The Lomaxes, and other collectors of their time and also decades later, found some of the most powerful vernacular music of the American South in the region's oppressive and violent prison system. The songs they found there, John and Alan Lomax...
In 1947, using his own Presto disc recording machine, Alan Lomax recorded bluesmen Big Bill Broonzy (1893-1958), Memphis Slim (1915-1988), and Sonny Boy Williamson (1914-1948) at Decca Studios in New York City, after they had given a concert at...