Afc 1933/001 LOMAX, ALAN--CORRESPONDENCE, 1935 115 Dallas, Texas, March 27, 1935 Mr Alan Lomax, Dear Sir, We hope that this will be some service to you. This is the best we could do. We have wrote it over and over so this is the contents. We started it two different ways you can fix it to suit you. this is as much of that song as my mother could think of. You will find it on the end of one of these sheets of paper. I am not just back to my self yet but I am thankful to be better. Arthur M. Ledbetter P. S. I hope it isn't too late. Mr. Alan Lomax I Hudie Ledbetter was the son of Wess and Dottie Ledbetter. Bot of them are now dead. Hudie was raised by his mother and father on the farm. He was and apt boy in his books, was always willing to learn. He was smart swift toward any kind of work he new. He was honest and always loved music. He began his music first on an acordian, harp, piano and later a guitar. He learned so well and fast until the news spreaded around among the people far and near. He was asked to play for all the parties and dances. Was noted to be the best dancer of his race. We never tried to interfere with any one unless they would give him a cause then he would try to defend himself. Through all of his troubles he has always been a boy to regain the same friendship with his [en]emies. Hudie was a poor boy, but was willing to help in any good cause he could. He never grew tired or impatience with any thing. He was the only boy in that country that won fame through 2 his talent. Hudie was always so interest in his music and work he did not have time for pals, although he was friendly with every one. Some of his first pieces he learned to play were There aint no corn bread here, Baby take me back, and Frankie was a good woman. Hudie's mother and father were poor people. They worked hard on the farm to make an honest living. They had a standard record through out Harrison County and Louisiana as being good honest respectable people. They live for their sn prayed night and day for him to be what he is today. That song. 1 Mama did you bring me any silver Mama did you bring me any gold What did you bring me dear mother To keep me from the gallow's pole. Son I didn't bring you any silver Son I didn't bring you any gold I just come here to see you Hang on the gallow's pole. 1 Dallas Texas Mr. Lomax Sir in ans. to your request concerning the life of Hudie Ledbeter. He was born and raised by good moral and honest parents by the home of Sallie and Wess Ledbetter. Hudie was a boy from his child hood days quite and respectful His record proved that he was a honest boy never meddle quarreled or aurguard with any one he was plain spoken some thing about Hudie's life was quite diffrent from other children, he never played like others he talked of the things he wanted to when he became a man. He seemed to have a inner view of life that if he could learn music he would make lots of money so he could make his mother and father happy in their old age. His talent was music Though he was good at any kind of work was swift quick very apt in his books Though he had not the opportunity to go to school long for his parents were of a middle age when Hudie was born. That forced Hudie to work 2 at a very early age. His parents were poor but honest and hard workers but unfortunate to save. They loved their son dearly and he loved them did all he could to make them happy. Hudie and I were lovers from childhood days went to school together to parties and dances. he was never late always on time loyal to his staff. Hudie was liked by every one who new him. Through all of this there was an unfinished duty he continued to look forward to so he talked it over with his parents to get him some kind of instrument so he could learn music. They bought him an acordion later a guitar which he love so well. The first night he got that he stayed up all night trying to learn, so by morning he had learned, there ant no corn bread here, later baby take me back, Frankie was a good woman. The next the boweever blues, so on and on. Song by song he learned composed his songs and music. No one ever thought that he would learn as fast as he did. He was asked to play for a recital he proved so well the news spreaded around for miles so he 3. continued to get better and better. then he was asked to play for all the big parties and dances. He was noted to be the best dancer and guitar player around. As the time rolled on the white people with stores and drugstores asked Hudie to play Saturday evening and nights at their places to draw the crowd, in that way he made nice change this enabled him to be of lots help to his parents. They were proud of him. The life Hudie lived nor his character caused him to get into trouble, but jealousy in the heart of the people because he could beat them playing and