alan lomax recorded a lot of touching music

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anyone knows him?

I am somewhat aware that he was archiving folk music and traveled around the country with a portable recorder

[Moved from Random Discussion to Art, Writing, and Music]

Yes,he recorded lots of "blues and hollers"from the South,the library of Congress used to have a good collection to sell.

he preserved the music of the past for future generations to study. there is a lot of sociological information laid down in all those grooves.

I'll admit, I'm most familiar with his archival work from owning a copy of Moby's album Play. Moby sampled several of Lomax's recordings on that album, arguably the best known example being a 1937 recording called "Trouble So Hard" by Vera Hall, which Moby remixed into the song "Natural Blues". I've heard the original recording as well as Moby's version, and I have to say, although I like the Moby song, the original has a directness and earnestness that really struck me. Perhaps it's because there was no instrumentation save for Ms. Hall's voice.

some of lomax's material is a sort of living window into the people/society of the 1800s. when it is reprocessed/transcribed via the smithsonian institution's new IRENE [Image Reconstruct Enhance Noise Elimination] optical transcription technique, the material really comes alive.