John Szwed on Alan Lomax

[AllenLowe]

I'm in the middle of reading Szwed's new book on Alan Lomax, and it is John's usual brilliant work. There a review in today's Times by Janet Maslin, who is generally positive but who continues to prove she's an idiot.

Her complaint, in a work like this, about a lack of discography (and people have made the same complaint about my projects) reminds me of the old Henny Youngman joke:

A little kid is drowning in the ocean. 15 lifeguards swim out to save him, risking their own lives. They make it back to shore, work 20 minutes to revive the kid – and the kid’s alive and breathing and fine. His mother comes over and says “he had a hat.”

[Christiern]

"Father and son shared an academic bent," writes Maslin, but I see no reference in her review to their shared bent for exploitation. I hope John Szwed (a writer who I admire and who by chance gave my career a pivotal boost) does not fail to mention the darker side of the Lomax venture. Granted, his father was probably the worst offender, but Alan seems to have continued that family tradition seamlessly.

When you finish reading the book, I hope you come back and tell us this is not yet another whitewash.

BTW, Maslin bemoaning the omission of a discography indicates how little she knows. As busy as the Lomaxes were (and they did enrich our world, as well), that would fill another volume.

Edited January 31, 2011 by Christiern

[AllenLowe]

so far so good, I think. He definitely gets all sides of the family.

[paul secor]

Imo, Maslin is a fluff writer/reviewer but, also imo, Szwed could have included a selected (his choice) discography.

[AllenLowe]

see my first post.

not to be too glib, but in the brave new world of publishing and recording, everything is a one-man job: writing, editing, indexes, discographies, promotion and distribution (well the last two sometimes require assistance) -

Edited January 31, 2011 by AllenLowe

[paul secor]

see my first post.

not to be too glib, but in the brave new world of publishing and recording, everything is a one-man job: writing, editing, indexes, discographies, promotion and distribution (well the last two sometimes require assistance) -

I hear you. John Szwed did include a discography in his Sun Ra bio, and that included a lot of recordings, but it was compiled by someone else.

In this case, even a selected discography would be a lot of work and Szewd probably would have had to put it together by himself.

[AllenLowe]

I've heard accounts of writers handing in books to major presses, and being told that, if they wanted an index, they had to either do it themselves or pay someone to do it. And recently I read one of the most highly touted books of the year (The Warmth of Other Suns) and found it to need a major edit - many many grammatical errors, repetitions. etc etc. Almost to the point of being unreadable.

and I know from my own projects how easy it is to miss very simple things in the mass of detail required. And though I'm sure the Lomax book is from a major press (can't remember which one) I'm willing to bet it was largely a solo effort.

Edited January 31, 2011 by AllenLowe

[Larry Kart]

I've heard accounts of writers handing in books to major presses, and being told that, if they wanted an index, they had to either do it themselves or pay someone to do it. And recently I read one of the most highly touted books of the year (The Warmth of Other Suns) and found it to need a major edit - many many grammatical errors, repetitions. etc etc. Almost to the point of being unreadable.

and I know from my own projects how easy it is to miss very simple things in the mass of detail required. And though I'm sure the Lomax book is from a major press (can't remember which one) I'm willing to bet it was largely a solo effort.

Yup. On my book I also had to pay someone out of my own pocket a not inconsiderable sum to copy edit the manuscript. Most publishers don't do that anymore. OTOH, the publisher did recommend a freelance copy editor who was very good and who found several errors that would have been annoying or worse if they'd made it into print. He even said that he enjoyed reading the manuscript.

The book should have had an index, but I felt sure that I couldn't do that myself -- compiling a really good one is a special craft and very time-consuming, and I didn't have the time or the energy to teach myself how to do it right the first time out of the box. And I damn well wasn't going to pay someone to do it, mostly because I felt pretty sure that to do it right one would not only have to be a trained compiler of indexes but a jazz person as well; and such people may not even exist.

[AllenLowe]

absolutely - though when someone asks me I always recommend that they at least try a names index, which is relatively easy to do and at least helps connect certain things.

the editing thing is really discouraging - that book The Warmth of Other Sons is a very interesting and a potentially important work - but I threw it down (though I'll probably pick it up again; I just feel like I'm editing in my head and doing the work the publisher and author should have done) -

[JSngry]

I felt pretty sure that to do it right one would not only have to be a trained compiler of indexes but a jazz person as well; and such people may not even exist.

Is there not software that can do that? If not, there should be!

