax, also a distinguished collector of folk music, and Bess Lomax Hawes.
Early life
The Lomax family originally came from England in the 19th century when William Lomax settled in a colony in North Carolina. John Lomax was born in Goodman in Holmes County in central Mississippi, to James Avery Lomax and the former Susan Frances Cooper. In December 1869, the Lomax family traveled by ox cart from Mississippi to Texas. John Lomax grew up in central Texas, just north of Meridian in ruralBosque County. His father raised horses and cattle and grew cotton and corn on the 183 acres (0.74km2) of bottomland that he had purchased near the Bosque River. The cowboy songs to which he was exposed during his childhood influenced Lomax in such a way that his future choice of career already seemed confirmed. About 1876, the nine-year-old Lomax met and became close friends with Nat Blythe, a former slave who had just been hired as a farmhand by James Lomax. The friendship, "which perhaps gave my life its bent," lasted three years, and was crucial to Lomax's early development. Lomax, whose own schooling was sporadic because of the heavy farmwork he was forced to do, taught Blythe to read and write, and Blythe taught Lomax songs including "Big Yam Potatoes on a Sandy Land" and dance steps such as "Juba". When Blyth was 21 years old, he took his savings and left. Lomax never saw him again and heard rumors that he had been murdered. For years afterward, he always looked for Nat when he traveled around the South.
John Junior Lomax (born 2 February 1966) is a New Zealand former rugby league player who represented his country. He is the brother of another international, David Lomax.
During the 1992 season he lined up alongside three of his brothers; Tony, David and Arnold, for Wellington against Bay of Plenty. All four brothers also played for the Lions that year in their 25-18 national club grand final win over the Northcote Tigers. In 1993 he was invited to be part of an Auckland Invitational XIII side that drew 16-all with the Balmain Tigers.
Playing career
In 1993 Lomax moved to Australia, joining the Canberra Raiders. He won the club's player of the year award in 1994. He missed the 1994 grand final due to suspension. Lomax played in sixty five games for the club before he moved to the North Queensland Cowboys, where he was named player of the year in 1998. Near the end of his career Lomax also spent a season with the Melbourne Storm.
In 2007, this film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Plot
Sinatra, apparently playing himself, takes a break from a recording session and steps outside to smoke a cigarette. He sees more than ten boys chasing a Jewish boy and intervenes, first with dialogue, then with a short speech. His main points are that we are "all" Americans and that one American's blood is as good as another's and that all our religions are to be respected equally.
Title song
The song originally appeared in the musical revue, Let Freedom Sing, which opened on Broadway on October 5, 1942. Brooks Atkinson wrote in the New York Times: "Although Mordecai Bauman does not sing it particularly well, he sings it with earnest sincerity, without feeling that he must imitate youth by blasting the voice amplifying system and cutting a rug."
Original 1934 John Lomax recording of 'Rock Island Line' by Kelly Pace and Prisoners
In 1934 John Lomax with the help of Huddie Ledbetter (Lead Belly) made the first two recordings of "Rock Island Line", a song that would become world-famous later. A tall tale in rhyme, the song's subject is a train so fast that it arrives at its destination in Little Rock (at 8:49) before its departure from Memphis (at "half past nine").
They arrived in Arkansas in late September and worked first in Little Rock and then at the Tucker and Cummins prison farms to the south. In recording the second version they for the first time encountered Kelly Pace - a petty criminal but an outstanding prison singer. (Pace would eventually contribute more than thirty performances to the Library of Congress archives.)
Lomax made additional recording trips to Arkansas prisons in 1939 and 1942, unaccompan...
published: 10 Sep 2011
John Lomax the music guy
The last name Lomax may mean more to music than any other in the world. Since 1880 the Lomax Family has been saving, funding, and fighting to keep these old classic American songs alive. These days it's Nashville's John Lomax III keeping up the family tradition. News 4's Terry Bulger shows us.
published: 21 May 2021
Leadbelly And Lomax, 1940's -- Film 429
Leadbelly and John Lomax.
Lomax records Leadbelly singing 'Goodnight Irene' in his prison uniform. Later Leadbelly goes to stay with Lomax.
published: 20 Sep 2013
Leadbelly et John Lomax
Description : Chutes d'un documentaire reconstituant la rencontre et la collaboration du musicologue John Lomax et du musicien Huddie William Ledbetter (LeadBelly).
A sa sortie de prison, LeadBelly rend visite à John Lomax au Texas.
