The Land Where the Blues Began by Alan Lomax Methuen GBP20 THE surprising thing about this book is that it was published without the aid of a ouija board. Was it not the Lomaxes, pere et fils, who in the 30s discovered Hudie Leadbetter, alias Leadbelly, later king of the 12-string guitar and later still the idol of my youth? The story is old but interesting: Leadbelly was serving a sentence for murder (his second) when the Lomaxes found him in a Louisiana prison. They recorded his sung request for clemency and backed it up with the explanation the singer was required to record for the Library of Congress folk song collection.
A Lomax radio programme later launched to the wider world almost everyone who laid the foundations on which modern folk music was built.
Hold on, though. The lead in all this was taken by John Lomax, the elder. This book is by his son, Alan, who when Leadbelly emerged from prison was 18. He is now in his late 70s and still going strong.
Wish him many more happy years; he deserves them because this book records his almost single-handed preservation of an artistic tradition.
Let us start at the great landmark in the history of modern popular music, Elvis. Elvis rose so large on the landscape that many people had difficulty seeing anything behind him. Look hard enough, though, and on one side you find a tradition of accompanied song which was basically rural and white. Some of it comes down to us in a rather glossy form as country and western.
On the other side is a quite different tradition which is rural and black. The matter of colour was a real barrier to the acceptance of this style in America, but British musicians were less inhibited and in the 50s discovered a whole neglected treasure house to which Mr Lomax is an incomparable guide.
