50 Years of 0044: JD Crowe & The New South’s Landmark Album

Writer Marty Godby called it “The convergence of 1975.”

The elements: a band that would only be together for 10 months, a benevolent venture capitalist who loved bluegrass, and an upstart record label from Boston. The resulting product was unprecedented and unforgettable: The New South, Rounder Records 0044. Bluegrass fans know it simply as “0044.”

The New South of this recording was J.D. Crowe on banjo; Tony Rice on guitar; Ricky Skaggs on mandolin; Bobby Slone on bass; and Jerry Douglas on Dobro. The impact of that configuration and the album were stunning. Yet, within a year of the recording, Rice would leave to become a founding member of the David Grisman Quintet. Skaggs and Douglas formed Boone Creek. Crowe and Slone continued performing together for years.

Rounder 0044 was influential enough to be preserved in the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry in 2024 and was awarded induction into the GRAMMY Hall of Fame this year. This month, Real Gone Music will re-release the album on vinyl, as will Craft Recordings later this year on compact disc.

Both the origin story and legacy of 0044 have inspired great narratives, probably more than any other bluegrass album. Bill Nowlin, one of the three founders of Rounder Records, wrote three articles for BGS on the album’s 40th anniversary. They offer a step-by-step look at what happened in 1974 and 75, plus hilarious and poignant anecdotes and quotes.

David Menconi dedicated a chapter of his excellent book, Oh, Didn’t They Ramble: Rounder Records and the Transformation of American Roots Music, to 0044. In 2016, radio host Daniel Mullins focused his college history capstone project on the album. Of course, it was 44 pages.

THE SHORT VERSION

 

J.D. Crowe, already revered for his banjo playing and baritone singing, led a band called The Kentucky Mountain Boys. From 1968, they had a six-nights-a-week gig at the Red Slipper Lounge in a Lexington, Kentucky Holiday Inn. Crowe added non-traditional bluegrass instruments and songs to the Holiday Inn repertoire. This was as much to please a diverse audience as it was to keep the musicians from getting bored. In 1971, Crowe changed the band’s name to The New South.

Of the name change, Rounder’s Marian Leighton Levy said, “It was obvious that this was a new kind of bluegrass.” From a broader view, “It was an era when the South was, in a way, trying to self-consciously reinvent itself as a new, modern place. And they [The New South] were kind of the musical representation of that wider political context.”

It was the ’70s, and change was brewing – even in the tightly controlled world of country music, Levy noted. Around the same time, Willie Nelson and his Outlaw Country compatriots were reaching out to new songwriters and moving away, physically and musically, from “the factory system of Nashville publishing companies.”

In 1974, lead singer Larry Rice left the New South and brother Tony took over singing lead. Ricky Skaggs’ pure tenor mixed with Rice’s unmistakable mid-range voice, creating a new, dynamic tension for their duets and trios. In the summer of that year, Crowe and the band toured without any product to sell. At the annual Gettysburg Blue Grass Festival, Crowe, his friend and manager, venture capitalist Hugh Sturgill, and the young founders of Rounder Records initiated “The Great Convergence” – an agreement for a studio recording. An innovative contract led to the first New South album.

THE BLUEGRASS WORLD EXPLODED

 

As soon as they heard the test pressing, the Rounder founders knew they had something remarkable on their hands. “Jack Tottle [who, along with John Hartford, wrote liner notes for the album] was stunned, and he kept saying, ‘This is one of the most amazing records ever made.’ And he was not given to exaggerating,” Levy said.

“It was clear. It was crisp … and the more you played it, the more you wanted to hear it.”

0044 came out in the spring of 1975. Levy said by festival season, other bands were playing the tunes from the record “pretty much note for note.” One observer said that at one festival, almost every band on stage played “Old Home Place.”