Date : 1935-00-00
Images commercialisées par l'atelier des archives http://www.atelierdesarchives.com
published: 09 Aug 2015
Lightning Washington and prisoners: Good God Almighty (1933)
"Lightning" Washington and prisoners, recorded by John A. and Alan Lomax at Darrington State Prison Farm, Sandy Point, Texas, December 1933.
In 1933, with the support of Macmillan Publishers and the Music Division of the Library of Congress, John A. Lomax made the first of his field-recording trips through the American South. Joined by his seventeen-year-old son Alan, Lomax visited some of the most notorious Southern penitentiaries — among them Sugar Land in Texas; Angola in Louisiana; Parchman Farm in Mississippi — where he knew anachronistic strains of African American folk-song would be preserved away from the influence of the radio, the phonograph, and cross-pollination with whites. The Lomaxes recorded the songs of timber and ground-clearing gangs, chants of the road and railroad cre...
published: 02 May 2012
"Appalachian Journey", Alan Lomax (1991)
Appalachian Journey és una de les cinc pel•lícules fetes de material d'arxiu d'entre 1978 i 1985 que Alan Lomax va muntar per a la sèrie PBS American Patchwork el 1991 sobre el folklore dels Apalatxes. Una excel•lent col•lecció de música "hilbily", amb la presència de Tommy Jarrell, Janette Carter, Ray i Stanley Hicks, Frank Proffitt Jr., Sheila Kay Adams, Nimrod Treballador i Phyllis Boyens, Raymond Fairchild, entre d'altres. Alan Lomax va ser un gran compilador de old music, però també un folklorista que va recórrer nombrosos països, entre ells Espanya als anys 50. Antifeixista convençut, la seva estada va ser vigilada de prop per la Guardia Civil, com a conseqüència de l'avís que el govern espanyol havia rebut de la presència de Lomax al pais.
published: 20 May 2013
Original 1939 John and Ruby Lomax recording - Rock Island Line
Between March 31, 1939 and June 14, 1939 John Avery Lomax and his wife Ruby Terrill Lomax recorded approximately 25 hours of folk music (from more than 300 performers) in their "Southern States Recording Trip" for the US Library of Congress. This is one of the original recordings of "Rock Island Line", which later became famous through singers like Kelly Pace, Leadbelly, and Lonnie Donegan.
http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/200210/15_bickalj_rockisland/artists.shtml
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/lohtml/lohome.html
http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9908/lomax.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Island_Line_%28song%29
Other recordings of this song:
Kelly Pace (1934 Lomax recording): http://youtu.be/0NTa7ps6sNU
Leadbelly: http://youtu.be/lCiJ4QQG9WQ
Lonnie Donegan: http://youtu.be...
In 1934 John Lomax with the help of Huddie Ledbetter (Lead Belly) made the first two recordings of "Rock Island Line", a song that would become world-famous lat...
In 1934 John Lomax with the help of Huddie Ledbetter (Lead Belly) made the first two recordings of "Rock Island Line", a song that would become world-famous later. A tall tale in rhyme, the song's subject is a train so fast that it arrives at its destination in Little Rock (at 8:49) before its departure from Memphis (at "half past nine").
They arrived in Arkansas in late September and worked first in Little Rock and then at the Tucker and Cummins prison farms to the south. In recording the second version they for the first time encountered Kelly Pace - a petty criminal but an outstanding prison singer. (Pace would eventually contribute more than thirty performances to the Library of Congress archives.)
Lomax made additional recording trips to Arkansas prisons in 1939 and 1942, unaccompanied by Ledbetter. Pace was a free man at the time of the 1939 visit, but Lomax collected a third version of "The Rock Island Line," this time in Cummins Prison. Listen to that recording here: http://youtu.be/5qWpAgoJHUk
By 1942, Pace was back in stir, sent up for forty-two years for stealing a car, and once again he was the star, performing some twenty-six songs as a soloist or member of a larger group. One of these is a fourth performance of "The Rock Island Line," the last version collected in Arkansas by Lomax.