[Larry Kart]

I felt pretty sure that to do it right one would not only have to be a trained compiler of indexes but a jazz person as well; and such people may not even exist.

Is there not software that can do that? If not, there should be!

A name index perhaps, but a really useful, thorough index -- no way. There are too many judgment calls involved. See this index for example, from a general-interest book I'm reading, "Neptune's Inferno: The U.S. Navy At Guadalcanal" (and this index is far from as complex as some top-drawer indexes are):

http://www.amazon.com/Neptunes-Inferno-U-S-Navy-Guadalcanal/dp/055380670X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1296511617&sr=1-1#reader_055380670X

[JSngry]

There's a market then!

C'mon Free Enterprise, fill that void!

[Christiern]

I did my own index for my Bessie Smith biography and using the computer actually made it quite easy. The problem I had on the expanded 2003 edition was space--Yale U. Press gave me a limited number of pages, so the index is not nearly as extensive as I wanted it to be. Better than nothing, however, nothing being what I found ins Reading Jazz,a compilation of jazz pieces. Edited by Robert Gottlieb, its 1068 pages cry out for an index.

[JohnJ]

Read and enjoyed this review in the WSJ a couple of weeks ago.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704723104576062420986386998.html

[seeline]

From the WSJ link above -

...Instead of merely transcribing song-texts, in the tradition of European scholars, they made recordings of performances...

Bartok made field recordings, as did some of his associates.

The Lomaxes didn't invent "on-the-spot" recording.

Edited February 2, 2011 by seeline

[John Culpepper]

I too read this book with great excitement as soon as I got a copy and couldn't put it down. It has so much surprising information and is so solidly researched, puncturing many myths and misconceptions. For example, who knew that Alan Lomax wanted to get Son House come up North to sing with the Almanac Singers. Also Lomax was involved in Martin Luther King's Poor People's March and got Muddy Waters to participate and sing for the marchers.

About discographies, there are partial discographies of Alan Lomax’s recordings on his website: http://www.culturalequity.org/pubs/ce_pubs_cds_index.phpCulturalequity.org

The Library of Congress has a hefty three-volume index of field recordings made under its auspices by John and Alan Lomax and others.

About recording -- many collectors and composers used recordings to some extent. In the folklore profession, however, it was customary to collect written texts and their variants for a long time after sound recordings came into use. Record blanks or wax cylinders were expensive and could only hold a few minutes of sound and there were problems with portability -- and of singers singing into a large horn with no dynamic controls. Microphone technology was slow to develop and long playing tape only came into use in the late forties and early fifties.

.

For my part, I would like to see Dave Marsh, the paranoid slanderer of Lomax, make his transparent own his own financial arrangements and political interests (e.g., he give interviews to the Trotkyite Socialist Workers Party News Organ). Google him in this regard and you will find some surprising things. He is far from disinterested. And indeed has a reputation for off-the-wall combative statements. The same might be said about Counterpunch, which doesn’t make public where its funds come from.

As far as Lomax as an “exploiter”, Rob Young in the current issue of The Wire Adventures in New Music (# 324, February 2011 http://www.thewire.co.uk/issues/current/) writes (in an long review that is not online) that:

“

Far from mercilessly exploiting his subjects, Lomax spent much of his life close to insolvency, scratching his living as he went—a grant here, a lecture fee there. Yet he insisted on paying all his source singers a fee – often out of his own pocket – and offered each one a contract assuring a royalty if their song happened to become a commercial success. If a lump sum occasionally came through, as when The Weavers’ ‘Good Night Irene’ a smash hit, Lomax ploughed it straight back into the next project. Such assiduousness flew in the face of most fellow collectors an, as he discovered with Lonnie Donegan’s ‘Rock Island Line’, artists and record companies were already claiming authorship of songs he had collected two decades earlier.

Lomax, Szwed clarifies, did not copyright individual songs, only his books of compilations (which the publishers insisted on). He made a genuine attempt to instigate a foundation to collect monies from copyrights to pay source singers. When BMI (Broadcast Music Inc.) Register lists Lomax as ‘writer’, it’s a standard abbreviation; in fact his contracts read ‘collected, adapted, and arranged by’ or ‘traditional song, arranger’. But he had given much thought to the role of the collector in the process and concluded, not unreasonably, that his was not a passive, transparent role in the process, but an active, curatorial one, and that he deserved a piece of the pie – which in most cases, was slim pickings anyway.”

