Once Lomax had recorded several of Ledbelly’s songs, he sent them to the governor of Louisiana who granted the musician clemency. Keep in mind that in those days, a Black man could be jailed for merely looking at a White woman, so its safe to say that many African Americans did not deserve to be in prison. On a trip to Angola Prison in 1933, Lomax met an individual named Ledbelly (also spelled Lead Belly) who accompanied his singing on a twelve-string guitar. Library of Congress, American Folklife Center Lomax’s recording machine was so large he had to remove the backseat of his car to put it in the trunk. He had to remove the back seat of his car to fit the whole apparatus in the trunk. The machine and its two large batteries weighed 300 pounds. He traveled the Southern United States with a large recording machine that produced aluminum phonograph discs, which would survive the heat of the summer. Later he turned to the songs of African Americans. Lomax was a song hunter interested in documenting cowboy songs. In the early 20th century, ethnographers (scholars who observe the social and cultural patterns of people) made their way into the countryside. One of the individuals who researched the Blues was John Lomax, a scholar from the University of Texas. The workers fooled the plantation owners into thinking that their music was the “‘happy’ music of hard working slaves.” “Call and response” was often used as a means of communication among the workers in the fields. Many of these people had been removed to the United States as slaves, and before the Civil War they labored in difficult situations on the Southern plantations. Rhythm and Blues developed from the music called the Blues, which grew out of African American religious music and work songs sung by African-Americans who lived mostly in the South. Listen to this video and listen for the edge of the blues played against the fast excitement of Rock and Roll. Ray Charles was an important bridge between the Blues and Rock and Roll.
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