~A SOUTHERN MOSAIC~
THE WORK OF JOHN A VERY LOMAX AND RUBY TERRILL LOMAX
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Submitted by: Cecile Johnson
Good evening and welcome to A SOUTHERN MOSAIC…A title chosen from the 1939 John and Ruby T Lomax Southern Recording Trip of the same name (but more on that later…). Just like an artistic mosaic~ a design of fragmeted smaller pieces connected to make a larger image ; or a cultural mosaic describing a patchwork of co-existing groups, languages and cultures~ we find that the lives of John Avery Lomax and Ruby Terrill Lomax intersected, connected and cut across the lines of our own hometown of Denton, Texas, shaped the beginnings of the Delta Kappa Gamma Society and piqued my own personal interest in the field recordings and preservation of authentic American folk music. It was not until recently that I had discovered the connection with these two people and what a coincidence that all of these factors should come together here in both my work in music, my association with Delta Kappa Gamma and Denton, Texas.
So who are John Avery Lomax and Ruth Terrill Lomax? John Lomax was born September 23rd, 1867 in Goodman, Mississippi. He had been collecting songs by jotting down lyrics to cowboy songs he heard since his childhood in Bosque County, Texas. He studied English literature at UT Austin, but it was while he was at Harvard that two professors encouraged him to document his native folk life in word and song. The resulting book Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads was first published in 1910 to critical and popular acclaim.
John Lomax married Bess Brown in 1903 and had 4 children, Shirley, John Jr., Alan and Bess, all of whom would help him in his later folk music research. Lomax for a time taught English at Texas A & M Commerce and co-founded the Texas Folklore Society, sharing with its charter members a sense that Texas’ rich folklore of stories and music need to be documented and preserved. At first he feared that the new technology of the early 20th century the radio and gramophone might signal the end of the time-honored tradition of transmitting music and stories on a personal level one person to the next. He was afraid that the purity and intimacy of traditional music might be lost forever. Yet, ironically Lomax would come to rely on the latest technological advances to document the very oral traditions he originally feared might destroy it. Ultimately Lomax would collect more than 10,000 recordings for the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress and serve as its curator.
For a time, John Lomax taught at UT Austin but became embroiled in a political battle and was fired in 1917. He abandoned his folk ways for a banking job in Chicago, but when his wife Bess Brown Lomax died in 1931, Lomax returned to his full-time folklore studies as both a lecturer and researcher.
The MacMillan Publishing Company accepted his proposal for an all-inclusive anthology of American ballads and folksongs. Interesting to note that this same company continues to publish music texts and the state adopted textbook that we use at Woodrow Wilson and throughout the Denton ISD elementary music program.
While at the Library of Congress, Lomax made arrangements to travel the country recording songs of the ordinary folk to be added to the Archive. The Library actually provided him with the equipment; a portable disc-cutting recorder, wax cylinders, extra batteries, 12-inch acetate discs and sapphire needles to be replaced as necessary. Thus began a 10-year relationship with the Library of Congress that would involve his son Alan and to some extent the entire Lomax family.
With a grant from the American Council of Learned Societies, Lomax set out on his first recording expedition with son Alan then 18 years old. They toured Southern prison farms recording work songs, reels, ballads and blues from inmates whom they believed represented a pure isolated musical culture “untouched” and “untouchable” by the modern world. One of their great discoveries occurred in July of 1933 when they recorded an African American 12-string guitar player by the name of Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Leadbelly at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola.
While traveling Lomax began courting Ruby Terrill by mail. They would be married on July 21st, 1934 in Commerce, Texas. Ruby Terrill was born and raised in Denton. She became the 2nd wife of John Lomax but perhaps is better known in her own right as one of the 12 founders of Delta Kappa Gamma in 1929. She served the University of Texas as Dean of Women and Associate Professor of Classical Languages holding leadership roles in church, civic and social organizations. She continued working at the University, taking care of home and family and assuming more duties for her husband’s research as well. In 1937, she decided to exchange her academic pursuits and frenzied Austin life for the intellectual and more frenetic pace of life on the road with her husband, ballad hunter John A. Lomax.
The Lomax family made their home outside Dallas (723 West Oak Street in Denton) called “The House in the Woods” as their permanent address. But in 1939 they drove away in Ruby’s Plymouth on a scouting tour of the Southern United States with the heavy recording equipment in the trunk. Ruby’s role in the success of the 1939 Southern Mosaic recording Trip was invaluable. She composed nearly all of the written documentation related to the collection. She listened to countless songs and stories, cataloguing and transcribing the contents of each disc on the record’s dust jacket just as the recording was taking place. She transcribed the song lyrics, composed and typed much of the 307 pages of field notes. Her voice can even be heard on a number of recordings announcing the performer’s name, date and location of the recording. She even took some of the trip’s photographs.
The 1939 recording expedition began in Texas stopping in 12 counties in 7 1/2 weeks (more than half of the trip). The Lomaxes captured on tape some 350 blues songs, corridos (Mexican /Spanish ballads), fiddle tunes, lullabies, play-party songs, and railroad, riverboat and prison work songs. They recorded in settings ranging from storage garages in Houston, schoolyards in Brownsville and prison work farms in Sugarland. In 3 months they traveled 6,502 miles through Texas, Arkansas, Alabama, South and North Carolina, Florida and Georgia. In June of 1939, they deposited 142 discs at the Library of Congress. These recordings are now made available on-line through the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress in Washington. The collection’s 686 sound recordings from more than 300 performers include the field notes, dust jackets, correspondence and song texts representing a musical heritage of American folksongs the Lomaxes have graciously preserved in posterity for all current and future generations.
After retiring to Texas in the early 1940’s, John Lomax continued his writing and collecting activities with his contacts and son Alan at the Library of Congress. He died in 1948. Ruby remained in Texas until her own death in 1961.
You can read and learn more about the Lomax’s work in books such as his:
Negro Songs as Sung by Lead belly
American Ballads and Folksongs
Our Singing Country
Folk Song USA
Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads
And his biography:
Adventures of a Ballad Hunter
The combined efforts and the body of work of John Avery Lomax and Ruby Terrill Lomax have certainly enriched the lives of music teachers interested in preserving and sharing our American music heritage. And how wonderful that as women educators, we weave our own mosaic tapestry in shaping and sharing such educational pursuits in the name of Ruby Terrill Lomax and Delta Kappa Gamma.
Thank you……………..
Cecile Johnson
OAKE Southern Division President
cjohnson2@dentonisd.org
1-940-369-4543 (W) 1-940-382-1614(H)
Music specialist
Woodrow Wilson Elementary
Denton, TX