Book description
Writer, musicologist, archivist, singer, DJ, filmmaker, record, radio
and TV producer, Alan Lomax was a man of many parts. Without him the
history of popular music would have been very different.
Armed with a tape-recorder and his own near-flawless good taste,
Lomax spent years travelling the US, particularly the south, recording
its heritage of music and song for posterity, bringing to light the
talents of performers ranging from Jelly Roll Morton to Leadbelly and
Muddy Waters, and crucially influencing generations of musicians from
Pete Seeger to the Stones, from Woody Guthrie to Bob Dylan.
His influence continues: recordings made by Lomax are the core of
the sound-tracks of Oh Brother, Where art Thou? and Gangs of
New York, and even featured, remixed, on Moby's Play.
John Szwed's biography is the first ever of this remarkable and
contradictory man (whom he both knew and worked with for ten years);
through it Szwed will tell the story of a musical and political era,
as he did so successfully in his previous book on Miles Davis.
John Szwed is Professor of Music, African-American Studies and
Anthropology at Yale University. He is the author of the acclaimed
biographies
Space is the Place: The Life and Times of Sun Ra
and
So What: The Life of Miles Davis.
