Blues Quote: Alan Lomax

"The British ballads became a new kind of form in their hand. And out of them came the blues, a new kind of song of commentary and satire, a song form which, after all, has become the main musical form of the whole human species."

~ Alan Lomax

It's the Birthday of Alan Lomax

This is also the birth month of Alan Lomax;

Alan Lomax (January 15, 1915 – July 19, 2002) was an American folklorist and musicologist. He was one of the great field collectors of folk music of the 20th century, recording thousands of songs in the United States, Great Britain, Ireland, the West Indies, Italy, and Spain.

Every time I think of Mr. Lomax, I thank God for him. He is one of the most important men in the world of blues as far as I am concerned.

Alan Lomax: Blues Songbook


Alan Lomax @Amazon.com
Alan Lomax @Wikipedia
Alan Lomax @SqueezeMyLemon
Alan Lomax @YouTube

The Men Behind The Bluesmen: Alan Lomax

Alan Lomax was born on January 15, in 1915 and he passed away on July 19, in 2002. He was an American folklorist and musicologist who did a great deal to help popularize blues music.

He was one of the great and best known field collectors of folk music of the 20th century. He and his father John Lomax, recorded thousands of songs in the United States, Great Britain, Ireland, the West Indies, Italy, and Spain.

According to Wikipedia;

A pioneering oral historian, he also recorded substantial interviews with many legendary folk musicians, including Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Muddy Waters, Jelly Roll Morton, Irish singer Margaret Barry, Scots ballad singer Jeannie Robertson, and Harry Cox of Norfolk, England, among many others. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor he took his recording machine into the streets to capture the reactions of everyday citizens. While serving in the army in World War II he made numerous radio programs in connection with the war effort. The 1944 "ballad opera," The Martins and the Coys, broadcast in Britain (but not the USA) by the BBC, featuring Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, Will Geer, Sonny Terry, Pete Seeger, and Fiddlin' Arthur Smith, among others, was released on Rounder Records in 2000.

The article at Wikipedia on Alan Lomax is a must read.


DVDs by Alan Lomax @Amazon.com



Lomax the Songhunter ~ Alan Lomax (DVD - 2008)




American Patchwork: The Land Where the Blues Began ~ Jack Owens, Sam Chatmon, and Othar Turner (DVD - 1990)




American Patchwork- Jazz Parades ~ Alan Lomax (DVD - 2006)



Alan Lomax @SqueezeMyLemon

Blues Song In The Spot Light: Ain't No More Cane

I remember the first time I heard the prison work song Ain't No More Cane it was one of those moments when blues music caused me great sadness.

I don't normally associate blues music with sadness, but this song takes me there. It might have been Leadbelly's delevery, but I thought about all those men who died working on prison work gangs.

Over the years there have been a few more upbeat treatments of the song, and some have really made it rock. Check these out;

Ain't no more cane on the Brazos(1)

Oh, oh, oh, oh...

Its all been ground down to molasses

Oh, oh- oh, oh- oh...


You shoulda been on the river in 1910
They were driving the women just like they drove the men.

Go down Old Hannah,(2) don'cha rise no more
Don't you rise up til Judgment Day's for sure

Ain't no more cane on the Brazos
Its all been ground down to molasses

Captain(3), don't you do me like you done poor old Shine
Well ya drove that bully(4) til he went stone blind

Wake up on a lifetime(5), hold up your own head
Well you may get a pardon and then you might drop dead

Ain't no more cane on the Brazos
Its all been ground down to molasses.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] The Brazos is a river in Texas which features in many prison songs because it runs past virtually all of the old prisons in Texas.
[2] Old Hannah is the name given to sun.
[3] Captain is one of the ranks in the hierarchy of prison guards, the man in charge of half the workers in a field. Also used outside the prisons to mean the White boss. In some of the old slave songs the singers call Jesus their captain. I also think that this language carried over from the Civil War.
[4] Bully: an inmate working in the line. The word can also be used as a verb, in which case it means working hard.
[5] A Lifetime prison sentence.


Other Notable Versions

Ollabelle - YouTube Version two

Ain't No More Cane mp3 by Ollabelle




The Band - YouTube - The Basement Tapes (1975)

Ain't No More Cane mp3 by Bob Dylan & The Band




Lyle Lovett - YouTube Kansas City 2007

Ain't No More Cane mp3 by Lyle Lovett




Ain't No More Cane mp3 by Son Volt (Non Album Track)





Ain't No More Cane mp3 by Band Of Heathens






Ain't No More Cane mp3 by The Tex-I-An Boys

Very traditional version





Ain't No More Cane mp3 by Paul Austin Kelly






Ain't No More Cane mp3 by by Ernest Williams & James (Iron Head) Baker

Song by actual prison gang




Ain't No More Cane mp3 by Dennis Monroe

Triditional folk version





Ain't No More Cane mp3 by Alan Lomax

Traditional folk version





Ain't No More Cane mp3 by Harvey Reid

Traditional folk treatment






The Band - YouTube - Woodstock 69

Lonnie Donegan - YouTube (1958) Very sad version.

