Born in 1915, Alan Lomax was a folklorist who recorded the songs and stories of folk groups across the rural United States. Between 1933 and 1942 Lomax traveled throughout rural Kentucky to record songs for the Archive of American Folk Songs at the Library of Congress.
In the 1930s the recording industry had been underway for well over 20 years. Record companies had exploited folk music by rural musicians, but they focused on recording only the music they saw as having commercial value. Lomax went right to the communities where the rural folk musicians lived, setting up in homes, grocery stores, schools, and churches to collect music at its source. He recorded unaccompanied ballads, children’s games and lullabies, and topical and protest songs.
The digitized versions of the Kentucky Lomax recordings are now available through the Berea College Special Collections and Archives at http://lomaxky.omeka.net.