The ''Southern Journey'' is the popular name given to a field-recording trip around the Southern States of the USA by the renowned ethnomusicologist
Alan Lomax
Alan Lomax (; January 31, 1915 – July 19, 2002) was an American ethnomusicologist, best known for his numerous field recordings of folk music of the 20th century. He was also a musician himself, as well as a folklorist, archivist, writer, sch ...
. He was accompanied on the trip by his then-lover, English folk singer
Shirley Collins
Shirley Elizabeth Collins MBE (born 5 July 1935) is an English folk singer who was a significant contributor to the English Folk Revival of the 1960s and 1970s. She often performed and recorded with her sister Dolly, whose accompaniment on ...
. It resulted in the first stereo field-recordings in the Southern United States, and is perhaps most noted for the 'discovery' of 'Mississippi' Fred McDowell. The music collected on the trip has had inestimable impact on the development of popular music. Tracks recorded on the trip were sampled by
Moby
Richard Melville Hall (born September 11, 1965), known professionally as Moby, is an American musician, songwriter, singer, producer, and animal rights activist. He has sold 20 million records worldwide. AllMusic considers him to be "among the ...
for his Platinum-selling album
Play
Play most commonly refers to:
* Play (activity), an activity done for enjoyment
* Play (theatre), a work of drama
Play may refer also to:
Computers and technology
* Google Play, a digital content service
* Play Framework, a Java framework
* Pla ...
. It also served as the inspiration for the soundtrack to the
Coen Brothers
Joel Daniel Coen (born November 29, 1954) and Ethan Jesse Coen (born September 21, 1957),State of Minnesota. ''Minnesota Birth Index, 1935–2002''. Minnesota Department of Health. collectively known as the Coen brothers (), are American film ...
' film
O Brother Where Art Thou
''O Brother, Where Art Thou?'' is a 2000 comedy drama film written, produced, co-edited, and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. It stars George Clooney, John Turturro, and Tim Blake Nelson, with Chris Thomas King, John Goodman, Holly Hunter, and ...
. The Southern Journey is the subject of a fascinating autobiography by
Shirley Collins
Shirley Elizabeth Collins MBE (born 5 July 1935) is an English folk singer who was a significant contributor to the English Folk Revival of the 1960s and 1970s. She often performed and recorded with her sister Dolly, whose accompaniment on ...
entitled ' America over the Water'. It is also the subject of s 2017 feature documentary,
The Ballad of Shirley Collins
''The Ballad of Shirley Collins'' is a 2017 British feature documentary directed by Rob Curry and Tim Plester.
The film follows the return of 80 year old folk singer Shirley Collins to the limelight as she records '' Lodestar'', her first albu ...
. Lomax' own recollections of the trip were documented in his autobiography "The Land Where Blues Began", which won the
National Book Award for Nonfiction
The National Book Award for Nonfiction is one of five U.S. annual National Book Awards, which are given by the National Book Foundation to recognize outstanding literary work by U.S. citizens. They are awards "by writers to writers". The panelists ...
in 1993.
Build-up
In 1958, Lomax had returned to America after a decade recording the
traditional music
Folk music is a music genre that includes traditional folk music and the contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be called world music. Traditional folk music has b ...
of
Britain
Britain most often refers to:
* The United Kingdom, a sovereign state in Europe comprising the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands
* Great Britain, the largest island in the United King ...
,
Ireland
Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...
,
Spain
, image_flag = Bandera de España.svg
, image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg
, national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond")
, national_anthem = (English: "Royal March")
, i ...
, and
Italy
Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...
; producing radio and television series for the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
Columbia Records
Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music, Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of Japanese Conglomerate (company), conglomerate Sony. It was founded on Janua ...
. His voluntary exile had been in no small part prompted by the inception of the McCarthy witch hunts, which had a particular hunger for Lomax’s folk-music peers.
