Alan Lomax traveled the country for decades recording blues, gospel, folk, zydeco, jazz, country, bluegrass, and more.
Read Write Web says he “was almost single-handedly responsible for how we think about Americana and world music both.”
Now, thousands of hours of his audio recordings, plus photos, video, and manuscripts will be released for free from the Association for Cultural Equity.
In 1941 Lomax went way back in the rural south to record a then-unknown blues musician. It was a hot day. Lomax asked for a glass of water and drank out of the same glass the musician did.
Muddy Waters later said, I decided then this was a white man I could trust.