In the meantime Ledbetter immediately recognized the potential of the tune and eventually played a major role in making it famous. He recorded it many times, first for folksong collectors at the Library of Congress in 1937 and later for commercial labels (RCA Victor in 1940 and Capitol in 1944, among others).
http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=2570
http://sundayblues.org/archives/tag/john-lomax
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Island_Line_%28song%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_Belly
Other recordings of this song:
1939 Lomax recording: http://youtu.be/5qWpAgoJHUk
Leadbelly: http://youtu.be/lCiJ4QQG9WQ
Lonnie Donegan: http://youtu.be/K_aIQ1_sAVg
Johnny Cash: http://youtu.be/FX1BPItDcDo
In 1934 John Lomax with the help of Huddie Ledbetter (Lead Belly) made the first two recordings of "Rock Island Line", a song that would become world-famous later. A tall tale in rhyme, the song's subject is a train so fast that it arrives at its destination in Little Rock (at 8:49) before its departure from Memphis (at "half past nine").
They arrived in Arkansas in late September and worked first in Little Rock and then at the Tucker and Cummins prison farms to the south. In recording the second version they for the first time encountered Kelly Pace - a petty criminal but an outstanding prison singer. (Pace would eventually contribute more than thirty performances to the Library of Congress archives.)
Lomax made additional recording trips to Arkansas prisons in 1939 and 1942, unaccompanied by Ledbetter. Pace was a free man at the time of the 1939 visit, but Lomax collected a third version of "The Rock Island Line," this time in Cummins Prison. Listen to that recording here: http://youtu.be/5qWpAgoJHUk
By 1942, Pace was back in stir, sent up for forty-two years for stealing a car, and once again he was the star, performing some twenty-six songs as a soloist or member of a larger group. One of these is a fourth performance of "The Rock Island Line," the last version collected in Arkansas by Lomax.
In the meantime Ledbetter immediately recognized the potential of the tune and eventually played a major role in making it famous. He recorded it many times, first for folksong collectors at the Library of Congress in 1937 and later for commercial labels (RCA Victor in 1940 and Capitol in 1944, among others).
http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=2570
http://sundayblues.org/archives/tag/john-lomax
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Island_Line_%28song%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_Belly
Other recordings of this song:
1939 Lomax recording: http://youtu.be/5qWpAgoJHUk
Leadbelly: http://youtu.be/lCiJ4QQG9WQ
Lonnie Donegan: http://youtu.be/K_aIQ1_sAVg
Johnny Cash: http://youtu.be/FX1BPItDcDo
The last name Lomax may mean more to music than any other in the world. Since 1880 the Lomax Family has been saving, funding, and fighting to keep these old cla...
The last name Lomax may mean more to music than any other in the world. Since 1880 the Lomax Family has been saving, funding, and fighting to keep these old classic American songs alive. These days it's Nashville's John Lomax III keeping up the family tradition. News 4's Terry Bulger shows us.
The last name Lomax may mean more to music than any other in the world. Since 1880 the Lomax Family has been saving, funding, and fighting to keep these old classic American songs alive. These days it's Nashville's John Lomax III keeping up the family tradition. News 4's Terry Bulger shows us.
Description : Chutes d'un documentaire reconstituant la rencontre et la collaboration du musicologue John Lomax et du musicien Huddie William Ledbetter (LeadBe...
Description : Chutes d'un documentaire reconstituant la rencontre et la collaboration du musicologue John Lomax et du musicien Huddie William Ledbetter (LeadBelly).
A sa sortie de prison, LeadBelly rend visite à John Lomax au Texas.
Date : 1935-00-00
Images commercialisées par l'atelier des archives http://www.atelierdesarchives.com
Description : Chutes d'un documentaire reconstituant la rencontre et la collaboration du musicologue John Lomax et du musicien Huddie William Ledbetter (LeadBelly).
A sa sortie de prison, LeadBelly rend visite à John Lomax au Texas.
Date : 1935-00-00
Images commercialisées par l'atelier des archives http://www.atelierdesarchives.com
"Lightning" Washington and prisoners, recorded by John A. and Alan Lomax at Darrington State Prison Farm, Sandy Point, Texas, December 1933.
In 1933, with the ...
"Lightning" Washington and prisoners, recorded by John A. and Alan Lomax at Darrington State Prison Farm, Sandy Point, Texas, December 1933.