dancing and made more money. Some began picking on him telling wrong things. Hudie being big hearted would laugh and try to keep down confusion. He would say to them boys I don't care what you say about me don't hit me. He would try to defend himself regain friendship with his enemies. Because Hudie won the record that brought him fame. Through his own hard labor they continued to worry him 4 until he was forced into the first trouble sent to prison for a long term which caused much grief to his parents. His father passed before he was freed, but the dear mother lived to see him home and shouted Victory. He sang and played before the governor and sang his way out. So you see that caused the young whites to pick at him. Still standing up for the right trying to defend himself to get the banner they kepted on until they sent him back. This grieved the mother so she passed before he was free the second time, but their prayers left behind went out and caused God to send you and your father to the aide of the poor colored people that wanted to be helped. I am glad to speak on the life of this faitful hard working boy who made himself what he is today with the aid of your people and the determining will of Hudie. With God in the plan we are glad for him may he continue to be loyal and true. From Mother and Arthur Mae. Leadbelly 128-147 400 East 34th St., Austin, Texas, April 20, 1935. Mr. Oliver Strunk, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Dear Mr. Strunk, I have written to Frank Megill asking him to send three or four of Lead Belly's records to Dr. Herzog. Dr. Herzog has not yet heard these records, which were made on the prison camp before Lead Belly's rise to fame. I felt when I listened to them at the Library that they represented a very different Lead Belly, both as to manner of singing and voice techniques. I feel that Dr. Herzog should hear them before he gives his final word about Lead Belly and his songs in his musical preface. I hope that you will see fit t to allow these records, which I have described carefully to Mr. Megill, to be sent to Dr. Herzog at Yale. He will. of course, take t the best care of them and return them at once as he is done with them. I am sorry I was not able to stay in Washington and get the x diminutive archive in somewhat better shape. I hope I shall be able to get around to that job at the end of the summer. Will a [?] stenographer be provided me? With best regards to yourself and Mrs. Strunk, I am, Sincerely yours, Alan Lomax Alan Lomax YALE UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE OF HUMAN RELATIONS DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY April 30, 1935 NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT Mr. Alan Lomax 400 E. 34th Street Austin, Texas Dear Mr. Lomax: Enclosed transcriptions of Irene, Elnora, Medicine Man, Governor Pat Neff, Julie Ann Johnson, Ha Ha Thisaway, and Governor O.K. Allen. This leaves the following still outstanding: Red Cross Sto', Mr. Tom Hughes Town, and Alberta of which I'll send you another copy. Furthermore: You Cain' Loose Me Cholly and 30 Days In the Workhouse for which I should like to have the texts if you can send them to me. I made a mistake on my list, p. 2: the 56 melodies do not include Way Over In The Promised Land; of that melody I did not send a transcription. I had no trouble with the texts of these songs; on the record for Elnora I find after the last chorus the verse: Looky here, Elnora O, Lawd, Looky her, Elnora, [?] O, Lawd. For the Cotton Picking song, numbering the stanzas of your text, the record contains: stanzas 1,2,3,1, then stanza: What's the matter? Pick a bale o' cotton, What's the matter? Pick a bale a day. Then stanzas 2,8,1, and the record breaks off probably in stanza 5. In the other songs your texts give exactly what the records have, except for Medicine Man which has more stanzas, and some divergence in the spoken portions of some songs. The records taken in prison, to be compared with those taken out of prison came from Washington, so I have now here in addition to the records on the previous list also: No. 128. 5. Titanic Blind Lemon 120. 4. Gal in Town Fort Worth Blues 130. 