Customer Reviews

The Alan Lomax Collection Sampler

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If you've never heard of Alan Lomax, this CD is a great place to start, with bits and pieces of several collections of his field recordings. It touches down in Spain, Italy, the British Isles, the Carribbean, the deep South, the Appalachians, and a few other places, too. But keep in mind that it is a *sampler* album. Many of the tracks are faded out well before the end of the song in order to fit so much onto one CD. Think of it as a catalog: if you hear something you like, you figure out which of the other CDs it's from and go buy it so you can hear the rest. It's fun to listen to by itself, too.

If you are trying to get started learning about roots music (also known as "real" music), please buy this CD and support a great record label (Rounder Records). The tracks are all remarkable in their own way. If you have any interest in folk or indigenous music, this recording (and all the rest of Lomax' collections) is essential.

This sampler is a wonderful gift for anyone who has an appreciation for the roots of American music. This is a great introduction to the Alan Lomax Collection. Alan Lomax was a musicologist who recorded and collected indigenous music from regions all over the United States.I have several other c.d.s from the collection and they are all wonderful.

There are at least two types of "world music" available to the interested CD buyer: the kind that is akin to "new age" listening, for those who are into metaphysics and meditation and multi-cultural (but mostly instrumental) music, and the kind represented on this CD...recordings of "authentic" singers from around the world, made on location and not in studios. Alan Lomax, following the trail blazed by his dad, John Lomax, in the first third of the 20th century, spent his life collecting, issuing and writing about his kind of world folk song. He did a lot of southern and mountain recording right here in the USA as well. In the 1990's Rounder Records, a label that all music fans should take pride in, reissued the Lomax collections on CD, and this sampler offers 38 tracks of varying interest. The hope was that if you heard something on here you really liked, you would buy the CD it came from. I first became aware of Mr. Lomax in the late '50's when I was in my mid-teens, and had discovered folk music via The Kingston Trio, Woody Guthrie, Cisco Houston, Paul Robeson, The Weavers, Logan English, Pete Seeger, Jean Ritchie and others on LP's of the day. I learned that he worked collecting folk songs for the Library of Congress in the '30's and until 1942, and first brought Woody Guthrie to the attention of the left-wing East Coast elite. He sang a little, and picked guitar a little, but mostly he produced recordings and radio shows and later some film and TV shorts on his favorite subject. I thought "Wow...what a neat job." I loved the music, but had no talent, so I was looking for a way to be involved. I never did find a way to be anything but an audience member and sporadic album and concert reviewer, and I never did buy any of the Lomax field recordings, but I'm still a folk fan, 50 years down the highway of life. On this sampler, I liked all of the 14 tracks sung in English, and hardly any of the selections not in my native language. There are good songs and performances here from the USA, Scotland, England and Ireland, and I'll bet the CD's they come from have even more worthy tunes. If Alan Lomax's kind of "world music" interests you, this CD is worth finding. Rounder Records, as a whole, is worth supporting. The label has many contempory singer/songwriters on its roster--it is not just an historical archive. But I am glad they have saved Mr. Lomax's life work for this generation. PS: The booklet for this CD is wonderful. It's a mini-education in folk song preservation through the decades, quite detailed yet in a font large enough for 66-year-old eyes to read. It considerably enhances the listening product.

After ordering General's Daughter (love the CD) this title was listed as one that I my like. I knew that the songs would not have the heavy mix as those in General's Daughter. These songs are "FIELD" recordings. Again I blame myself for not researching a little deeper.