WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.120 --> 00:00:03.560 Welcome. This is Rebecca Shore for Radio Eye, and today 2 00:00:03.720 --> 00:00:06.799 I will be reading from a special edition of Smithsonian 3 00:00:06.919 --> 00:00:12.919 Magazine America at two fifty the Revolutionary Spark. As a reminder, 4 00:00:13.119 --> 00:00:16.320 radiois a reading service intended for people who are blind 5 00:00:16.800 --> 00:00:19.559 or have other disabilities that make it difficult to read 6 00:00:19.600 --> 00:00:23.440 printed material. Please join me now for the first article, 7 00:00:23.760 --> 00:00:27.719 which is the second part of Alan Lomax spent years 8 00:00:27.879 --> 00:00:31.399 traveling the country to record the sounds of America. The 9 00:00:31.519 --> 00:00:35.439 legacy of his obsession will live Forever by Chris Heath. 10 00:00:37.200 --> 00:00:41.640 Part one profiles Alan Lomax as a pioneering folklorist whose 11 00:00:41.719 --> 00:00:45.880 decades of field recordings preserved an extraordinary range of American 12 00:00:45.960 --> 00:00:50.719 musical traditions. While Lomax is often remembered for discovering or 13 00:00:50.880 --> 00:00:55.119 encouraging famous figures such as Muddy Waters, the author argues 14 00:00:55.159 --> 00:00:59.039 that his deeper achievement was not talent scouting, but documenting 15 00:00:59.079 --> 00:01:04.159 the everyday songs, stories, work, music, spirituals, and regional traditions 16 00:01:04.159 --> 00:01:08.000 of communities that might otherwise have vanished from cultural memory. 17 00:01:08.799 --> 00:01:12.599 The opening account of Lomax recording Muddy Waters in Mississippi 18 00:01:12.920 --> 00:01:17.040 shows how hearing himself on playback helped waters imagine a 19 00:01:17.159 --> 00:01:21.040 musical future, but it also framed that moment as only 20 00:01:21.120 --> 00:01:24.799 one part of Lomax's broader mission to capture the true 21 00:01:24.840 --> 00:01:29.760 history of America through sound. Part one traces Lomax's work 22 00:01:29.920 --> 00:01:34.920 through three major regions, the Mississippi Delta, coastal Georgia, and 23 00:01:35.000 --> 00:01:39.760 northern Michigan. In Georgia, his recordings with Zora, Neil Hurston 24 00:01:40.159 --> 00:01:44.560 and others preserved ring shouts, work songs, spirituals, and the 25 00:01:44.640 --> 00:01:47.840 voices of performers such as John Davis and Bessie Jones, 26 00:01:48.159 --> 00:01:52.280 whose singing later reached new audiences through recordings and sampling. 27 00:01:53.200 --> 00:01:58.519 In Michigan, Lomax documented lumberjack songs, immigrant musical traditions, lake 28 00:01:58.599 --> 00:02:04.120 sailor ballads, and other overlooked repertoires, despite financial straining, theft, 29 00:02:04.159 --> 00:02:09.400 and difficult travel. Together, these examples show Lomax's legacy as 30 00:02:09.439 --> 00:02:14.000 a vast archive of American expression, some famous, much obscure, 31 00:02:14.400 --> 00:02:17.840 but all valuable as a record of communities, histories, and 32 00:02:17.919 --> 00:02:21.560 human experience that continue to be available for anyone willing 33 00:02:21.599 --> 00:02:26.719 to listen. Here now is Part two. It's a blessing 34 00:02:26.759 --> 00:02:29.719 that we have both these recordings and some surviving field 35 00:02:29.759 --> 00:02:34.960 notes because somewhat perplexingly later in life, Lomax himself wasn't 36 00:02:35.000 --> 00:02:38.080 always the most reliable witnessed the events of his own 37 00:02:38.120 --> 00:02:42.159 and other's past. In his nineteen ninety three memoir The 38 00:02:42.240 --> 00:02:46.159 Land Where the Blues Began, for instance, Lomax wrote plenty 39 00:02:46.199 --> 00:02:50.719 about these Mississippi adventures, but a fair amount is verifiably askew. 40 00:02:51.479 --> 00:02:56.159 He conflated two Mississippi journeys in consecutive years, nineteen forty 41 00:02:56.199 --> 00:02:59.199 one in nineteen forty two, and to a single nineteen 42 00:02:59.240 --> 00:03:02.919 forty two visit, and he incorrectly stated not only that 43 00:03:03.000 --> 00:03:06.360 this second date is when he discovered muddy waters in 44 00:03:06.400 --> 00:03:09.919 the location he misidentified, but that he did so while 45 00:03:09.960 --> 00:03:13.840 in search of the legendary Blues guitarist Robert Johnson, though 46 00:03:13.879 --> 00:03:16.120 there is clear evidence that he must have known of 47 00:03:16.199 --> 00:03:20.639 Johnson's death, Johnson died in nineteen thirty eight, some years before, 48 00:03:21.240 --> 00:03:24.000 and though he mentions that he was in Mississippi