Word: lomax
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...when Library of Congress Folklorist John Lomax recorded Lead Belly's famed pardon petition,† he put Irene on the other side. Music-loving Governor 0. K. Allen is said to have pardoned the old reprobate as much for Irene as anything. Until Lead Belly died in Manhattan last year, he sang Irene as his theme song...
...stage of the Chamber Music Auditorium of the Library of Congress the oldtime pianist sat at the keyboard, facing an open microphone. "Mister Morton," said Alan Lomax, assistant curator of the Library's American Folk Song Archive, "how about the beginning? Tell about where you were born and how you got started . . . and maybe keep playing piano while you talk...
Famed Creole Pianist-Composer Ferdinand ("Jelly Roll") Morton (King Porter Stomp, Jelly Roll Blues, Alabama Bound), "the father of hot piano," talked and played almost every day for a month. Folklorist Lomax, co-author with his late father, John A. Lomax, of Folk Song U.S.A., etc., listened and recorded. What he heard (and later checked up on) adds up to more than mere reminiscent fodder for jazz fans. Mister Jelly Roll (Duell, Sloan & Pearce; $3.50), published last week, is also the full-flavored story of a raucous, diamond-studded era of U.S. history, as seen and told by a mulatto...
...beginning for Ferdinand La Menthe (he changed his name to Morton because "I didn't want to be called 'Frenchy' ") was much like the end. He was born hard by the cribs of New Orleans' tough and fabled Storyville. When Author Lomax met him in 1938, he was pounding the piano in a dingy Washington nightspot. That same year, Jelly Roll was stabbed in a brawl there, and he died broke in Los Angeles...