On his return to
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
following the death of McCarthy in 1957, he found an urban
folk revival
The American folk music revival began during the 1940s and peaked in popularity in the mid-1960s. Its roots went earlier, and performers like Josh White, Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Big Bill Broonzy, Billie Holiday, Richard Dyer-Benn ...
in full bloom. Crowds of young banjo players, guitarists, fiddlers, and fans were gathering in
Washington Square Park
Washington Square Park is a public park in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan, New York City. One of the best known of New York City's public parks, it is an icon as well as a meeting place and center for cultural activity. ...
to pick and sing traditional songs and tunes, many of which Lomax had recorded years earlier from the likes of
Lead Belly
Huddie William Ledbetter (; January 20, 1888 – December 6, 1949), better known by the stage name Lead Belly, was an American folk music, folk and blues singer notable for his strong vocals, Virtuoso, virtuosity on the twelve-string guita ...
,
Woody Guthrie
Woodrow Wilson Guthrie (; July 14, 1912 – October 3, 1967) was an American singer-songwriter, one of the most significant figures in American folk music. His work focused on themes of American socialism and anti-fascism. He has inspired ...
,
Hobart Smith
Hobart ( ; Nuennonne/Palawa kani: ''nipaluna'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian island state of Tasmania. Home to almost half of all Tasmanians, it is the least-populated Australian state capital city, and second-small ...
, and
Texas Gladden
Texas Anna Gladden (' Smith, March 14, 1895 – May 23, 1966)
. The revival was to some extent driven by access to these earlier recordings at
Izzy Young
Israel Goodman Young (March 26, 1928 – February 4, 2019), known as Izzy Young, was a noted figure in the world of folk music, both in America and Sweden. He was once the owner of the Folklore Center in Greenwich Village, New York, and from 1973 ...
’s Folklore Center on
MacDougal Street
MacDougal Street is a one-way street in the Greenwich Village and SoHo neighborhoods of Manhattan, New York City. The street is bounded on the south by Prince Street and on the north by West 8th Street; its numbering begins in the south. Betw ...
, where they had access to hundreds of songs in albums, books (among them Lomax’s American Ballads and Folk Songs and Our Singing Country), and burgeoning folk-music magazines like “
Sing Out!
''Sing Out!'' was a quarterly journal of folk music and folk songs that was published from May 1950 through spring 2014. It was originally based in New York City, with a national circulation of approximately 10,000 by 1960.
Background
''Sing Out ...
”. Lomax himself was somewhat sceptical about the burgeoning scene he encountered, and on some level it proved to be the catalyst for the Southern Journey collecting trips. He commented 40 years later:
Alan Lomax began making arrangements for a field recording trip throughout the American South using a prototype Ampex 600 Series stereo recorder. He secured support from
Ahmet Ertegun
Ahmet Ertegun (, Turkish spelling: Ahmet Ertegün; ; – December 14, 2006) was a Turkish-American businessman, songwriter, record executive and philanthropist.
Ertegun was the co-founder and president of Atlantic Records. He discovered and ch ...
and
Nesuhi Ertegun
Nesuhi Ertegun ( Turkish spelling: Nesuhi Ertegün; November 26, 1917 – July 15, 1989) was a Turkish-American record producer and executive of Atlantic Records and WEA International.
Early life
Born in Istanbul in the Ottoman Empire, Nesuhi ...
, of
Atlantic Records
Atlantic Recording Corporation (simply known as Atlantic Records) is an American record label founded in October 1947 by Ahmet Ertegun and Herb Abramson. Over its first 20 years of operation, Atlantic earned a reputation as one of the most i ...
. Lomax was accompanied by the young British folksinger
Shirley Collins
Shirley Elizabeth Collins MBE (born 5 July 1935) is an English folk singer who was a significant contributor to the English Folk Revival of the 1960s and 1970s. She often performed and recorded with her sister Dolly, whose accompaniment on ...
