The Living Lomax Archive
“Whatever you're meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.” ― Doris Lessing
Big news: Lomax Archive went live yesterday morning, a record label dedicated to releasing the music recorded primarily by Alan Lomax and his father John. I am honored to have worked with Anna Lomax Wood, her son Odysseus Chairetakis, Reed Watson and Robert Meitus to create the label, as well as to help curate the releases going forward. We are launching the label with four digital releases, celebrating the great blues and spiritual recordings Alan Lomax recorded as well as his recordings in Haiti and his recordings with the Georgia Sea Island Singers. You can hear them all here (just click these words).
For those unaware of the work of the Lomax family, between the 1920s and the 1960s (to the present, really), they traversed the US, as well as various countries overseas, establishing the fine art of field recording. They would go into communities and preserve the cultural legacies with state-of-the-art (at the time) recording equipment they had in the back of their car. These recordings are treasures, celebrating artistry and artists, recordings that continue to help define and tell the story of the places they were made; history coming to life through sound. Their most famous stateside recordings are probably their blues and gospel recordings. They recorded legends…many of them for the first time…like Lead Belly, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Blind Willie McTell, Bessie Jones, Vera Hall, Sid Hemphill and on and on and on. John and Alan left a legacy of thousands of incredible recordings, music that would have been lost in time if it were not for their journeying to the communities of which they traveled and pressing the RECORD button once they got there.
The purpose of Lomax Archive is to get these recordings out into the world, using this vast catalog to curate records focusing on specific artists or specific themes. We are starting with digital releases…..moving to vinyl releases and box sets within the year (we are working on a box set of the complete, newly remastered Mississippi Fred McDowell recordings, for example). We will be releasing blues recordings from the 1930s that have been sorely buried in the dusty annals of tape archives, while we will also be focusing on more well-known, beloved sounds. We will be releasing music from The Bahamas, Ireland, Italy and Scotland. It is rather overwhelming what is in the archive, but thanks to the continuing work by Anna, who at 80 years of age is leading this effort with her lifetime of knowledge, along with the years of oversight from past archive curator Nathan Salsburg and others, we have a roadmap.
Most music enthusiasts I know grew up listening to the recordings of Alan Lomax. The Southern Folk Heritage Series released by Atlantic Records in the 1960s, featuring his recordings, were pivotal to introducing the world to the work. Alan, along with filmmaker John Bishop and Worth Long, directed the The Land Where the Blues Began in 1979, which was the first time audiences were able to see performances by blues players like RL Burnside, Otha Turner, Sam Chatmon, before the Internet made it so much easier. After Alan did a deal with Rounder Records in the ‘90s, dozens of CDs were released over a decade that further explored the musicians and their music behind the recordings. It was from that Rounder series that I dug in deeply to this massive body of work. Lomax Archive stands on the shoulders of all the great released work that has come before, reissuing much of it, with an ambition to dig even deeper into the thousands of recordings that make up the collection.
I met Anna Lomax Wood in 2007, introduced to me by her lawyer and my dear friend Jeff Greenberg (miss you, Jeff). Anna gave up her life as a teacher when her father became ill, shortly after the Rounder Records deal in the mid-90s. She was responsible for curating the Rounder releases since her father was not able to, and when I met with her, she was readying to begin working on the recordings Alan produced in Haiti in 1935 and 1936 when he was just 19 years old. After just one meeting Anna, Jeff and I agreed to create a boxset of Alan’s Haitian recordings which became Alan Lomax In Haiti, brilliantly designed by my wife Barbara, beautifully sound restored and remastered by Steve Rosenthal…with epic notes by Gage Averill. It was nominated for a Grammy for best historical album as well as for best album notes. Ever since the Haiti project, Anna and I have kept in touch, hatching an idea for a label a little over a year ago. To mark the 90th anniversary of the Haiti recordings, Lomax Archive will issue a digital version of the box set sometime in 2026, which will include PDFs of the book containing Avril’s notes and translations of the songs as well as Alan’s personal notebook and the videos he took while on the island. The compilation released yesterday is just a taste of the meal to come.