In 1933, with the support of Macmillan Publishers and the Music Division of the Library of Congress, John A. Lomax made the first of his field-recording trips through the American South. Joined by his seventeen-year-old son Alan, Lomax visited some of the most notorious Southern penitentiaries — among them Sugar Land in Texas; Angola in Louisiana; Parchman Farm in Mississippi — where he knew anachronistic strains of African American folk-song would be preserved away from the influence of the radio, the phonograph, and cross-pollination with whites. The Lomaxes recorded the songs of timber and ground-clearing gangs, chants of the road and railroad crews, solo field hollers with their roots running deep into the antebellum south; they also recorded comic songs, blues, and spirituals. By late 1934, they had recorded dozens of singers and hundreds of songs — "poetic expressions," as Lomax described them, "of pungent wit, simple beauty, startling imagery, extraordinary vividness and power."
"Jail House Bound," a production of West Virginia University Press, collects the earliest of the Lomaxes' prison recordings — made between July and December 1933 in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee — drawing on new remasters from the fragile original acetate discs. The album is introduced by noted American music scholar Mark Allen Jackson (author of "Prophet Singer: The Voice and Vision of Woody Guthrie"). Released digitally (May 15, 2012) by Global Jukebox in collaboration with the West Virginia University Press.
"Lightning" Washington and prisoners, recorded by John A. and Alan Lomax at Darrington State Prison Farm, Sandy Point, Texas, December 1933.
In 1933, with the support of Macmillan Publishers and the Music Division of the Library of Congress, John A. Lomax made the first of his field-recording trips through the American South. Joined by his seventeen-year-old son Alan, Lomax visited some of the most notorious Southern penitentiaries — among them Sugar Land in Texas; Angola in Louisiana; Parchman Farm in Mississippi — where he knew anachronistic strains of African American folk-song would be preserved away from the influence of the radio, the phonograph, and cross-pollination with whites. The Lomaxes recorded the songs of timber and ground-clearing gangs, chants of the road and railroad crews, solo field hollers with their roots running deep into the antebellum south; they also recorded comic songs, blues, and spirituals. By late 1934, they had recorded dozens of singers and hundreds of songs — "poetic expressions," as Lomax described them, "of pungent wit, simple beauty, startling imagery, extraordinary vividness and power."
"Jail House Bound," a production of West Virginia University Press, collects the earliest of the Lomaxes' prison recordings — made between July and December 1933 in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee — drawing on new remasters from the fragile original acetate discs. The album is introduced by noted American music scholar Mark Allen Jackson (author of "Prophet Singer: The Voice and Vision of Woody Guthrie"). Released digitally (May 15, 2012) by Global Jukebox in collaboration with the West Virginia University Press.
Appalachian Journey és una de les cinc pel•lícules fetes de material d'arxiu d'entre 1978 i 1985 que Alan Lomax va muntar per a la sèrie PBS American Patchwork...
Appalachian Journey és una de les cinc pel•lícules fetes de material d'arxiu d'entre 1978 i 1985 que Alan Lomax va muntar per a la sèrie PBS American Patchwork el 1991 sobre el folklore dels Apalatxes. Una excel•lent col•lecció de música "hilbily", amb la presència de Tommy Jarrell, Janette Carter, Ray i Stanley Hicks, Frank Proffitt Jr., Sheila Kay Adams, Nimrod Treballador i Phyllis Boyens, Raymond Fairchild, entre d'altres. Alan Lomax va ser un gran compilador de old music, però també un folklorista que va recórrer nombrosos països, entre ells Espanya als anys 50. Antifeixista convençut, la seva estada va ser vigilada de prop per la Guardia Civil, com a conseqüència de l'avís que el govern espanyol havia rebut de la presència de Lomax al pais.
Appalachian Journey és una de les cinc pel•lícules fetes de material d'arxiu d'entre 1978 i 1985 que Alan Lomax va muntar per a la sèrie PBS American Patchwork el 1991 sobre el folklore dels Apalatxes. Una excel•lent col•lecció de música "hilbily", amb la presència de Tommy Jarrell, Janette Carter, Ray i Stanley Hicks, Frank Proffitt Jr., Sheila Kay Adams, Nimrod Treballador i Phyllis Boyens, Raymond Fairchild, entre d'altres. Alan Lomax va ser un gran compilador de old music, però també un folklorista que va recórrer nombrosos països, entre ells Espanya als anys 50. Antifeixista convençut, la seva estada va ser vigilada de prop per la Guardia Civil, com a conseqüència de l'avís que el govern espanyol havia rebut de la presència de Lomax al pais.
Between March 31, 1939 and June 14, 1939 John Avery Lomax and his wife Ruby Terrill Lomax recorded approximately 25 hours of folk music (from more than 300 perf...