, whom he had met in
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
several years earlier. They had begun a relationship before Lomax moved back to New York, and with the trip impending, he invited her to accompany him to act as his assistant. They left New York City in a
Buick Roadmaster
The Buick Roadmaster is an automobile that was built by Buick from 1936 until 1942, from 1946 until 1958, and then again from 1991 until 1996. Roadmasters produced between 1936 and 1958 were built on Buick's longest non-limousine wheelbase and s ...
in late August 1959.
The Southern Journey
Recording started on August 24th in Bluefield Virginia, where the pair recorded an old subject of Lomax's, the banjo virtuoso and multi-instrumentalist
Hobart Smith
Hobart ( ; Nuennonne/Palawa kani: ''nipaluna'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian island state of Tasmania. Home to almost half of all Tasmanians, it is the least-populated Australian state capital city, and second-small ...
. For the next two months the pair traveled through
Virginia
Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...
,
Kentucky
Kentucky ( , ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States and one of the states of the Upper South. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north; West Virginia and Virginia to ...
,
Tennessee
Tennessee ( , ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked state in the Southeastern region of the United States. Tennessee is the 36th-largest by area and the 15th-most populous of the 50 states. It is bordered by Kentucky to th ...
,
Alabama
(We dare defend our rights)
, anthem = "Alabama (state song), Alabama"
, image_map = Alabama in United States.svg
, seat = Montgomery, Alabama, Montgomery
, LargestCity = Huntsville, Alabama, Huntsville
, LargestCounty = Baldwin County, Al ...
,
Mississippi
Mississippi () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States, bordered to the north by Tennessee; to the east by Alabama; to the south by the Gulf of Mexico; to the southwest by Louisiana; and to the northwest by Arkansas. Miss ...
,
Arkansas
Arkansas ( ) is a landlocked state in the South Central United States. It is bordered by Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, and Texas and Oklahoma to the west. Its name is from the Osage ...
,
Georgia
Georgia most commonly refers to:
* Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia
* Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States
Georgia may also refer to:
Places
Historical states and entities
* Related to the ...
, and
North Carolina
North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and So ...
, making over seventy hours of recordings. The project was shorter than every other major recording trip of Lomax’s career, but it is among the crowning achievements of his legacy. It marked the first-ever stereo recordings made of American traditional music in the field, at last doing justice to the sonic complexity of the Georgia Sea Island ring shouts, the many-voiced work songs of the Southern prison farms, and the thunderous hymnody of the Sacred Harp. But perhaps its greatest achievement was the discovery of farmer and bluesman 'Mississippi' Fred McDowell.
Itinerary
1960 trip
in 1960, Lomax was invited to Williamsburg, Virginia, to serve as music supervisor to a historical film being produced by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. He used the occasion to do a follow-up tour of coastal Virginia and Georgia, recording again with many of the artists from the 1959 trip, as well as several new artists. Lomax and Collins had split up by this time, and she had returned to England, where two albums worth of material recorded by Lomax and Peter Kennedy before the Southern Journey had recently been released. Lomax was instead accompanied on the 1960 trip by his young daughter, Anna Lomax, who would later go on to found the Association for Cultural Equity.
Release history
When Lomax returned to New York City in late October1959, he prepared seven LPs for
Atlantic
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe an ...
, which were released as the “ Southern Folk Heritage Series”
. There was much music left over, however, and Lomax ultimately made an arrangement with
Prestige Records
Prestige Records is a jazz record company and label founded in 1949 by Bob Weinstock in New York City which issued recordings in the mainstream, bop, and cool jazz idioms. The company recorded hundreds of albums by many of the leading jazz music ...
to issue another series entirely – twelve LP volumes under the title “Southern Journey.” This latter series featured the new recordings made by Lomax and his daughter
Anna
Anna may refer to:
People Surname and given name
* Anna (name)
Mononym
* Anna the Prophetess, in the Gospel of Luke
* Anna (wife of Artabasdos) (fl. 715–773)
* Anna (daughter of Boris I) (9th–10th century)
* Anna (Anisia) (fl. 1218 to 12 ...
in 1960.