2. Becky Dean You Don' Know My Mind 131. O.K. Allen Midnight Special Irene 132, Blind Lemon Hawaiian Blues I shall compare these with the other versions. The remaining melodies will come soon, in the meanwhile I am hoping to get the texts of You Cain' Loosa Me Cholly and 30 Days In the Workhouse; Mr. Waters does not have them at the Library of Congress. My musical contribution is progressing fine, and I am waiting for your and your father's opinion on remarks on other versions etc. in the literature before giving it its final shape. I hope all is well with you and that the final details of the book are progressing as you wish. And, before all, that Professor Lomax is well. Tell me if there is anything I can do in New York at Macmillan's; I shall be in New York around the middle of May I believe, if not a little later. With best wishes, George Herzog (COPY RETAINED IN fol. 414) PHONE ADDRESS ALL COMMUNICATIONS CABLE ADDRESS BRYANT 9-2673 TO THE FIRM "WILMUSIC", N.Y. CLARENCE WILLIAMS MUSIC PUBLISHING COMPANY, Inc. CLARENCE WILLIAMS, President 145 WEST 45th STREET NEW YORK CITY DETROIT PUBLISHERS OF CHICAGO STANDARD BLUES ST. LOUIS AND NOVELTIES LOS ANGELES BOOKS-FOLIOS LONDON PIANO SOLOS SYNDEY NEGRO SPIRITUALS June 20, 1935 Mr. Alan Lomax 400 East 34th Street Austin, Texas Dear Mr. Lomax: Please excuse my delay in answering your letter, but I have been so very, very busy. However, I am working on an idea, and I'm having my secretary take down little by little and probably by the time I see you again I will have quite a bit of stuff compiled. I am enclosing a copy of "I NEVER KNEW WHAT THE BLUES WERE". Regarding its history, quite naturally I would say that a girl was at the bottom of it. I was trooping through Texas with a pal of mine in 1915 and 1916. My friend decided to stay in Texas, and when I returned to my home in New Orleans I saw his girl. She told me she loved him so much and missed him so and said she never knew what the blues were until he went away. That inspired me to write the tune. "I NEVER KNEW WHAT THE BLUES WERE" was copyrighted May 4th, 1917, #404921. Always glad to hear from you and to hear of the progress of your book. Very truly yours, Clarence Williams President. CW:ES THE CLARENCE WILLIAMS MUSIC PUBLISHING CO., Inc. Enc. COPY RETAINED IN FOL 415 Nassau, The Bahamas, August 3, 1935. Mr. Oliver Strunk, Music Department, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.. Dear Mr. Strunk, The department's recording machine has had an interesting time this summer and I should like to give you some account of it before you leave for Europe. In many ways this has been the most exciting field trip I have made and, really can only be told in a long, rambling novel, but I shall confine myself to a catalouge of records which, while exciting enough, is by no means adequate for the whole story. Miss Mary Elizabeth Barnicle, professor of the ballad at New York University, Miss Zora Hurston, Columbia anthropologist and probably the best informed person today on Western Negro folk-lore, and myself met in Brunswick Ga.. on June the fifteenth and began our search for folk-songs there. Through Miss Hurston's influence we were soon living, in an isolated community on St. Simon's island, on such friendly terms with the Negroes as I had never experienced before. This community is a settlement of Negroes that has remained practically static since the days of slavery, [is made up entirely of Negores.] We rented a little Negro shantey and sent out the call for folk-singers. The first evening our front yard as crowded. In a week's time we had made about forty records. 1) Children's game songs, both traditional and indigenous 2) The shrill, strange cries that thes children use to signal to each other across the fields. 3) Chanties of the sort that the Negroes sing in loading the ships in Charlestown, Savannah and Brunswick, songs of the like that the white sailors heard in the days of clipper ships and turned to their own use -- probably the earliest type of Negro work-song. 4) Ring-shouts, probably the earliest for of the Negro spiritual, widely current in the days of slavery, but now all but forgotten except in a few isolated communities. These songs are for dancing. 5) Records of what is called "Jooking" on the guitar. The "jook" is the saloom and dance hall of this part of the South and "jook" music furnishes the rhythm for the one-step, the slowdrag and the other dances of Whiskey filled Saturday nights At St. Simons island we were lucky enough to find still current and popular an early and primitive type of guitar playing, in which the drum rhythm is predominant, that was forerunner o of the more highly developed and sophisticated "blues" accompaniments so popular over the South today. 