Southern Journey, Vol. 5: Bad Man Ballads
Various artists, recorded by Alan Lomax
Rounder Records through Festival
Review by Norm Dixon
Bad Man Ballads: Songs of Outlaws and Desperadoes is just one of a monumental series of recordings of folk music collected and preserved by Alan Lomax for the US Library of Congress since the early '30s. Many of these historic recordings have been long out of print and very hard to get despite their legendary reputations. The first six volumes (plus a 38-track sampler) of Southern Journey have just been released. They are part of the 13-volume first instalment of an ambitious reissue program.
Southern Journey was recorded in fields, prisons, work camps, barrel houses and churches, on the porches, streets and chain gangs of the US south in the late '50s. It reminds us that there was a time, not so long ago, when music and song were not simply commodities mass produced by the recording and broadcasting industries. A time when people were not so neatly divided into professional music-makers and passive consumers.
Folk music was one of main forms of mass communication for poor people to disseminate news, opinion, protest, history and legend. Long before the world wide web, folk music provided people with interactive information and entertainment which was embellished, altered, updated and enriched as it passed to and fro between a multitude of musician/listeners and listener/musicians over generations.
Southern Journey is also a monument to the commitment and vision of Alan Lomax, whose life has been dedicated to studying, explaining, preserving and popularising the music of ordinary people within the US and around the world.
The quest that Lomax began was radical from the start. He recognised that the culture of the poor and dispossessed — African-Americans, poor whites, "hillbillies" and "Okies", Mexicans, native-Americans — were the strands from which US musical culture was made.
He saw that the music of the poor could not be understood without also understanding the history and social conditions of the people. His project exposed and challenged entrenched racism against minorities and prejudice against working people.
In 1933, 17-year-old Lomax — with his father, English Professor John Lomax — made his first field trip to document southern African-American blues, work songs, spirituals and hymns, and oral histories. It was the first of many such expeditions, which would extend later to the Caribbean, Europe and Africa.
It is no accident that the careers of many of the legends of US folk music and blues are inextricably bound to that of Alan Lomax. It was the Lomaxes who first recorded Huddie Leadbetter — better known as the legendary Leadbelly — in 1933 in a Louisiana prison, where he was serving time for manslaughter. In 1938, Leadbelly toured the US with the Lomaxes' help and in the process created one of the most lasting and influential repertoires, with songs such as "Bourgeois Blues", "Goodnight Irene", "Midnight Special" and "Rock Island Line".
In 1938, Alan Lomax tracked down jazz composer and pianist Jelly Roll Morton, working anonymously in a seedy Washington club. His essential role in the creation of jazz in New Orleans was all but forgotten. Together they produced a musical history that explored the origins of jazz and Morton's not insignificant (although widely debated) contribution.
The list does not stop there. It includes Woodie Guthrie, Muddy Waters, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Bukka White, Son House, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Pete Seeger and Burl Ives.
Lomax redefined the meaning of folk music. Until he and his father's pioneering work, folk music meant simply English and Celtic song and dance. Academics disregarded the music's local evolution in the US and studied only isolated communities where the music existed "undiluted" in places like the Appalachian Mountains.
For Lomax, folk music was not a museum exhibit but a real, evolving culture that reflected all the influences of the society it existed within. This viewpoint was reinforced by Lomax's left-leaning, radical democratic view that dissent and protest against oppression — especially against racism — were essential engines of its development. This is why African-Americans and poor whites were the centre of Lomax's attention.
Radical folk singer Pete Seeger credits Lomax with being "more responsible than any other person for the 20th century folk-song revival". This new conception of folk music and its emphasis on struggle may partly explain why folk music became such an important component of the radicalisation in the '60s.
Bad Man Ballads reflects well how folk music was used by ordinary people to protest against injustice, while conveying information and opinion about events.
The "bad men" in these songs are overwhelmingly driven by circumstances outside their control to commit acts that are sometimes heinous and unforgivable yet understandable ("Pretty Polly", "The Lawson Murder"), sometimes heroic if hopeless ("Jesse James", "Railroad Bill", "Cole Younger", "Willie Brennan"). The heroes are often Robin Hood-like bandits who rebel against authority and are celebrated by the people.
For African-American contributors, it is the hopeless but necessary rebellion against the racist south that is a constant theme. In "Po' Lazarus", an overworked and underpaid black worker steals the payroll from the boss and escapes. He is hunted down by the deputies and murdered.
In "John Henry", the famous steel-driving man affirms his dignity as a worker and a human being. His boss threatens to replace him with a machine, but John Henry promises to match it in a contest. John Henry wins but dies in the process.
These songs were recorded by black prisoners at work at the Mississippi State Penitentiary. It makes fascinating listening to hear these moving and inspiring voices accompanied only by the regular rhythm of axes chopping tree trunks or picks striking earth.
Rounder Records has promised to reissue another 100 or so volumes of Lomax's famous Library of Congress recordings over the next five years. You had better start saving now.