ABSTRACT
The writings chosen for this section span the period 1949–1960. Between 1950 and 1958, Alan Lomax lived in London, where he continued his multifaceted career as writer, broadcaster, performer, producer, and ethnomusicologist. One of his central occupations was the creation of a world survey of folk music on a series of long–playing discs for Columbia Records. For this project he completed four separate field–recording expeditions—to Ireland, Scotland, Spain, and Italy—between 1951 and 1955. Throughout his stay in England, he also made numerous recordings on excursions around the country, or even in his own London flat. His collecting labors resulted in thousands of recorded song performances, as well as scores of photographs, which remain of great importance to contemporary ethnomusicology. These recordings provided the basis for several volumes in the Columbia World Library series, as well as for other labels and numerous BBC programs. He also published several books during this time reflecting his continuing study of American music. Mr. Jelly Roll, an oral history of Jelly Roll Morton now considered to be a landmark publication in jazz history, was published in 1949. Harriet and Her Harmonium, a children’s book about a young girl’s musical journey across the United States in the 1850s, appeared in 1955, and The Rainbow Sign, an oral history of the African–American folk singer Vera Ward Hall and the preacher Reverend Ribbins, in 1959. The large and wide–ranging songbook Folk Songs of North America, which drew extensively on the fieldwork of Alan and his father John, was completed in England and published in 1960.
