Re: [ARSCLIST] John Lomax Library of Congress recordings

[Matthew Barton <mbarton@xxxxxxx>]

In the pre-tape era, the Library did make disc copies to order, I've
seen shellacs, and glass and aluminum based discs as well. The original
of the 1933 recording you have would have been on aluminum. Everything
else would have been first recorded to acetate, although there's a
chance the 1937 is also aluminum.

 There were some commercially issued 78s from the Library in the 1940s,
but that particular song by Rich Amerson was not among them.

Matthew Barton
American Folklife Center
The Library of Congress
101 Independence Ave., SE
Washington, DC 20540-4610
phone: (202) 707-1733
fax: (202) 707-2076
email: mbarton@xxxxxxx

>>> stevena@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 1/3/2005 1:47:27 PM >>>
Gracias. I'm reading as we speak.

Any idea about what the discs would have been made from? I'm
suspecting
they were request copies made by the Library of Congress. The pieces
*sob* sound like shellac.

Steven Austin
Stevena@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx



-----Original Message-----
From: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List
[mailto:ARSCLIST@xxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Matthew Barton
Sent: Monday, January 03, 2005 8:57 AM
To: ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] John Lomax Library of Congress recordings

A good place to start learning about John Lomax would be the American
Folklife Center's website at the Library of Congress:

www.loc.gov/folklife

There's a good biographical article at:

http://www.loc.gov/folklife/fcn/Fall99.txt

You'll find other information at the Folklife Center website, as well
as a link to all of the recordings from a 1939 Southern field
recording
trip he undertook with his wife Ruby Terril Lomax. He wrote an
autobiography called "Adventures of a Ballad Hunter" (MacMillan, 1947,
out of print). There's a recent biography by Nolan Porterfield as
well.
Quite a few of his recordings are available commercially, many on
Rounder Records--some in their "Archive of Folk Culture" series,
others
in the Alan Lomax Collection series (Alan was John's son).

Matthew Barton
American Folklife Center
The Library of Congress
101 Independence Ave., SE
Washington, DC 20540-4610
phone: (202) 707-1733
fax: (202) 707-2076
email: mbarton@xxxxxxx

>>> stevena@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 1/3/2005 11:24:49 AM >>>
Greetings again.

Here is the second of two inquiries.

>From some thrift store in the distant past, I acquired two discs from
"the Library of Congress Recording Library." These were 10-inch discs
with paper labels. The information on the label notes included (for
example):

Library of Congress Recording Laboratory
Division of Music
"Shack Bully Waking-Up Song"
Sung by Richard Amersch at Livingston, Alabama
Part A of 2
78RPM
Order No 1322 A1
Recorded by John A. Lomax 1937
AAFS

Could someone recommend a resource for learning more about Mr. Lomax's
recordings?

Also, can anyone tell me what material may have been used to make the
discs? This is the sad part of the post. Stacked tightly between other
records in a temperature stable environment, the discs nonetheless
deteriorated to the extent that they crumbled upon touch. Hopefully,
these recordings were duplicated sometime before they found their way
to
the open market.

Steven Austin