Numerous other issues and reissues of material from the recordings includes:
* In 1971, German record label GHP released a solo imprint of the Mountain Ramblers recordings made in Hillsville, VA.
* In 1977,
New World Records
New World Records is a record label that was established in 1975 through a Rockefeller Foundation grant to celebrate America's bicentennial (1976) by producing a 100-LP anthology, with American music from many genres.St Simons Island sessions.
* In 1995,
Rounder Records
Rounder Records is an independent record label founded in 1970 in Somerville, Massachusetts by Marian Leighton Levy, Ken Irwin, and Bill Nowlin. Focused on American roots music, Rounder's catalogue of more than 3000 titles includes records by Al ...
released thirteen volumes of the “Southern Journey” as a CD series.
* In 2010, a new five LP series, featuring a host of previously unreleased material from the tour was curated by Nathan Salsburg of the Association of Cultural Equity, and Eric Isaacson of Portland, Oregon’s Mississippi Records.
* In 2012, digitised versions of the entire recordings were released for free online by the Association of Cultural Equity, who are also running a repatriation scheme, returning Lomax's digitized recordings and photographs to the places they were collected.
Impact and legacy
The Atlantic and Prestige albums were proof that many old-timers were still alive and making music, and Lomax succeeded in involving these tradition-bearers directly in the folk revival. He arranged for appearances at the Newport Folk Festival by Almeda Riddle, Fred McDowell, Hobart Smith, Ed Young, and Bessie Jones and the Georgia Sea Island Singers, all of whom became frequent performers at other revival events and seminally influential figures of the era. Riddle and Jones each went on to make records of their own and enjoy considerable popularity at concerts and folk festivals for decades to come. McDowell appeared on dozens of albums and became a highly renowned and regarded bluesman. Alan, sitting on the board of the Newport Foundation, also saw that money left over from the annual festivals was donated to traditional performers and to new documentation projects in the field.
Southern Journey recordings have featured prominently in samples by a surprising range of artists and musicians. Samples appear on four of the tracks on
Moby
Richard Melville Hall (born September 11, 1965), known professionally as Moby, is an American musician, songwriter, singer, producer, and animal rights activist. He has sold 20 million records worldwide. AllMusic considers him to be "among the ...
's platinum-selling
Play
Play most commonly refers to:
* Play (activity), an activity done for enjoyment
* Play (theatre), a work of drama
Play may refer also to:
Computers and technology
* Google Play, a digital content service
* Play Framework, a Java framework
* Pla ...
album. These include Trouble So Hard by Vera Ward Hall on the track
Natural Blues
"Natural Blues" is a song by American electronic musician Moby. It was released on March 6, 2000, as the fifth single from his fifth studio album, '' Play'' (1999). The song is built around vocals sampled from "Trouble So Hard" by American folk ...
, and Sometimes by
Bessie Smith
Bessie Smith (April 15, 1894 – September 26, 1937) was an American blues singer widely renowned during the Jazz Age. Nicknamed the " Empress of the Blues", she was the most popular female blues singer of the 1930s. Inducted into the Rock and ...
on
Honey
Honey is a sweet and viscous substance made by several bees, the best-known of which are honey bees. Honey is made and stored to nourish bee colonies. Bees produce honey by gathering and then refining the sugary secretions of plants (primar ...
. Two sermon fragments from the recordings have been used by
Kanye West
Ye ( ; born Kanye Omari West ; June 8, 1977) is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer, and fashion designer.
Born in Atlanta and raised in Chicago, West gained recognition as a producer for Roc-A-Fella Records in the ea ...
on collaborations with
Jay Z
Shawn Corey Carter (born December 4, 1969), known professionally as Jay-Z, is an American rapper, record producer, entrepreneur, and founder of Manhattan-based conglomerate talent and entertainment agency Roc Nation. He is regarded as one of ...
and
Pusha T
Terrence LeVarr Thornton (born May 13, 1977), better known by his stage name Pusha T, is an American rapper, songwriter and record executive. He rose to prominence as one-half of the hip hop duo Clipse, which was mainly active from 1994 to 20 ...