Between March 31, 1939 and June 14, 1939 John Avery Lomax and his wife Ruby Terrill Lomax recorded approximately 25 hours of folk music (from more than 300 performers) in their "Southern States Recording Trip" for the US Library of Congress. This is one of the original recordings of "Rock Island Line", which later became famous through singers like Kelly Pace, Leadbelly, and Lonnie Donegan.
http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/200210/15_bickalj_rockisland/artists.shtml
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/lohtml/lohome.html
http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9908/lomax.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Island_Line_%28song%29
Other recordings of this song:
Kelly Pace (1934 Lomax recording): http://youtu.be/0NTa7ps6sNU
Leadbelly: http://youtu.be/lCiJ4QQG9WQ
Lonnie Donegan: http://youtu.be/K_aIQ1_sAVg
Johnny Cash: http://youtu.be/FX1BPItDcDo
Between March 31, 1939 and June 14, 1939 John Avery Lomax and his wife Ruby Terrill Lomax recorded approximately 25 hours of folk music (from more than 300 performers) in their "Southern States Recording Trip" for the US Library of Congress. This is one of the original recordings of "Rock Island Line", which later became famous through singers like Kelly Pace, Leadbelly, and Lonnie Donegan.
http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/200210/15_bickalj_rockisland/artists.shtml
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/lohtml/lohome.html
http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9908/lomax.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Island_Line_%28song%29
Other recordings of this song:
Kelly Pace (1934 Lomax recording): http://youtu.be/0NTa7ps6sNU
Leadbelly: http://youtu.be/lCiJ4QQG9WQ
Lonnie Donegan: http://youtu.be/K_aIQ1_sAVg
Johnny Cash: http://youtu.be/FX1BPItDcDo
In 1934 John Lomax with the help of Huddie Ledbetter (Lead Belly) made the first two recordings of "Rock Island Line", a song that would become world-famous later. A tall tale in rhyme, the song's subject is a train so fast that it arrives at its destination in Little Rock (at 8:49) before its departure from Memphis (at "half past nine").
They arrived in Arkansas in late September and worked first in Little Rock and then at the Tucker and Cummins prison farms to the south. In recording the second version they for the first time encountered Kelly Pace - a petty criminal but an outstanding prison singer. (Pace would eventually contribute more than thirty performances to the Library of Congress archives.)
Lomax made additional recording trips to Arkansas prisons in 1939 and 1942, unaccompanied by Ledbetter. Pace was a free man at the time of the 1939 visit, but Lomax collected a third version of "The Rock Island Line," this time in Cummins Prison. Listen to that recording here: http://youtu.be/5qWpAgoJHUk
By 1942, Pace was back in stir, sent up for forty-two years for stealing a car, and once again he was the star, performing some twenty-six songs as a soloist or member of a larger group. One of these is a fourth performance of "The Rock Island Line," the last version collected in Arkansas by Lomax.
In the meantime Ledbetter immediately recognized the potential of the tune and eventually played a major role in making it famous. He recorded it many times, first for folksong collectors at the Library of Congress in 1937 and later for commercial labels (RCA Victor in 1940 and Capitol in 1944, among others).
http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=2570
http://sundayblues.org/archives/tag/john-lomax
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Island_Line_%28song%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_Belly
Other recordings of this song:
1939 Lomax recording: http://youtu.be/5qWpAgoJHUk
Leadbelly: http://youtu.be/lCiJ4QQG9WQ
Lonnie Donegan: http://youtu.be/K_aIQ1_sAVg
Johnny Cash: http://youtu.be/FX1BPItDcDo
The last name Lomax may mean more to music than any other in the world. Since 1880 the Lomax Family has been saving, funding, and fighting to keep these old classic American songs alive. These days it's Nashville's John Lomax III keeping up the family tradition. News 4's Terry Bulger shows us.
Description : Chutes d'un documentaire reconstituant la rencontre et la collaboration du musicologue John Lomax et du musicien Huddie William Ledbetter (LeadBelly).
A sa sortie de prison, LeadBelly rend visite à John Lomax au Texas.
Date : 1935-00-00
Images commercialisées par l'atelier des archives http://www.atelierdesarchives.com
"Lightning" Washington and prisoners, recorded by John A. and Alan Lomax at Darrington State Prison Farm, Sandy Point, Texas, December 1933.