So, what is it about that record? Let’s start with the musicians. Skip Heller, who initiated the 0044 Real Gone Music reissue, said everyone in that group of players “would talk about it like it was high school prom and their first love … they had all been in good bands before, but this was the first time they had been in a band that was as great as anything in bluegrass music had ever been.”

Levy said, “They absolutely knocked each other out. … And I think that long before anybody heard the record, they knew the band would stand the test of time – because of all of them, not just one person.”

The record’s title was The New South. Only after the first printing sold out, three band members had moved on, and it was time to redo the cover (read about the cover photo – a great story in itself), was it retitled J.D. Crowe & the New South. Crowe, born in 1937, was the venerated elder and a banjo icon. After entering Jimmy Martin’s boot-camp-of-a-band at age 18, he developed impeccable timing, his own take on Scruggs-style banjo, and excellence as a baritone singer. And he knew how to pick his band members.

The influences of Tony Rice (age 24 at the time) on bluegrass and related music are limitless – from cementing the role of guitar as a lead bluegrass instrument, to modeling impeccable rhythm playing and singing, to excelling in so many genres outside the bluegrass boundaries. At 21, Skaggs had the instrumental chops, a stunning voice and the instincts to become successful in both country and bluegrass. Rounder’s Ken Irwin attributes much of 0044’s innovation to Skaggs, including bringing a teenaged Douglas into the mix.

Douglas is to Dobro what Rice is to lead guitar. Fifty years later, after 14 GRAMMY awards and countless other honors, he continues to inspire and encourage musicality and creativity in Dobro playing. Touring with Alison Krauss since 1998, it’s likely that he has been heard live by more people than any other resophonic guitar player. Of the veteran, Bobby Slone, Mullins said, “Everyone in the band wanted to make sure that Bobby got a lot of credit. … He was such a rock solid force on that band, not just on bass, but as far as camaraderie was concerned.”

By the time The New South entered the studio, Crowe, Slone, and Rice, later joined by Skaggs, had spent hundreds of hours performing together at the Holiday Inn. Individually, they were superb musicians. Together, they were as tight as a band could be.

THE SONGS

 

Long before 0044, Crowe had blasted out from under bluegrass constraints, incorporating songs like Fats Domino’s “I’m Walkin,” and at Larry Rice’s suggestion, The Flying Burrito Brothers’ “Sin City.” The songs on 0044 were just a small set of a huge repertoire. While the unconventional musical choices sparked controversy among traditionalists, they also sparked a flame of excitement that spread quickly and widely.

In 1975, Mullins said, Ralph Stanley & the Clinch Mountain Boys, Jimmy Martin, and Bill Monroe were still “killing it” at festivals with their first generation bluegrass sound. “On the other end of the spectrum, Seldom Scene recorded Live at the Cellar Door,” an immensely popular recording, that year. Like the Country Gentlemen, the Scene had been recording songs totally out of the bluegrass box, using bluegrass instrumentation, but with an emphasis on rich melodies and harmonies, rather than just the drive of traditional bluegrass.

Mullins said, “You go to Crowe, who’s got the street cred from all his records with Martin, but he’s also looking ahead, and so he’s able to get it all in there. A lot of bands were playing to one side or the other … but to have one that hit right in the middle, right at that time, was unreal.”

“When they saw J.D. Crowe’s name up front, and they knew that he had played banjo with Jimmy Martin on all those records they had loved for 20 years, it probably made some of those hard-edged fans pay more attention,” he said.

Whatever the dynamics of the time, The New South became synonymous with great bluegrass. And 0044 made Ian Tyson’s songs forever acceptable in bluegrass jams.

ON AND ON

 

Kristin Scott Benson, six-time IBMA Banjo Player of the Year, was born the year after 0044 came out. Benson said she was about nine the first time she saw J.D. Crowe. He was playing with the Bluegrass Album Band, “and that was a formative experience. That band was so explosive, and the crowd had an air of chaos, because everybody was so excited to hear the band. Every time Tony Rice ended a solo, you couldn’t hear any music.” (Because of the crowd noise.)