6) A miscellaneous set of spirituals, ragtime songs, ballads, and a few stories completed this group of records. We felt when left St. Simons island that we had turned back time forty or fifty years and heard and recorded some genuine Afro-American folk-music of the middle of the nineteenth century. Our next stop was in Eatonville, Florida, where Miss Hurston was born and brought up. [Eatonville was the first incorporated Negro town in American and for the reason, has a different sort of life than any other community Negro community I have so far visited.] Miss Hurston introduced us there to the finest Negro guitarist I have heard so far, better even than Lead Belly although of a slightly different breed. His records along with a more usual group of spiritual, and work-songs, and childrens games were made up and we moved on to Belle Glade on Lake Okeechobee in the Everglades. About ten or fifteen years ago the Government drained this section of the everglades and opened it up for farming. The soil is rick, black muck, so acid that it burns a sensitive skin, and out of this soil you can almost see the plants as they grow. In the bean-picking season, for let it be known that this section of the world furnishes most of the beans and cabbages for the Northern markets in the winter, Bella Glade, a town of two or three thousand inhabitants, swarms with from ten to fifteen thousand workers from all over the South. Most of these are Negroes. And folk-songs are as thick as marsh mosquitoes. For the first three or four days we recorded work-songs, ballads, spirituals of the usual sort, them Miss Hurston introduced us into a small community of Bahaman Negroes. We then heard our first fire-dances and for the first time, although we and other collectors and searched the South, and the heavy, exciting rhythm of a drum. The dances and the songs were the closest to African I had ever heard in America. These, along with a set of spirituals and chanties new to me, we recorded and then moved on to Miami for a little rest. Up to this time we had mad about ninety records, [of the most interesting and valuable sort] In Miami [after discussing] we decided [to] that the only thing for us to do was to make a visit, however, brief, to the Bahamas where we could hear the fire dances in their own country. Here we came and here we have remained ever since [charmed] bewitched by these fairy islands and busy recording the livest and most varied folk-culture we had yet run into. Miss 2 Hurston, who had been, so to speak, our guide and interpreter in Georgia and Florida, who had led us into fields we might never have found alone, who had generously helped us to record songs + singers she had herself discovered, could not, for various reasons, come with us to Nassau; but we felt that up until the time she left us, she had been almost entirely responsible for the great success of our trip and for our going into the Bahamas. Our first week in the Bahamas we stayed on Cat Island where the spirits of the dead and voodoo men walk by day and by night the drum begins to roll for the fire-dances. Here we recorded - 1. Rushing songs - a form of the holy shout where the congregation shuffles round and round the church singing, clapping, and stamping on the floor. When the Baptist church wants to raise money, it has a "rush" and the church is sure to be packed. Instead of a collection being taken, each "rusher" is supposed to drop a penny or a thruppence in the plate as he shuffles by - The Boys [chan] break their shillings & sixpences up in to half-pences and distribut[ed] it among the young women. Then they all sail away. When I see you next, I'll teach you how to rush. It's a great sport. The melodies are very fine & some of them quite old. 2)Anthems — a[n] Bahaman adaption and elaboration of American spiritual singing. 3) Jumping dances. A ring is formed. The goat-skin drum, taut from heating over a fire of cocoa-nut leaves, begins its peculiar jerky thump. The girls begin to clap and raise a song [su] that consists of an endless & timeless repitition on a simple tune [to] of such a [pr] sentence as — "See Uncle Lou when he falls in the well." A boy leaps from the circle out into the moon-light] lit ring. A dramatic, [sensu] angular, sensual posture & [he is ] then he flings away in his dance, his own personal move, as much his property as his [hat or shoes] skin. For a minute he dances then, when the drummer by muffling his beat, has told him to leave the ring, the dancer stops his "move" short [and] before a girl. She has her dance & then "goes for" a Boy. Thus the dance goes on free, lovely, primitive, and , it seems to me completely African. There are hundreds of jumping dance songs. 4) And then there are the ring-plays, hundreds of [also] [??] too, calling for a different kind of dancing a different drum rhythm. 