Lomax, John Avery definition of Lomax, John Avery in the Free Online Encyclopedia.

Lomax, John Avery (lō`măks), 1867–1948, American folklorist, b. Goodman, Miss. Lomax's first book, Cowboy Songs (1910), contained for the first time in print such songs as "The Old Chisholm Trail," "Git Along Home Little Dogies," and "Home on the Range." Collecting and recording songs in Southern penitentiaries, he discovered Leadbelly Leadbelly, nickname of Huddie William Ledbetter, 1885–1949, American singer, b. Mooringsport, La. While wandering through Louisiana and Texas, he earned a living by playing the guitar for dances.
..... Click the link for more information. , who provided the material for his Negro Folk Songs as Sung by Lead Belly (1936), which he compiled with his son,

Alan Lomax, 1915–2002, b. Austin, Tex. In addition to the Leadbelly collection, father and son collaborated in compiling American Ballads and Folk Songs (1934), Our Singing Country (1941), and, with Charles and Ruth Crawford Seeger, Folk Song: U.S.A. (1947).

The younger Lomax began his career as a folklorist and musicologist as a teenager when he recorded folk artists visited by his father. He was the first person to record not only Leadbelly, but such musical greats as Woody Guthrie Arlo Guthrie, 1947–, b. New York City, is also a folk singer and composer. He is best known for "Alice's Restaurant," a rambling, witty song that was the basis of a motion picture in which he starred (1969).
..... Click the link for more information. and Muddy Waters Waters, Muddy, 1915–83, African-American blues singer and guitarist, b. Rolling Fork, Miss., as McKinley Morganfield. As a teenager he began singing and playing traditional country blues on harmonica and guitar, and in 1941 he was recorded by Alan Lomax for the
..... Click the link for more information. . He also compiled The Folk Songs of North America (1960) and wrote a memoir of his Southern travels, The Land Where the Blues Began (1993).

Bibliography

See J. A. Lomax's autobiography, Adventures of a Ballad Hunter (1947).