It would be four years until she picked up the banjo, and two more years until she learned about The New South album – and what it meant to a banjo player.

On 0044, she says, “If you just talk quintessential banjo solos, you’ve got ‘I’m Walkin’ and ‘You Are What I Am.’ His tone is aggressive. It’s just such confident, groovy, greasy, pristine banjo. It’s impossible to overstate how good it is and how influential it is.”

“But I think you should listen to his contributions on the less banjo-friendly songs [‘Home Sweet Home Revisited,’ ’10 Degrees’], because Crowe was great at that. He was a magical backup player.”

Billy Failing, who currently plays banjo with Billy Strings, agrees. Failing started out his banjo life drawn to more progressive players like Béla Fleck. But, he said, “As time goes on, the more I circle back to J.D. Crowe. I think of how much of a gold standard he is for bluegrass banjo, and how interesting his playing is.”

“He’s considered a traditional player,” Failing continued, “but then I’m always hearing some lick that surprises me. It’s been a gradual thing, but it becomes more meaningful as time goes on. I was just listening to The New South album, and on ‘Cryin’ Holy’ – it’s just so slamming! He’s turned it up to 11 constantly on that one.” And, like Benson, he points out what he calls Crowe’s “intricate touch” on banjo.

“It’s such a cool kind of push and pull between whether he’s out front or whether he’s playing backup … it catches your attention in such a cool way.”

Benson said, “It’s easy just to be drawn to those obvious picks [like ‘Old Home Place’] but the album is so much deeper than that. This particular band presented a tightness and a level of execution that was new – I don’t think there had been a bluegrass record up until that point that was so well done.”

“The vocals, the arrangements are so well thought out. Everybody’s playing so well together. It was just a special moment and a special group of people, and I think it raised the bar for bluegrass albums,” she said, and made an imprint on so many contemporary musicians.

Benson poses the question, “Who’s the most influential modern bluegrass guy? It would have to be Tony Rice, because he affected the genre with his rhythm guitar playing, which is phenomenal. And that type of rhythm playing affects the entire groove of the band. It became the new standard, what most people go for.”

“Never discount the importance of his rhythm,” she continued, “and then obviously his lead playing, but also his singing and his material choice … so if someone pinned me down and I could only name one, he might be the guy.”

Failing, speaking of his bandmates, said, “Everybody’s inspired by The New South. I hear Billy [Strings] constantly talking about his inspiration by Tony Rice, and Jarrod [Walker] by Ricky Skaggs.” (Walker wrote liner notes for the Real Gone Music re-release.)

Mullins noted that the Rice/Skaggs blend – a lead singer with a baritone-range voice coupled with a high tenor – established a hair-tingling blend that continues to be emulated, from Ronnie Bowman and Don Rigsby in Lonesome River Band through Alison Krauss’ duets with Dan Tyminski and Russell Moore.

Benson said, “It’s an important record for the genre as a whole, and it’s also an important record to me, personally, and really, to any banjo player who is serious about learning. It’s one of those essential albums.”

UNANSWERED QUESTIONS

 

First, how did it come to be widely known as 0044? Well, nobody’s sure. Irwin and Levy remember being in the very early stages of their operations at the time – with both a new label and a new distribution company. All three Rounders had been totally immersed in music, but they were learning the business as they went, developing it on their own terms.

Levy speculated, “It is possible that it went back to when we were just calling records by their numbers,” when there just weren’t that many products. “So, it may have been something we started when we were talking, and other people picked up on it, not intentionally. And we thought it was sort of humorous.”

And how did members of Emmylou Harris’ Angel Band get left off the credits, as well as the fact that J.D. played guitar on it? John Lawless goes into depth in his fascinating Bluegrass Today article.

