alan lomax

In a new series of posts looking at Folk and Traditional Music over the ages, we head back to 1951 for The first Edinburgh People’s Festival Ceilidh – the big bang of the Scottish folk revival; presided over by Hamish Henderson and recorded by Alan Lomax.

From the makers of The Ballad of Shirley Collins, Southern Journey (Revisited) retraces Alan Lomax’s iconic song collecting trip from the late 1950s – A muso-geographic road trip through the American South by two outsiders…

This year marks the 50th Anniversary of Bob Dylan’s controversial performance at Newport Folk Festival when he went electric. We look back at the event and what really happened. Plus we have some great video to share and we look at a similar myth surrounding Muddy Waters 1958 UK performance which also apparently shocked many.

The latest offering to come from Dust to Digital is a goldmine: Folksongs of Another America: Field Recordings from the Upper Midwest, 1937–1946. A groundbreaking documentary project — 5 CDs of newly-restored, rare music; a new documentary film on DVD; and a richly-annotated book to go with them.

More new releases from the Aladdin’s Cave of musical wonders known as Dust-to-Digital including newly re-mastered Alan Lomax recordings from Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman.

Step back in time to 1950’s to The Ship Inn, in the village of Blaxhall, Suffolk. Alan Lomax and Peter Kennedy are there with their recording equipment as Cyril Poacher prepares to entertain.

The first stereo recordings of the Fiery choral sounds of Sacred Harp singing! Recorded by Alan Lomax at Corinth Baptist Church in 1959 get released on vinyl.

Cold Specks is the moniker of the young female Canadian singer Al Spx, despite having an incredibly unique and soulful voice that has been compared to Mahalia Jackson and Sister Rosetta Tharpeshe she didn’t get the hype in Toronto that she’s now getting in the UK. It wasn’t until she moved to London about a year and a half ago to record her debut album I Predict A Graceful Expulsion …

★★★★★ I’m Gonna Live Anyhow Until I Die is the fifth installment from Global Jukebox, an independent label from the Alan Lomax Archive. No music collection should be without it!

A noted highlight of the annual MusicNow festival weekend was a collaboration between Megafaun, Fight The Big Bull, Bon Iver and Sharon Van Etten called Sound Of The South, re-imaginings of the songs recorded by ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax in his early travels.

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 …