.
In 2011, the 50th anniversary of the Southern Journey, a season-long tribute series was curated in Belgium, put on by
Ancienne Belgique
Ancienne Belgique ( French for "Old Belgium") is a concert hall for contemporary music in Brussels, Belgium. Located in the historic heart of Brussels, it is one of the leading concert venues in Belgium, hosting a wide variety of international and ...
.
Southern Journey on film
The first appearance of the Southern Journey recordings on film were in the 1960 docudrama 'The Music of Williamsburg', which was commissioned by the
Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
Colonial Williamsburg is a living-history museum and private foundation presenting a part of the historic district in the city of Williamsburg, Virginia, United States. The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation has 7300 employees at this location a ...
. it featured several musicians who Lomax had recorded in 1959, including
Hobart Smith
Hobart ( ; Nuennonne/Palawa kani: ''nipaluna'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian island state of Tasmania. Home to almost half of all Tasmanians, it is the least-populated Australian state capital city, and second-small ...
, Ed Young, Lonnie Young and Bessie Jones.
In terms of film use, the Southern Journey recordings are perhaps most famous for their role in the soundtrack to the
Coen Brothers
Joel Daniel Coen (born November 29, 1954) and Ethan Jesse Coen (born September 21, 1957),State of Minnesota. ''Minnesota Birth Index, 1935–2002''. Minnesota Department of Health. collectively known as the Coen brothers (), are American film ...
2002 feature
O Brother Where Art Thou
''O Brother, Where Art Thou?'' is a 2000 comedy drama film written, produced, co-edited, and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen. It stars George Clooney, John Turturro, and Tim Blake Nelson, with Chris Thomas King, John Goodman, Holly Hunter, and ...
. The film's title sequence was underscored by James Carter's performance of Po Lazarus, recorded by Lomax at
Parchman Farm
Mississippi State Penitentiary (MSP), also known as Parchman Farm, is a maximum-security prison farm located in unincorporated Sunflower County, Mississippi, in the Mississippi Delta region. Occupying about of land,Anna Lomax initiated a national hunt for Carter, who had never recorded before or after. He was eventually found, aged 76, in Chicago, and presented with a royalty cheque for $20,000, and an invitation to the awards ceremony. The soundtrack also featured versions of several other songs of which versions had been recorded on the Southern Journey. These include Didn't Leave Nobody But The Baby, recorded in 1959 by Sidney Hemphill Carter, and O Death, recorded in the Georgia Sea Islands from Bessie Jones. The film's putative band, the Soggy Bottom Boys, also owe a clear debt of gratitude to the Mountain Ramblers of Hillsville, VA.
The 1959 Southern Journey is the subject of
Rob Curry
Rob Curry is a British film director, best known for his work on theatrical documentaries. His films include TEMPEST (released in UK cinemas in 2012), and Way of the Morris (co-directed with Tim Plester), which premiered at SXSW and was released ...
and
Tim Plester
Timothy Marc Plester (born 10 September 1970) is a British actor, playwright, and filmmaker, best known for the documentaries ''Way of the Morris'' and ''The Ballad of Shirley Collins'' - plus a multifarious number of cameo roles for film and TV ...
's 2017 feature documentary
The Ballad of Shirley Collins
''The Ballad of Shirley Collins'' is a 2017 British feature documentary directed by Rob Curry and Tim Plester.
The film follows the return of 80 year old folk singer Shirley Collins to the limelight as she records '' Lodestar'', her first albu ...
. Alongside documenting Ms. Collins' remarkable return to singing and recording after a hiatus of 40 years, the film also features extensive use of archive interviews that Collins and Lomax recorded in 1959, accompanied by modern reconstruction footage based on the photographic record from the trip.