HAPPY 50TH BIRTHDAY

 

As the liner notes to the Real Gone Music re-release say, “Virtually no other album anywhere in history is known to its audience by its label number. Not Kind of Blue, nor Pet Sounds, Glenn Gould’s Goldberg Variations, none.”

That says quite a bit about the recording’s importance. So does the fact that two labels are issuing re-releases this year.

The Real Gone Music edition is pressed on gold-colored vinyl for its golden anniversary. Both re-releases contain two cuts not included on the original product: “Why Don’t You Tell Me So?” and a version of “Cryin Holy” with Emmylou’s voice in the mix.

Failing sums up what 0044, J.D. Crowe, and the musicians he surrounded himself with mean to him and to many of the pickers making the best music today.

“Every time I circle back to the Bluegrass Album Band, The New South, and J.D. Crowe, I’m reminded, ‘that’s how it’s done!’”


Photo Credit: Phil Zimmerman

Wear your love for 0044! Shop our exclusive RR 0044 tee on the BGS Mercantile here

BGS 5+5: The Down Hill Strugglers

Artist: The Down Hill Strugglers
Hometown: Brooklyn, New York
Latest Album: Old Juniper
Personal Nicknames (or rejected band names): We are sometimes mistakenly called the Down Home Stragglers.

Editor’s Note: Answers have been provided by band member Eli Smith.

What’s your favorite memory from being on stage?

Lots of great memories there. Being on stage at the Jalopy Theatre, the Brooklyn Folk Festival, or Washington Square Park Folk Festival with Walker, Jackson, and our dear bandmate, now gone, John Cohen would probably be my favorites.

It was also wonderful to play at the Library of Congress, in that hallowed hall. And the Oldtone Music Festival is an important one for us.

What’s the most difficult creative transformation you’ve ever undertaken?

It’s been interesting running the Brooklyn Folk Festival all these years, and now running the Jalopy Theatre’s record label, Jalopy Records, while also maintaining a musical life with the Down Hill Strugglers and solo, under my own name. Many musicians are also producers, as I am. It can be a challenge to switch back and forth between those mindsets, but it is satisfying to see both types of work progress. Finally, it’s all about sharing good music, however you can.

Genre is dead – long live genre! – but how would you describe the genres and styles your music inhabits?

We are working in the field of traditional music from the United States, with an ear also turned to traditional music from all over the world. One song I wrote, that’s on our new album, was inspired by a 78rpm record from Central Asia re-issued on the Secret Museum of Mankind series. It had a sound that stuck in my head and made sense to me. We changed it around until it became our own song in our own style. That seems natural.

The Down Hill Strugglers is an old-time string band. However, old-time music is a catch all for historic American folk music. It encompasses fiddle music, banjo tunes, guitar picking, songs & ballads, blues, religious music, work songs, and more; diverse music ministering to different parts of life.

What is a genre, album, artist, musician, or song that you adore that would surprise people?

Longmont Potion Castle has remained popular with the Down Hill Strugglers, driving around on tour, for years. That’s some funny stuff…

If you didn’t work in music, what would you do instead?

I might drive a cab, or something like that. I’d have great music playing in the cab and deck the vehicle out my own way. It’d be nice. Also, I’d do more organizing work as a leftwing activist. And I used to be a clerk in record stores. The best job I had was at the Arhoolie store, Down Home Music, in El Cerrito, California.


Photo Credit: Fernando Armenghol

Natalie Merchant Captures the Ephemera of Love on ‘Keep Your Courage’

(Editor’s Note: Concert photos by David Iskra.)

From the moment Natalie Merchant gained fame as the lead singer and lyricist for 10,000 Maniacs, it was clear she was no conventional pop star — in fact, during her dozen years with that band and subsequent decades as a solo artist, she has resolutely avoided the entire notion of stardom. Merchant has instead simply followed her muse, whether it has inspired her to create music, step up as a political activist, work with underprivileged children as a Head Start volunteer, or devote herself to raising her daughter, Lucia, now 20. 

