Anglo Lomax
English-Language song from the Alan Lomax Collection
by Steve Winick

Alan Lomax will leave many legacies to the broad spectrum of popular music — from the popularization of the blues to the examination of African roots in the New World. His role was likewise crucial in the British and American folk revivals. In New York in the 1940s, he acted as a catalyst around whom important figures like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger came together. Then he ventured forth to do fieldwork in Britain in the early 1950s, providing recordings that became the basis of countless revivalist performances. Let's look at some of his British output, and then at one seminal recording from the earlier New York era.

The four British CDs have all been edited by Peter Kennedy, one of Lomax's field partners on his 1953 collecting trips. The best of the four is What Will Become of England? [Rounder 1161-1839-2 (2000)] by Harry Cox, a new entry in Lomax's Portraits series. This disc contains some absolutely brilliant performances by one of the most important traditional singers in English history. The cream of this crop includes brilliant ballads like "The Barley Straw," "Blackberry Fold," and "The Farmer's Servant," all of which are astonishingly complete and entertaining versions. The last one, for example, is a great wish-fulfillment song in which a servant waits for his master to depart, has his way with the master's wife, and gets credit for "taking care of master's business." This basic plot, of course, was known to enslaved black Americans in the 19th century, as well as to the English, but it's never sounded better than Cox's version, a sweet and saucy protest song laced with sex and satire. A lusty version of "The Foggy Dew," a suitably serious "Nelson's Monument," and a detailed version of "Henry the Poacher" (in which the protagonist is transported to Australia for his crimes) all rehearse some of the basic concerns of English village life: love and marriage, wars and their aftermath, and trying to make a living in hard times. Maybe the most fascinating of all is "Barton Broad Babbing Ballad," a purely local song about eel fishing. Tunes played on both the melodeon and the fiddle show that Cox was an all-around rural entertainer, and a set of toasts demonstrate he was a local man of words, as well. Indeed, one of the best features of What Will Become of England? is the incorporation of spoken bits in between the songs, giving Cox's opinions of everything from working in a gang to songs on the radio (which he refers to as "all this-here squit"). That raises the CD above the mundane level, making it an essential purchase for fans of traditional English singing.

Now for the negative: Kennedy has edited several songs for length, to my mind an unconscionable desecration. It's hard to tell how many have been so altered, because the liner notes are hopelessly unclear; when Kennedy writes "Omitted" next to a verse, does this mean that Cox sometimes sang that verse but omitted it on this occasion, that Kennedy felt Cox's version was incomplete for other reasons, or that Cox did sing it but that Kennedy edited it out? In fact, there are times when Cox pretty clearly did not sing the verses in question ("On Board of the Kangaroo," "Young and Growing"), and other times when he probably did ("Windy Old Weather," "The Crocodile"), so there's no way to tell for sure what's going on. Meanwhile, the historical notes have glaring errors. They claim, for example, that Cox was "discovered" in 1945, but there are songs of his in folklore journals by 1923. Still, none of this alters the brilliance of Cox's performances or the vision Lomax and Kennedy had in recording both songs and talk, and the CD stands up well despite its deficiencies.

There are 3 more CDs reviewed in this column in Dirty Linen #89 (Aug/Sept '00).
To read it all, buy it on the newsstand or subscribe!