We have an ambitious upcoming release schedule, looking to produce 20 digital records this first year, and 3-4 physical LPs and boxsets. Anna, Odysseus and I are currently working on four albums to celebrate Women’s History Month. Given I have a full-time job, I have to fit in the curating where I can, mostly at night when the kids are asleep…those quiet hours where the crackles within the ghostly sounds of the past dance so elegantly with the candlelight. Feel free to reach out with Lomax recordings YOU want to hear…records you would like to see made. It is all open right now, and pretty damn exciting.
Billy Childish: like a god i love all things
“Lehmann Maupin presents like a god i love all things, an exhibition of new paintings by British painter Billy Childish.…In Childish’s latest body of work the winter landscape is his central theme, both wild and serene. The paintings on view comprise a series of quietly beautiful scenes featuring low hanging winter suns, cool mists, and sombre trees.”
Today would have been Gen’s 75th birthday (I didn’t realize s/he shared a birthday with Timothy Leary). In searching around for any kind of on-line birthday acknowledgement, I found this announcement of this release of his final interview, which I was unaware of. Happy Birthday Gen, you are sorely missed.
Birkenstocks Aren’t Art, German Federal Court Says
Nothing like a court to tell us what are is. I realize that the company is calling their shoes art mostly for a copyright play, but nevertheless…sheesh. Wait til this generation’s Andy Warhol starts painting them. “Birkenstocks cannot be considered art, since they are just comfortable, popular footwear made of cork.”
Smoke, Mirrors & Magic Lanterns: How a Parisian Horror Story Became our First Cinematic Experience
“…what truly set Robertson apart was his meticulous attention to atmosphere. He would plunge his audience into complete darkness for extended intervals, then abruptly reveal ominous figures—skeletons, ghosts, grinning devils—seemingly hovering in midair. He was known to lock the theatre doors at the start of each performance, ensuring that no one could flee once the phantasmagoria was underway.”
Ann Cook's Borrowed Dress: Her life in New Orleans and her 78 RPM records
As my friend Josh Rosenthal texted…this new newsletter, Pieces of Lost Time, really got it right. Great research, a great story.
New Nirvana museum in Aberdeen invites all to 'Come as you are'
The museum is such a nutty idea, but it is the newscast piece on the museum that is just bonkers. The newscaster talks of Kurt Cobain as if he was a Martha Stewart type of celebrity, before going on a tour of the museum—the curators have collected (and are collecting) a plethora of ephemera to celebrate the life of Kurt and the band. The newscast then goes on the outdoor tour which includes a romp down a garbage-laced drug addled path to the underpart of the bridge mentioned in the Nirvana song Something in the Way. Thank you Steve Turner for turning me on to the existence of the museum.
The Time a Couple Crazy Kids—Ford Madox Ford, Hemingway—Started a Journal in Paris
“The review is very shabby in my opinion,” quipped James Joyce to Robert McAlmon, whose story appeared in the debut.
Gone
By: Lia Purpura
It’s that, when I’m gone,
(and right off this is tricky)
I won’t be worried
about being gone.
I won’t be here
to miss anything.
I want now, sure,
all I’ve been gathering
since I was born,
but later
when I no longer have it,
(which might be
a state everlasting, who knows?)
this moment right now
(stand closer, love,
you can’t be too close),
is not a thing I’ll know to miss.
I doubt I’ll miss it.
I can’t get over this.
HAPPY 145th BIRTHDAY JAMES REESE EUROPE!
Wild Billy Childish is quite the musician as well as the artist you mention him to be. I also like his work as The William Lovelady Intention. I own an old Leadbelly 78 set (4 records in the set) on Asch Records which was I think affiliated with the Lomax Brothers.
Lots to take in from this post.
glad to hear all this, though I have a feeling that the most important Lomax recordings have already been put out. I do wonder two things: 1) a while back the Lomax archivist resigned, implying that there were real problems with the Lomax project, and 2) I hope if they do sound restoration they don't mess it up as it was on some of the "river of song" reissues which showed a very poor and destructive use of noise reduction, including the introduction of distortion (I do this work myself and can recognize such things).