Since her multiplatinum solo debut, Tigerlily, came out in 1995, Merchant has released music sparingly; her new album, Keep Your Courage, is her first collection of new material in nine years. Though she has a reputation for writing songs more focused on external issues than her own heart, on this self-produced effort she takes a deep dive into the subject of love, surveying it from multiple angles via thoughtful, engaging lyrics sung in her deftly nuanced, yet strongly sure voice. Weaving rich — yet never overdone — orchestrations around gospel-soul grooves, bits of Bourbon Street, catchy pop and sometimes Celtic-influenced balladry, Merchant crafts a sound imbued with both elegance and earthiness. 

During a long, sometimes quite amusing, dialogue stimulated by her enormous intellectual curiosity and vast range of interests, it becomes clear that “elegant, yet earthy” might describe the woman as well as her art. Surprising tidbits she shared include the fact that she’s named after the late actor Natalie Wood and that she appreciated learning square-dancing in grade school. (“It was so inclusive; everybody got a chance to be someone’s partner.”) She also divulged a penchant for graphically describing the eating habits of avian predators hunting the acres surrounding her home in New York’s Hudson Valley, and confessed that, as a TV-deprived kid seeking thrills in the small upstate-New York enclave of Jamestown, she indulged in all sorts of reckless activity — including hiding near stop signs on icy roads, then leaping out to grab car bumpers and be dragged as far as possible. (“I think it gave us all character,” she says of weathering those risks, though she admits with a laugh, “If I saw my daughter doing that, I would say, ‘Look at yourself. What are you thinking?’”)

BGS: I’m so charmed by this album; the orchestrations are just beautiful. But I want to start with the Joan of Arc image on the cover; you refer to having kept it in your ephemera collection. I love the phrase, and the concept. Can you tell me more about that?

NM: Oh, my ephemera collection — I think I was 14, 13 when I started collecting junk. It’s very well organized. I’m going upstairs to look at it so I can tell you. There is an entire cabinet of glass-plate negatives; tintypes, daguerreotypes … 10 boxes of postcards, catalogs, Victorian parlor photos. I collect real-photo postcards, from the turn of the century to the 1930s; you would have your photographs made into a postcard. … Mentor (magazine) folios, advertiser cards — which I love — studio portraits, childhood images, “Museum of Mankind” — for some reason, I named that box — ethnic costumes, flowers and insects, large photographs, children’s book research, sketches … I started collecting it because I lived in a small town where there wasn’t that much to do. I basically wanted to create my own little museum in a box, so I did. [Laughs] When 10,000 Maniacs started making records and having to make posters and all that, I was responsible for doing a lot of the design work, and I would use my ephemera collection.

That leads to the Library of Congress’ American Folklife Center and your appointment to the Board of Trustees. I understand that you’re passionate about making the archives more accessible for research and education. Can you tell me a bit about how you regard those archives and what you’d like to see happen with them?

Well, my appointment happened at the end of November and had to be passed by Congress, so I didn’t get official word that I could be in the building with credentials until Christmas. I went down in early January just to meet the staff and have a tour, then went back a few weeks later because I was so excited. It’s awe-inspiring. They have millions of articles and artifacts, and it’s not just folk music. For instance, they’re in charge of the AIDS Memorial Quilt and all the objects that were donated with the quilt.

When I first heard of the appointment, all I thought [was] it was the Lomaxes, because that’s what I’m familiar with. I did a little research of my own when I was down there last time, just to see how the archive works, and just to be holding the field notes of John Lomax and see the equipment that they recorded with, and they had a card catalog – I love card catalogs! The quote from one of the people on the staff was, “We’re not just about banjos and quilts.”

Your song “Sister Tilly” is an accounting of a time in history and women who created it; that’s folklife. 

I found a website that had all sorts of feminist posters from the 1970s of International Women’s Day rallies and things like that. That’s folklife — it certainly is.

