Alan Lomax: Popular Songbook [Original recording remastered]

Alan Lomax | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (August 26, 2003)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Original recording remastered
• Label: Rounder Select
• ASIN: B0000AUHRE
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #279,279 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

The late Alan Lomax, like his father John A. Lomax before him, was one of America’s most influential and tireless scholars and chroniclers of folk and ethnic music. Yet Lomax also enthusiastically embraced rock n’ roll as it became a powerful cultural force in the 1950s. He also had a life-long fascination with the evolution of music performances and how particular songs were adapted from one style or era to the next.

This intriguing 22-song collection was culled from the hundreds of grassroots recordings that Lomax, who died in 2002 at 87, collected from the early 1930s, onward. The common thread is that they have all found their way, in one form or another, into the lexicon of modern rock and pop music. Cuts like Leadbelly’s 1934 rendition of "Midnight Special," Woody Guthrie’s 1940 recording of an old slave lament called "Goin’ Down The Road Feelin’ Bad," the Cleveland Simmons Group’s 1935 version of "Sloop John B," the Duke of Iron’s 1946 calypso version of "Ugly Woman," and Georgia Turner’s 1937 "House Of The Rising Sun" offer vivid glimpses at how great songs evolve with changing times and changing tastes, as they are passed from one generation of musicians to the next. --Bob Allen

Customer Reviews

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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Secret Origins of Moby, January 12, 2005

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Larry D (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Alan Lomax: Popular Songbook (Audio CD)

I already had a passing knowledge of the work of Alan Lomax before I first heard Moby's "Play" album in 2001. But the strangely exhilerating sound of the sampled Lomax field recordings mixed with electronic dance beats, made me curious to find and hear the original recordings. And I've really been meaning to do that -- since 2001. Fortunately, Rounder has done some serious legwork for me: "Popular Songbook" includes three tracks used by Moby for "Play" ("Sometimes", "Joe Lee's Rock", and Trouble So Hard" were heavily sampled in Moby's "Honey", "Find My Baby" and "Natural Blues", respectively), and the 1959 original version of "Didn't Leave Nobody But the Baby", which was re-worked and performed in the "O Brother Where Art Thou" soundtrack. Plus a 1937 "Midnight Special" by Lead Belly, a truly rockin' 1947 "Stagolee" by Memphis Slim, and that's just for starters. I have read some rather condescending reviews of this collection from folk music academics, getting all sniffy at the notion of 21st Century radio airplay dictating the track choices for a folk music collection -- yeah, whatevah! For us middlebrow-type music lovers who've been meaning to check out this Alan Lomax guy but never quite gotten around to it, "Popular Songbook" is a good starter kit.