Skip to main content

The Musical Melting Pot

April 2023
1min read

Sounds of the South A Musical Journey From the Georgia Sea Islands to the Mississippi Delta


recorded in the field by Alan Lomax, Atlantic 7 82496-2 (four CDs), $63.92 . CODE: BAT -4

In 1959 the folklorist Alan Lomax, who two decades before had recorded Jelly Roll Morton’s remarkable musical reminiscences (see above), spent the summer taping every sort of folk music of the American South. There, he wrote, “the rich and contrasting musical cultures of Northwest Europe and West Africa have lived together for more than 300 years, with little interference from learned or official culture. Their illegitimate offspring—minstrel songs, the spiritual, ragtime, jazz, blues, bluegrass, cajun, country, gospel and rock—became regional, then national, and finally international idioms.… These Sounds of the South, the outcome of two centuries of friendly musical exchange between blacks and whites, amount to something of a cultural triumph.” These recordings—originally issued on seven LPs and now squeezed onto four CDs—capture the broad variety of that music at a time when it was still vital in some of its most ancient traditions but could be captured on up-to-date stereo equipment. Lomax uncovered primal-sounding fife-and-drum music and unaccompanied blues singing that seemed to reach back centuries, ecstatic church choruses both black and white, chain gangs doing their prison work songs, virtuosic bluegrass bands, Ozark balladeers. Some of his discoveries went on to considerable fame; they included the blues singer Fred McDowell and the band the Mountain Ramblers. All of them are worth hearing. You won’t soon forget the sound of the residents of St. Simons Island, Georgia, singing as they once did when heaving timber onto old sailing schooners: “O Ratty, join the band—Hanh! O run along, come join the band.…” The set contains full and very informative notes in an extremely handsome book.

We hope you enjoy our work.

Please support this 72-year tradition of trusted historical writing and the volunteers that sustain it with a donation to American Heritage.

Donate

Stories published from "July/August 1994"

Authored by: The Editors

ONCE THE VERY HEART of downtown St. Louis, Union Station has come through hard times to celebrate its one hundredth birthday—and even though the trains don’t pull in here anymore, it’s still an urban draw

Authored by: The Editors

CIA Special Weapons & Equipment: Spy Devices of the Cold War

Authored by: The Editors

Mencken: A Biography

Authored by: The Editors

High Performance The Culture and Technology of Drag Racing, 1950-1990

Authored by: The Editors

The Life and Work of John A. Noble

Authored by: The Editors

Paul Revere’s Ride

Authored by: The Editors

Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture

Authored by: The Editors

The Marine Art of James Edward Buttersworth

Authored by: The Editors

The Age of Innocence

Authored by: The Editors

Coney Island

Featured Articles

The world’s most prominent actress risked her career by standing up to one of Hollywood’s mega-studios, proving that behind the beauty was also a very savvy businesswoman. 

Rarely has the full story been told about how a famed botanist, a pioneering female journalist, and First Lady Helen Taft battled reluctant bureaucrats to bring Japanese cherry trees to Washington. 

Often thought to have been a weak president, Carter was strong-willed in doing what he thought was right, regardless of expediency or the political fallout.

Why have thousands of U.S. banks failed over the years? The answers are in our history and politics.

In his Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln embodied leading in a time of polarization, political disagreement, and differing understandings of reality.