5) Along we this material which was so largely [Negroid] of Negro origin, we recorded [five] a number of fine English ballad airs. We left Cat Island on the bi-weekly mailboat to return to Nassau, not because we had exhausted or even begun to hear all the material, but because our batteries had discharged and something had gone wrong with the recording instrument. [As soon as] A do or so later in Nassau, we [had] were recording again - Jumping dances, ring play, Quadrilles, anthems and the songs of the streets - a genuine, casual Ballad lore that concerns itself with the latest street fight or love affair. [Th] Three weeks ago, [Miss] when we came to town, I was calling Miss Bamick "sweetie pie" as a joke. Today, out on the streets, one hears nothing but "sweetie pie" bandied back & forth and there are already two songs with ["sw] simply riddled with "Sweetie pie's" Here, you see, there is a live, flowing, vital folk culture and the collector live in a continual state of confusion & exhilaration. [We have mor] A week ago we returned from another trip to the Outer Islands — this time to Andros. There we had spent another week where songs & stories & superstitions were pouring in from [our g?ld] morning until night. [This time] On Andros, since the native dances have more or less gone out of fashion, we recorded nothing but the folk tales - variants of European fairy stories, shot through, as must have been their originals with songs & dances. [These songs are of African] Some of these songs are fragments of old English ballads & see [* x*] shanties; some African songs; some from Jamaica, Haiti & Cuba. Altogether they are the [lovliest?] folk-melodies I have recorded and in their [se] dramatic settings are perfect. About 20 records of this sort. Back here again, [we began] so exhausted we could scarcely stagger, [we began ag\ found an old lady whose mother had come from Africa. Fri her we recorded 35 African melodies. Then a group of Haitians strolled our way and [sang all] gave us ten fine records of their singing. Songs & people pour in on us all day every day until we have to stop them in our weariness. Altogether we have made, despite trouble with the machine, lacks of charging facilities for our batteries, and shortage of blank records, some ninety double-face records since we have been on the islands. With a month's experience behind us and a fair wind we can make easily a hundred more before we leave and get besides some fine movies of the native dances. The material here, besides being interesting in itself will have great importance in the study of Afro-American music, since it represents a mixture of African and English cultures at a much earlier stage than can now be found anywhere in America. The absorption of the Negro into the white civilization has gone on very slowly on these islands and is, I should say, where it was in America about the time of the American revolution. I hope to see you face to face some time and tell you a little more clearly and in [d] detail about this material. But for now this report is quite long, enough I think With best regards to Mrs. Strunk & yourself and best wished for a pleasant trip, I am, Sincerely yours, Alan Lomax 30 Gansevoort Street New York City 12 September 1935 Miss F. McFarland, Director, Music Projects, Works Progress Administration, Port Authority Building, New York City. My dear Miss McFarland: The possibility of the Works Progress Administration approving a project in American folk music has been this week suggested to me by Mr. Herbert Halpert. On the basis of your interest in American culture, I should like to submit a project that will be an important contribution to the scientific study of American folk song and to American culture. I have discussed this project with many musicians and students of folk song, and it has generally been agreed that it is vital to the study, preservation and proper presentation of American folk music. As you perhaps know, my father, John A. Lomax, has been for twenty years a collector of American folk-songs and was the compiler of the first book of indigenous folk-songs issued in this country -- "Cowboy Songs" -- which still remains the authoritative book in its field. For the last two years my father has been Honorary Consultant in Folk Songs at the Library of Congress and under a grant from the Carnegie Foundation has been, by means of a high fidelity electric recording instrument, engaged in recording folk songs in the South. During this time I have been his assistant and have collaborated with him on two books, "American Ballads and Folk Songs", issued last fall by the Macmillan Company, and "The Songs of the Lead Belly", to appear in the near future. Our collection of recordings, made up of Negro folk songs from all over the South, French folk songs from Louisiana, Mexican material from Texas, songs from the mountain whites, and a large and interesting collection made by myself last summer in the Bahamas, is deposited in the Archives of the Library of Congress. But to make use of this material in furthering either the scientific study of folk songs or the composition of an American music which should be based on our extensive and Miss McFarland Page Two beautiful folk traditions, it is first necessary that a careful musical analysis of the available recorded material be made. There are few musicians capable for this highly technical and precise work, which consists in the studies of subleties most of which are foreign to conventional music; and yet it is those subleties, often unnoticed or "corrected" by musicians, that make a folk-song what it is. The project I suggest is the establishment of course, which will at the same time be a research and artistic project, in the transcription of folk music. This class should work under the supervision of some expert in the field of primitive music, most preferably of Dr. Herzog of Yale University; and use as its raw material the collection of records at the Library of Congress supplemented by material from Yale, Harvard and Columbia. The results of a year-long project of this sort would be manifold and important. 