And your little museum in a box; man, you were destined for this. 

If I hadn’t been a musician, I would have been a librarian or teacher, or a historian. 

Your bio contains the statement, “For the most part, this is an album about the human heart,” and you reference both Aphrodite and Narcissus, two ends of the spectrum. You’re beckoning the goddess of love on one hand and singing about the ultimate rejection on the other. Care to elaborate about those choices?

Well, the album’s about love in so many different forms, whether it’s platonic or romantic, or love for a family member. Or in the case of “Sister Tilly,” it’s expressing love and gratitude toward an entire generation of women — my mother’s generation, who transformed our society; women who came of age in the mid- to late ‘60s and up to the mid ‘70s. I really consider those women responsible for making the society that we took for granted.

And in the romantic love column, there’s the ecstasy of falling in love or wanting to fall in love, or invoking the goddess to bring love into my life. And then, in “Big Girls,” I say love can be deceiving and harmful, but [it’s] also encouraging people who’ve been injured in love, both in “Big Girls” and “The Feast of Saint Valentine,” to persevere, to keep their courage, to keep moving forward. The worst thing that can happen is your feelings get hurt. And the best thing that can happen is that even if you’re injured in love, there’s opportunities to grow. I think most of us will admit the most difficult things we faced in our lives were the experiences that made us grow the most.

Let’s talk about another literary figure in your life, Walt Whitman (the subject of “Song of Himself”). When did you fall in love with him?

Uncle Walt. Maybe 20 years ago. I wanted to write about Walt Whitman because I found a lot of solace in his poetry during the recent times of unrest in our country. He had such an expansive, radical love. All inclusive. In a time when people were really limiting the people who were worthy of loving. And he believed in equality — for women, Native Americans, enslaved people, just everyone. And when he went to Washington — he spent three years in Washington — he originally went because his brother was in a hospital in Washington, but he ended up staying. He got a job working as a clerk, and every day, he would go after work and spend time with the soldiers. He didn’t discriminate between Confederate or Union soldiers. They were just injured young men, or dying young men, oftentimes. He would write letters home for them, as they were dying and after they died, to tell their parents what fine, fine men they were. 

He saw the humanity, not the side of the argument they were on.

Yeah. And when you’re sitting at the bedside of a 15-year-old farm boy from rural Alabama, I don’t think he understood why he was fighting anyway, other than it got to a point where you were fighting to defend your own family. I don’t think there was a lot of ideology involved in the farm boys from villages all over the North and South.

The funny thing is, Walt Whitman being a great American literary figure, our greatest poet, I wanted [the song] to sound very American. But I tried putting fiddle on it three times, I tried putting banjo on it, and it just wanted to be a song about guitar and piano. I just couldn’t fit those other instruments in. Then it occurred to me that Walt was more of a sitting-in-the-parlor-with-the-parlor-piano [type], and he also loved opera; he went to the opera all time, so I thought, this is probably more representative of him anyway.

How does “Hunting the Wren” fit in?

To me, “Hunting the Wren” is loveless love. That was written by an Irishman named Ian Lynch, who’s in a band called Lankum. I thought it was a traditional song, but when I found out that he had written it, I found an interview with him. The wren is just a metaphor for these outcast women who “flock ’round the soldiers in their jackets so red for barrack room favors, pennies and bread,” and I wanted to know the story behind this brutally simple description of prostitution, the redcoats — obviously, the British — and barracks. What I found out from his interview, it was about a group of women who lived in the most abject poverty and privation you can imagine. The local authorities wouldn’t even let them construct shelters. They lived on the outside of these British barracks, on an open plain called the Curragh, and they would dig holes in the ground and cover them with rags and sticks, to live in. They would go into the village to get food and they would be spat on and beaten. Most of these women had lost their families in the famine. Some were common-law wives of the soldiers, but they weren’t allowed to live in the barracks, and some were prostitutes. The act of sex can be called lovemaking, but if it’s bought and sold, then there’s the loveless love. 