Eric Bibb - YouTube Wales in 2006

The Black Crowes - YouTube in Portland, ME

TheFolksinger - YouTube For Odetta

I Feel Like Going To Church: Santic - Trouble so hard

Vera Hall is sampled here in Santic's version of Troubled so Hard. I think this is another example of the influence of gospel blues music on other forms of music. Many who are not familiar with the orgins of modern forms of music do not understand the debt that is owed to those who came before.

As an example of this, you can find many covers of Troubled so Hard on YouTube, but almost none of them mention MS. Hall or her contribution.

I also wrote a post about Moby's sample of Ms. Hall here >>>I Feel Like Going To Church - Natural Blues

Notes from YouTube;

Vera Hall - Trouble So Hard

Vera Hall (1902-1964) - Born in 1902 in Payneville, Alabama, just outside of Livingston in Sumter County, Vera Hall grew up to establish one of the most stunning bodies of American folk music on record.

Hall married Nash Riddle, a coal miner, in 1917 and gave birth to their daughter, Minnie Ada. Riddle was killed in 1920. Though Hall sang her entire life, learning spirituals such as I Got the Home in the Rock and When Im Standing Wondering, Lord, Show Me the Way from her mother, Agnes, and her father, Efron Zully Hall, it was not until the late 1930s that Halls singing gained national exposure.

John Avery Lomax, ethnomusicologist, met Hall in the 1930s and recorded her for the Library of Congress. Lomax wrote that she had the loveliest voice [he] had ever recorded. The British Broadcasting System played Halls recording of Another Man Done Gone in 1943 as a sampling of American folk music. The Library of Congress played the song the same year in commemoration of the 75th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. In 1945, Hall recorded with Byron Arnold. In 1984, the recordings were released as a Collection of Folksongs entitled Cornbread Crumbled in Gravy.

In 1948, with the help of Alan Lomax, Hall traveled to New York and performed on May 15 at the American Music Festival at Columbia University. During the course of this trip, Lomax interviewed Hall on several occasions. In 1959, these interviews would be transformed into Rainbow Sign, a thinly- guised biography of Hall. In this book, Lomax stated, her singing is like a deep-voiced shepherds flute, mellow and pure in tone, yet always with hints of the lips and the pleasure-loving flesh... The sound comes from deep within her when she sings, from a source of gold and light, otherwise hidden, and falls directly upon your ear like sunlight. It is a liquid, full contralto, rich in low overtones; but it can leap directly into falsetto and play there as effortlessly as a bird in the wind.

Today, her work still garners attention. In 1999, techno-artist, Moby (Richard Melville Hall), included her voice and song Troubled So Hard in his multi-platinum album Play, thus introducing Halls voice to a whole new generation of listeners. Prized by scholars and folksong enthusiasts, Halls recordings include examples of early blues and folk songs that are found nowhere else. Her masterful renditions of traditional songs and stories are a defining part of Southern Black culture and the Black Belt region.

The below video is nice because it offers some pictures of Ms. Hall and allows you to put a face with the beautiful voice. I also like the raw nature of the sound, it reminds me of the hyms that my grandmother and great Aunts would hum and sing as they went about their business of life.

Vera Hall - trouble so hard


Spirituals

please click image

The above album is Alabama farm worker Dock Reed and his cousin Vera Hall Ward. Both were both recorded by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress. Dock, by all accounts, was a deeply religious man who never sang secular music, while Vera was known to perform a few of these "sinful" songs. Please click on the image and listen to the samples mp3s of this wonderful gospel blues album.

It's the Birthday of Alan Lomax

This is also the birth month of Alan Lomax;

Alan Lomax (January 15, 1915 – July 19, 2002) was an American folklorist and musicologist. He was one of the great field collectors of folk music of the 20th century, recording thousands of songs in the United States, Great Britain, Ireland, the West Indies, Italy, and Spain.

Every time I think of Mr. Lomax, I thank God for him. He is one of the most important men in the world of blues as far as I am concerned.

Alan Lomax: Blues Songbook


Alan Lomax @Amazon.com
Alan Lomax @Wikipedia
Alan Lomax @SqueezeMyLemon
Alan Lomax @YouTube

It's the Birthday of Alan Lomax

This is also the birth month of Alan Lomax;

Alan Lomax (January 15, 1915 – July 19, 2002) was an American folklorist and musicologist. He was one of the great field collectors of folk music of the 20th century, recording thousands of songs in the United States, Great Britain, Ireland, the West Indies, Italy, and Spain.

Every time I think of Mr. Lomax, I thank God for him. He is one of the most important men in the world of blues as far as I am concerned.

Alan Lomax: Blues Songbook


Alan Lomax @Amazon.com
Alan Lomax @Wikipedia
Alan Lomax @SqueezeMyLemon
Alan Lomax @YouTube