1)There would be in this country a group of experts in the transcription of folk music whose services in the study of primitive and folk music would be invaluable. 2)An analysis of American folk music on a large scale would have been made which analysis would be basic to all other work in that field. 3)A group of young performers and composers would, perhaps, be on the track of a genuine American music-- operas, sympnonies and so forth based on American folk music. Fitting arrangements for American folk-songs, that we are sorely in need of, could certainlybe written by these musicians whey they had become thoroughly acquainted with the style of this music 4) Certainly a few Amricanmusicians would know how to perfrom American folk songs. In the hope that this project will win your approval and interest, I am, Sincerely yours, Alan Lomax Lafayette, Louisiana, Friday Nov. Dear Alan, I'm all apologies for having neglected your comprehensive outline of folk songs, so long - I'm terrifically busy. First I joined an art class in order not to have only my thesis on my poor little brain and thought i should only be entertained and lo and behold there is some work to it. Later I became substitute in the school near me, and my present sick teacher promises to be out a long time and I am working for a terrifically low salary, but fell honor bound to continue. I study colonial history, American inventions. Europe, and Africa several hours a day. My thesis is progressing along though and by next week, I should be able to ship it for corrections in its entirety. If I were not afraid to lose parts en route to Baton Rouge, I should send you pages coped, as conditions I'm keeping most pages, so I can put the thing together if my manuscript be lost. This is my outline: 1. Title page 2. Acknowledgements 3. Preface 4. Table of contents Chap 1 { 5. A list of La. Fr. Folk Songs Already Published with sources. {6. A list of La. Fr. Folk Songs on commercial records. {7. A list of [rec] songs of this thesis taken from records for the Library of Congress and a short account of what you and your father [seem to be] are doing. [I mean I don't say much]. Chap 2- 8. An account of experiences collecting songs. Chap 3 9. Louisiana French Folk Songs } Chap 4 10. Cajun Folk Songs } Chap 5. 11. Creole Folk Songs } In the last three chapters there is first a discussion of characteristics of songs of that group then the songs classed mainly according to text. Thus: Louisiana French Folk Songs 1. Discussion 2. Songs about Sheep and a Shepherdess 3. Lullabies 4 Songs of Love and Marriage 5. Comic songs about Little Men 6. Drinking Songs 7. Miscellaneous Cajun Folk Songs 1. Discussion 2. Songs of Love and Marriage 3. Songs in which the Lover Goes to Texas 4. Songs that mention the "jug on the pommel of the saddle". 5. Songs of Animals 6. Songs naming people or places 7. Songs from the Civil War 8. Miscellaneous Creole Folk Songs 1. Discussion 2. Songs of Love and Marriage. 3. Songs of Satire and Ridicule 4. Songs From the Civil War 5. Songs that Mention Food 6. Miscellaneous. [*I'm sorry about not being able to talk on your fine points now; when I get over this work, I shall. Sorry about the change of ink. but be indulgent. My best regards to you, to Shirley, and to the cute little Patsy. Sincerely, Irene*] over herself. She's the only one who can [do the job] adequately Pretty sketchy, but sane, Write to him to have transcriptions from records typed so she can check them A note about lectures: Dr. Payne write that he was arranging a book in Dallas through the professor of folk lore at S.M. U., Brooks, [I] but gave me the opportunity to take over if I cared. I wrote Brooks. I wrote Beatty with whom I was arranging a lecture. Brooks replies that he had never heard of the fact Dr. Payne mentions. Beatty replies, "That makes it easy on us. We will have someone in Sandburg's place since S. is coming anyway. We are booking Stork Young." What kind of a nut is this Payne any way. Damn him to be scorched. The [two] three dates I have hopes of , good hopes - Sam Houston, Stephen F. Austin, Tulsa University. Transcribed and reviewed by contributors participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.