So this is an actual story. 

This is Irish history. There’s an amazing account that was written by Charles Dickens. The thing that Dickens points out is they had this mutual protection for each other. Some of the women were old, just homeless women; they had different generations. The older women would take care of the children while the other women went to get food or make money in any way they could. They lived like this, I think, 50 years. It was that or the workhouse, and in the workhouse, there was a good chance you would die of disease or be raped or destroyed by working. It was forced labor. It’s pretty grim, but I really was moved by the song and I wanted to include it. And it wasn’t like I was setting out to write a song cycle about the human heart. But when I was writing the liner notes, that’s when it occurred to me that I had written these songs that had some very close connections, and then some very distant connections, but they were there, and it fit in.


Photo Credit: David Iskra

Cool Shit from the Library of Congress

In the past, we've taken you through Alan Lomax's online archives. Now, we'd like to take you on a digital journey through the vast collections available to the public through the Library of Congress's online collections. You could spend weeks going through all the site has to offer, but we've culled a few of our favorite roots-related items for your perusal. 

Dolly Parton and the Roots of Country Music: A Timeline

The Queen of Country Music, Dolly Parton's influence on the genre is endless. Take a look at major points in Parton's career — like in 1953, when she crafted her own guitar out of used instrument parts — from her birth through the mid-2000s. Check out other Parton features, like this look at the musician's relationship to copyright.

Quilts and Quiltmaking in America, 1978-1996

Quiltmaking is a major American art form, one that especially took hold in the Appalachian region. The Blue Ridge Parkway Folklife project documented major strides in quiltmaking in the late 20th century, a revival in the art in the Virginia and North Carolina regions.

The Amazing Grace Collection

Perhaps one of the best known songs of all time, "Amazing Grace" has been recorded by countless artists, from Johnny Cash to Elvis Presley. This collection highlights some of the most important versions of that historic song.

California Gold: Northern California Folk Music from the Thirties

This set houses 35 hours of folk music from the Northern California movement of the 1930s, and showcases a wide range of languages, ethnic groups, and musicians.

Letter from Alan Lomax to Pearl R. Nye

We'd be remiss if we didn't include one item from Lomax, and this letter to Captain Pearl R. Nye shows both Lomax's kindness and his genuine interest in broadening his collections.

A Trip Through Alan Lomax’s Online Archives

Alan Lomax was one of the world's foremost historians of American folk music in the 20th century. Son of folklorist John Lomax, he spent his life collecting field recordings, researching folklore in various cultures, producing concerts and events, and promoting the idea of cultural equity within the folklore community. In 2004, all of Lomax's archives were acquired by the Library of Congress. The massive archives include 6,400 sound recordings, 5,500 still images, and 6,000 moving images, as well as 25,000 pages from Lomax's office files. His work spans multiple continents and decades, and is one of the most comprehensive resources for folk culture available. 

With that level of research available to the public, many historians and hobbyists have put together their own Lomax-centric projects, including Joshua Clegg Caffery's John and Alan Lomax in Louisiana, 1934 — an in-depth journey into the father/son duo's studies of lower Louisiana housed at Lomax1934.com.

There are also the Library of Congress Alan Lomax Collection, which is available online for free; the Alan Lomax YouTube archives; and the Association for Cultural Equity's archives of Lomax's sound recordings to dig into. Not sure where to start? We've picked out some highlights to help you get started on your journey through the archives. 

Lead Belly Memorial Concert Poster, 1950

Sheet Music from the Carribean Folk Song Project, 1965

Performers in Louisiana, 1934, via Lomax1934.com

Transcript, Woody Guthrie CBS Performance, 1940-41

Belton Sutherland, Blues #1

1982 Holly Springs Sacred Harp Convention


Photos coutesy of The U.S. Library of Congress