Family associations - Alan Lomax, Sam Hinton, Pete Seeger

One of the many reasons I remain in love with Austin is because it contains so many amazing relics of Texas cultural history. I find it extra fortuitous that one of my years-long obsessions, the Lomax family, has such an entwined history with the town I love. On Saturday I drove over to the Center for American History at UT, so I could spend some time with the John A. Lomax Family Papers, which are archived there. I don't know how it had escaped me that they have such a great collection here. I suppose I figured that the Library of Congress has everything cool that I'll ever want to write about. But do I live on the East Coast? Nope. Luckily, Texas has enough to keep me happy.


I've been writing a term research paper for one of my history classes; about the history of the cowboy ballad and its place in the development of a folkloric America. It's a basic research paper...not too detailed and only ten pages long. In it I interlace the history of song collection as an early 20th century fascination and tie the collection process itself in with the development of frontier songs, folk ballads and the braggadocio-laden "tall tale" tradition of the American cowboy.


Naturally, as with most music for which I find myself most entranced, I found that the work of John A. Lomax and his son, Alan Lomax, is the hub of this particular cultural wagon wheel (one with many, many spokes). In my paper I used "American Ballads and Folk Songs" by both John and Alan, as well as John Lomax's 1947 personal memoir "Adventures of a Ballad Hunter," to provide good primary sources for both the songs and their systematic documentation.


History by its very definition always an extremely subjective study...and the Lomaxes intentionally (and sometimes inadvertently) shaped our country's musical history with their work. I find their documentation processes compelling, especially when compared to that of my uncle Sam's autobiography, where he outlays his own kind of systematic and scientific approach to both documentation of vaudeville and folk music cultures, and also of biological species that he encountered during his lifetime. What a fount of information, and all just waiting for me to tie it in!



Although the paper is already written and I don't intend to use the John A. Lomax Family Papers as direct source material for said paper, it doesn't really matter. That's just one paper, which doesn't compare to almost fifteen years of intense personal curiosity about the Lomaxes. I had to ask to see some of those boxes.


So here is what I discovered in the Center for American History archives on Saturday:


There are countless (COUNTLESS) handwritten notes by John A. Lomax (whose handwriting is slanted near beyond legibility!) and other individuals. On the back of almost all of these thin, yellowed pages are written the names of the people who contributed the song. Fascinating!


I happily unearthed several drafts of "Adventures of a Ballad Hunter", from roughly-scratched-on paper in that slanty writing to typewritten and proofread pages from the final manuscript. I loved finding out the things that were scratched out and never made it into the book that I so love.


I also found a funny little note from 1944 in which John asked his son Alan for feedback on his draft. See the picture!!!


"Dear Alan: Do you think the enclosed can be made to do for an introduction. Look it over and speak your mind. - Father"


- to which another handwritten note by his (obviously hipper) son, replied:


"This is swell - a little sententious toward the end."


Awesome.


It made me tear up at the obvious mutual respect they had for one another. It made me wish my dad were still living so he could look MY stuff over. God only knows he would love what I'm doing now.


Let's see - what else did I find out? I found out that Alan Lomax had between one and three young women writing to him over a period of ten years (for most of which he was married to Elizabeth Lyttleton Harold). He had a couple of other wives and loves over the years (Shirley Collins being one of them), but none were noted in the signature lines of the letters that *I* read that day.


I was just sort of leafing through everything, trying to keep a snappier pace because there was so damned MUCH of everything and the CAH closed at 2pm. But when I opened Alan's folders and I saw a yellowed paper with a first line that scrawled, "Alan - I got your heartless letter today"...whoa! What?


I found myself embroiled in the seperate dramas of a woman named Faith and a woman named Mishka (although I was writhing with guilty curiosity for a while since the first few of Mishka's letters looked like they were signed "Mike"). The letters were all about their love and admiration for Alan and his having fallen in love with other people...among other anecdotes from which I might gleen some further interesting facts, at a later date. It was rather like seeing an archaic paper episode of "Jerry Springer" - I don't particularly enjoy watching it unfold, but it's too engrossing to ignore!