In 1933, with the support of Macmillan Publishers and the Music Division of the Library of Congress, John A. Lomax made the first of his field-recording trips through the American South. Joined by his seventeen-year-old son Alan, Lomax visited some of the most notorious Southern penitentiaries — among them Sugar Land in Texas; Angola in Louisiana; Parchman Farm in Mississippi — where he knew anachronistic strains of African American folk-song would be preserved away from the influence of the radio, the phonograph, and cross-pollination with whites. The Lomaxes recorded the songs of timber and ground-clearing gangs, chants of the road and railroad crews, solo field hollers with their roots running deep into the antebellum south; they also recorded comic songs, blues, and spirituals. By late 1934, they had recorded dozens of singers and hundreds of songs — "poetic expressions," as Lomax described them, "of pungent wit, simple beauty, startling imagery, extraordinary vividness and power."
"Jail House Bound," a production of West Virginia University Press, collects the earliest of the Lomaxes' prison recordings — made between July and December 1933 in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee — drawing on new remasters from the fragile original acetate discs. The album is introduced by noted American music scholar Mark Allen Jackson (author of "Prophet Singer: The Voice and Vision of Woody Guthrie"). Released digitally (May 15, 2012) by Global Jukebox in collaboration with the West Virginia University Press.
Appalachian Journey és una de les cinc pel•lícules fetes de material d'arxiu d'entre 1978 i 1985 que Alan Lomax va muntar per a la sèrie PBS American Patchwork el 1991 sobre el folklore dels Apalatxes. Una excel•lent col•lecció de música "hilbily", amb la presència de Tommy Jarrell, Janette Carter, Ray i Stanley Hicks, Frank Proffitt Jr., Sheila Kay Adams, Nimrod Treballador i Phyllis Boyens, Raymond Fairchild, entre d'altres. Alan Lomax va ser un gran compilador de old music, però també un folklorista que va recórrer nombrosos països, entre ells Espanya als anys 50. Antifeixista convençut, la seva estada va ser vigilada de prop per la Guardia Civil, com a conseqüència de l'avís que el govern espanyol havia rebut de la presència de Lomax al pais.
Between March 31, 1939 and June 14, 1939 John Avery Lomax and his wife Ruby Terrill Lomax recorded approximately 25 hours of folk music (from more than 300 performers) in their "Southern States Recording Trip" for the US Library of Congress. This is one of the original recordings of "Rock Island Line", which later became famous through singers like Kelly Pace, Leadbelly, and Lonnie Donegan.
http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/200210/15_bickalj_rockisland/artists.shtml
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/lohtml/lohome.html
http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9908/lomax.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Island_Line_%28song%29
Other recordings of this song:
Kelly Pace (1934 Lomax recording): http://youtu.be/0NTa7ps6sNU
Leadbelly: http://youtu.be/lCiJ4QQG9WQ
Lonnie Donegan: http://youtu.be/K_aIQ1_sAVg
Johnny Cash: http://youtu.be/FX1BPItDcDo
John Avery Lomax (September 23, 1867 – January 26, 1948) was an American teacher, a pioneering musicologist, and a folklorist who did much for the preservation of American folk music. He was the father of Shirley Mansell, John Avery Lomax, Jr., Alan Lomax, also a distinguished collector of folk music, and Bess Lomax Hawes.
Early life
The Lomax family originally came from England in the 19th century when William Lomax settled in a colony in North Carolina. John Lomax was born in Goodman in Holmes County in central Mississippi, to James Avery Lomax and the former Susan Frances Cooper. In December 1869, the Lomax family traveled by ox cart from Mississippi to Texas. John Lomax grew up in central Texas, just north of Meridian in ruralBosque County. His father raised horses and cattle and grew cotton and corn on the 183 acres (0.74km2) of bottomland that he had purchased near the Bosque River. The cowboy songs to which he was exposed during his childhood influenced Lomax in such a way that his future choice of career already seemed confirmed. About 1876, the nine-year-old Lomax met and became close friends with Nat Blythe, a former slave who had just been hired as a farmhand by James Lomax. The friendship, "which perhaps gave my life its bent," lasted three years, and was crucial to Lomax's early development. Lomax, whose own schooling was sporadic because of the heavy farmwork he was forced to do, taught Blythe to read and write, and Blythe taught Lomax songs including "Big Yam Potatoes on a Sandy Land" and dance steps such as "Juba". When Blyth was 21 years old, he took his savings and left. Lomax never saw him again and heard rumors that he had been murdered. For years afterward, he always looked for Nat when he traveled around the South.