Lomax, Alan

Alan Lomax, (born January 15, 1915, Austin, Texas, U.S.—died July 19, 2002, Sarasota, Florida), American ethnomusicologist, one of the most dedicated and knowledgeable folk-music scholars of the 20th century.

After study at Harvard University, the University of Texas at Austin (B.A., 1936), and Columbia University, Lomax toured the prisons of the American Deep South with his father, John Lomax, also a noted student of folk song, recording folk-song performances for the Archive of American Song of the Library of Congress. During this tour they discovered the great blues singer Huddie Ledbetter (“Leadbelly”). Later, Lomax was responsible for introducing to American audiences other folk and blues artists, including Woody Guthrie, Muddy Waters, Josh White, and Burl Ives. In 1938 he made a series of recordings with the jazz pianist Jelly Roll Morton. From 1951 to 1958 he was in Europe, recording hundreds of folk songs in Great Britain, Italy, and Spain.

A profound folklorist who was also interested in the historical and social origins of jazz, Lomax wrote an outstanding biography of Jelly Roll Morton, Mr. Jelly Roll (1950). The Folk Songs of North America in the English Language was published in 1960. His work in cantometrics (the statistical analysis of singing styles correlated with anthropological data), which he developed with Victor Grauer, is the most comprehensive study of folk song as yet undertaken. Cantometrics: A Handbook and Training Method appeared in 1976. Lomax also wrote and directed the documentary The Land Where the Blues Began (1985). In 1997 the Alan Lomax Collection debuted on Rounder Records. The series featured more than 100 albums of music recorded by Lomax.