Another thing which I didn't know (although I should have!) was that John Lomax was good friends and a colleague of Charles and Ruth Seeger, who were also music and cultural historians of the era. What's interesting is that they were in turn the parents of Pete Seeger (and no doubt the source of his starting repertoire).


What's even more interesting is that I had dinner with Pete Seeger when I was a teeneager, because my uncle Sam Hinton was playing a multiple-act folk music bill in Kansas City with Pete Seeger. I know they were lifelong friends. I also know that Alan and Pete knew each other all their lives on account of their parents' friendship, and I knew that Alan and Sam also had a friendship hearkening back almost to when Sam lived in Texas in the 30s (although I think they met after that, in the early to mid 1940s). I talked with Sam after Alan died in 2002, just to see how he was doing. He missed his friend, of course.


I would find it enjoyable and incalculably rewarding to research and write an extensive piece on the history/dynamics of the lives and friendship of Sam Hinton, Alan Lomax and Peter Seeger, who shared a lifelong love of music and folklore and maintained personal and professional associations with one another for almost 50 years. Along with, of course, the help of many sources including the Lomax Family Papers, Sam's autobiography, and Adam Miller's biography (which I have yet to obtain).


I also skimmed over some very lengthy letters from Woody Guthrie to Alan, which also warrant closer scrutiny in the future.


I am so thankful to my father and my father's family for teaching me about Sam and his legacy (and my grandfather Jon Gnagy's too), and for passing on to me a passionate love for history, culture, education and music. I also thank the the powers that be that I now live in a town that enables me t0 drive only 12 minutes to find a dusty, crumbling wealth of information in 40+ closely guarded boxes of papers and photographs that I can touch, smell, and learn from.

"A Naturalist in Show Business/I Helped Kill Vaudeville"

So I've been working with TSHA Online to get some assignments that I can really get excited about.

I had suggested Sam Hinton to their research editor because 1) he's my uncle, 2) he's recently deceased (a TSHA rule), and 3) he spent a fair amount of time in Texas.

This was agreed upon so I emailed Leanne, Sam's daughter, to see if she could send me excerpts from one or two of the biographies I had heard were in the works for him. She sent me his unpublished autobiography that he wrote in 2001. It's called "A Naturalist in Show Business (or) I Helped Kill Vaudeville."

FLOORED.

Although this might be considered too esoteric for some, I personally was riveted since page one (of 324). Sam Hinton moved to Texas at the age of 12 in the late 1920s. He worked road construction. He attended Texas A&M. He learned songs from old black sharecroppers. He played with snakes. Early on he decided that his life will be devoted to two things equally: making music, and the study of biological science. And you know what? He did it!

As head of Scripps Aquarium in San Diego, he touched more shark guts than anyone I know personally (I think!)...he also helped father the mid-20th century folk boom. The book is so equally divided that if one were not eager and/or cognizant of the need for some people to fully live two lives (as I am), it might prove tiresome or confusing...only half as interesting. Luckily I'm a zoology nerd as well as a music person, so I'm right there in the fire with him.

Here's an example: Sam will begin a chapter by recounting the cantankerous ramblings of an old vaudeville legend who was sitting on the theater back stoop and kvetching about "the biz"...then just when you start to shake your head in wonder that he even knew such a legend, he segues abruptly into saying "meanwhile, I thought it prudent to walk around the side of the building to the alleyway, where one of the girls had reported seeing a large striped snake by the dumpsters. I found him and it turned out to be a calm-demeanored specimen of Lampropeltis triangulum, or the common Milk Snake...."

Now you have an idea of what I mean. It's amazing...the things he did, the people he met, the things he saw!