***

Szwed's account of the copyrights is here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=sV48asr7T4MC&pg=PT438&lpg=PT438&dq=alan+lomax+szwed+copyrights&source=bl&ots=NwTAoOjxZ0&sig=RoUA3BhdH0NPem4VkBL8CIvMbsI&hl=en&ei=suwoTc7aEIT58AbvrMWyAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&sqi=2&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=copyright&f=false

Note: Szwed writes, "Collectors copyrighting folksongs was not unusual at the time. Carl Sandburg, Zora Neale Hurston, Bela Bartok, Cecil Sharp, Percy Grainger, Ralph Vaughn Williams, and even Lawrence Gellert, the most politically leftist of all the collectors, all filed claims for copyright, though none of them shared earnings with the singers."

You can go on the Library of Congress website to see the kind of agreements that they arranged and how scrupulous they were even though they had very little money to disburse. After he left the Library of Congress, Alan did share his earnings with the singers from whom he collected.

Szwed also says that neither Alan Lomax nor his father ever filed claims for copyright on individual songs. This was done by a large music publisher, whom Alan Lomax sued in the 1950s, winning a partial settlement in which he was allowed a portion of the author's half of the earnings (contrary to his wishes) as collector and arranger. He would have preferred to have had publishers' credit. Thus, Lomax is being excoriated today for winning a settlement in a lawsuit with a large corporation.

For an insight into how the music publishing industry works see: Rian Malan http://www.3rdearmusic.com/forum/mbube2.html and wikipedia “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”. If your read this, it will become clear that Lomax, Seeger, and other scholars are being scapegoated for the unethical doings of the music publishers. The site reproduces Malan's original 2000 Rolling Stone article, which was the basis of a film documentary that was shown on PBS and is followed by an interesting discussion page.

Edited February 6, 2011 by John Culpepper

[Head Man]

I'm in the middle of reading Szwed's new book on Alan Lomax, and it is John's usual brilliant work. There a review in today's Times by Janet Maslin, who is generally positive but who continues to prove she's an idiot.

Her complaint, in a work like this, about a lack of discography (and people have made the same complaint about my projects) reminds me of the old Henny Youngman joke:

A little kid is drowning in the ocean. 15 lifeguards swim out to save him, risking their own lives. They make it back to shore, work 20 minutes to revive the kid – and the kid’s alive and breathing and fine. His mother comes over and says “he had a hat.”

Thanks for the heads-up on this, Alan, I've put my order in.

I've also ordered a copy of a book by the English folk-singer Shirley Collins called "America Over the Water" which covers her time with Alan Lomax collecting & recording songs and music in the southern states in 1959-60. I believe they were 'an item' at the time.

[Neal Pomea]

Alan Lomax Archive and IODA to Disseminate more than 17,000 Historic Recordings

[jostber]

Alan Lomax Archive and IODA to Disseminate more than 17,000 Historic Recordings

Wow, this should make available some great recordings: http://www.culturalequity.org/features/globaljukebox/ce_features_globaljukebox.php

[Face of the Bass]

I just finished Szwed's excellent biography of Miles Davis, which I would say is not quite as good as the Sun Ra biography but still one of the best I've ever read. I'm definitely going to check out the Lomax bio now, as I'm beginning to realize that Szwed is easily my favorite music historian/biographer working today.

[Face of the Bass]

I was just wondering if anyone reading this might happen to know what the correct pronunciation is for John Szwed's name? Thanks in advance.

[Rooster_Ties]

FWIW, I've always pronounced it "zved" -- going back to my first contacts with him back around 1990 and in the early 90's when he was researching Sun Ra (and to my shock, I was even mentioned by name in the list of "thankyou's" in the preface of his Ra biography -- along with several other people I crossed paths with later, for unrelated reasons).

Now, whether that pronounciation is accurate (or not) -- or whether he and I only exchanged emails (pre-internet, at least for me (anyone remember Bitnet?)), or whether we spoke on the phone (which I kind of vaguely remember, but couldn't swear in a court of law) -- I really can't say. (My god, that was going on 25 years ago!)

My 2 cents, which I'm sure someone mayl suggest is barely worth even that, I'm sure. <smile>

[Face of the Bass]

My inclination is to pronounce it like "Swede" but I doubt that's right.

[JSngry]

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Szwed

or, if you prefer a visual paradigm...

https://www.google.com/search?q=Szwed&client=firefox-a&hs=J0u&sa=X&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=rcs&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&ei=Jto8U-KrD7PQsQSeyIDICg&ved=0CDMQsAQ&biw=1400&bih=695

[alankin]

I've been pronouncing it as either shwed or shved.