Right now I'm also taking a summer class and working on a research paper for said class - about the history of the cowboy ballad. This is great and I can use plenty of the Lomax library (Alan, John, both) about ballad hunting...but really I can't wait to take Sam's autobiography and make some anecdotes known to the public via the TSHA website.

My Grand Plan

Over the past few years I've simultaneously balanced (or imbalanced) my musical life through several bands, and by researching and writing about musicians from days gone by.

I've known for several years now that I'm at a crossroads in my life; now that I've achieved some stability for myself, I need to make a shift from what I DO do to what I WANT to do. Does that make sense? In a nutshell, I am a musician, music buff and music historian who works at a deliciously cubicle-y day job in Clinical Research.

Luckily, my educational level hasn't seemed to matter much up to this point, as I have been chasing some of these scholastic pursuits and been published numerous times. But the way I see it, it can only go on like that up to a point. I mean, who wants their biography written by someone who doesn't even have an Associates' Degree? I cannot be taken seriously as a historian unless I have the academic creds to back it up. And naturally, I know very little compared to what I need to know... I must learn about it in more depth, not just from Half-Price Books, 'zines and liner notes.

Did I mention I'm also a total academic nerd who loves writing papers, school, deadlines, and all that schtuff?

After my father died in 1997, I wanted to take a break from school and I found myself with my first band. It felt so right, although I was really scared of the possibilities. After some fits and starts, I finally found the group that got me some recognition (The Casey Sisters) and creative satisfaction, and I started to really get on a roll. And then when Swedish record labels came a-knockin,' it was like...forget school! Why not move to Austin, get a record deal, make some albums, play a bunch of festivals and tours in Europe? School will still be there when I get back.

And there I stayed for ten years.

One day about a year and a half ago, I found myself on the website for the Center for Texas Music History (CTMH) at Texas State University - San Marcos. I sat, idly clicking and wishful thinking...until I saw on the webpage that one of my gal pals, a super musician, was listed the Director of Programs for CTMH at TSU-San Marcos. I mean, I hadn't seen her in a while, but DAMN! She had my dream job! I literally got goosebumps and FELT my life change at that moment (even though my butt was sore from sitting in my stupid computer chair).

I wasted no time in contacting her, and we met up soon after. We had a glass of wine and I showed her a few of my writings and told her what I wanted to do with my life, and how I hoped to make the transition. Lo and behold, she got tears in her eyes, said how amazed she was by my interest, and promptly gave me a writing assignment to be published on her website. Ever since she's been my mentor and my cheerleader. I love her.

I've now started planning my education in great detail. While taking core courses at ACC and working full time, I've been planning for a transfer to Texas State in the fall of 2010. My goal is clear: B.A in History, M.A. in Public History. Oh, how I thrill at the thought of taking an Archiving class, or a class on the history of country music, or a class on how to research and write historically-oriented publications. We're talking drooling here.

What were previously my attempts to FEEL like a scholar are now slowly being realized. Rather than just writing for 'zines, I'm now a writer for Texas State Historical Association (TSHA), which is bona fide and has been around since eighteen ninety-fucking-seven. I'm ready!

Once of my articles is about to be posted on TSHA Online; it's about Ronnie Dawson and is the article my friend assigned me last year. The TSHA editor then asked if I would write on another group...and there are more to follow, or so she told me on the phone the other day. What? You got it, lady! So now I'm researching The Levee Singers.

Later on will come some information on a cool idea I had that my mentor says will get me on all the documentaries as a "talking head." Who doesn't want to be a Talking Head? I mean, even David Byrne and Tina Weymouth wanted to at some point. Haha.

Swingin' Back In.....

It's been 3 years since I last posted on my "No Future" music blog. I suppose I should feel ashamed, but I'm not really. Aside from scholastic and work and personal endeavors, I have more blogs, FB and Myspace profiles than I know what to do with.

HOWEVER - my musical life has taken on a lovely new direction, and this blog is now going to chronicle my journey.

Off we go!