as 49 00:03:24.080 --> 00:03:27.240 part of a joint project with Fisk University in Nashville, 50 00:03:27.599 --> 00:03:31.520 the region's pre eminent black university, more than eighty years later, 51 00:03:31.639 --> 00:03:35.080 deep contention remains about the ways in which Lomax may 52 00:03:35.120 --> 00:03:39.439 have inappropriately taken sole credit for a shared endeavor. In 53 00:03:39.520 --> 00:03:42.800 his memoir, for example, he states that the project was 54 00:03:42.840 --> 00:03:46.680 his idea, even though good evidence seems to suggest that 55 00:03:46.800 --> 00:03:50.199 it had been proposed by the folklorist and composer John 56 00:03:50.240 --> 00:03:52.960 Wesley Work the Third, who was with him on that 57 00:03:53.039 --> 00:03:57.120 first day with Muddy Waters. Fortunately, in the case of 58 00:03:57.159 --> 00:04:01.360 some one who became famous like Waters, other material exists 59 00:04:01.560 --> 00:04:05.080 to help pin down exactly what happened and win. We 60 00:04:05.159 --> 00:04:08.400 know Water's own perspective of that summer day when his 61 00:04:08.520 --> 00:04:11.560 music was first recorded from interviews he gave over the 62 00:04:11.680 --> 00:04:15.560 years that were collated in writer and filmmaker Robert Gordon's 63 00:04:15.599 --> 00:04:19.000 two thousand and two biography Can't be satisfied the Life 64 00:04:19.000 --> 00:04:22.839 and Times of Muddy Waters that, for instance, when Lomax 65 00:04:22.879 --> 00:04:26.199 and his companions turned up, waters first thought hearing that 66 00:04:26.240 --> 00:04:28.519 a white man was looking for him was that the 67 00:04:28.560 --> 00:04:31.480 authorities had found out he was selling whiskey, and that 68 00:04:31.560 --> 00:04:35.199 Lomax had to gradually win Water's confidence before he could 69 00:04:35.199 --> 00:04:38.240 succeed in convincing the musician that he really did just 70 00:04:38.319 --> 00:04:41.040 want to hear him play his music. As for the 71 00:04:41.079 --> 00:04:44.279 house that once stood where I found a vacant, grassy plot, 72 00:04:44.680 --> 00:04:48.639 well that has its own remarkable story. For many years 73 00:04:48.680 --> 00:04:51.879 it lay empty. In nineteen eighty seven, it was damaged 74 00:04:51.879 --> 00:04:56.040 in a tornado. That year, Billy Gibbons, Zizi Top's lead 75 00:04:56.040 --> 00:04:59.959 guitarist and singer, visited and took away a cypress roof timber, 76 00:05:00.360 --> 00:05:02.959 which he dropped off with a guitar maker in Memphis 77 00:05:03.120 --> 00:05:07.279 who crafted two guitars from the wood. Subsequently, during a 78 00:05:07.319 --> 00:05:11.319 post tornado clean up, the three damaged outer rooms, the roof, 79 00:05:11.399 --> 00:05:14.480 and the porch were removed and taken into storage by 80 00:05:14.480 --> 00:05:19.000 stove All Farms, leaving only the original nineteenth century central cabin. 81 00:05:20.079 --> 00:05:23.199 In nineteen ninety six, the cabin was leased for five 82 00:05:23.279 --> 00:05:26.839 years by the House of Blues, the restaurant and entertainment chain. 83 00:05:27.560 --> 00:05:30.279 It was taken apart and shipped off to be reassembled 84 00:05:30.279 --> 00:05:34.040 in different House of Blues venues and exhibitions, appearing that 85 00:05:34.160 --> 00:05:38.040 first summer in Chicago and Atlanta. The House of Blues 86 00:05:38.040 --> 00:05:43.439 apparently even sold Muddy Waters Cabin World Tour t shirts. Eventually, 87 00:05:43.560 --> 00:05:47.240 in two thousand one, the central cabin structure returned closer 88 00:05:47.279 --> 00:05:50.199 to home, taking a permanent place in the middle of 89 00:05:50.240 --> 00:05:54.920 the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale. Clarksdale's centrality in the 90 00:05:54.920 --> 00:05:59.879 story of the Blues was recently reinforced and fancifully reimagined 91 00:06:00.240 --> 00:06:04.360 in the movie Sinners. That is how last fall, inside 92 00:06:04.399 --> 00:06:07.480 the museum, I was able to walk into the actual 93 00:06:07.519 --> 00:06:11.519 home where Lomax's first recording session with Waters took place. 94 00:06:12.120 --> 00:06:16.360 Light streaming through the gaps in the aged horizontal wood beams. 95 00:06:16.399 --> 00:06:20.000 Within and around the cabin were various objects from or 96 00:06:20.120 --> 00:06:23.920 relating to Water's life, including one of the guitars Gibbons 97 00:06:23.920 --> 00:06:28.000 had made from the cabin's timber. Also parked right there 98 00:06:28.319 --> 00:06:32.079 inside the exhibition hall, next to where waters Porch would 99 00:06:32.079 --> 00:06:35.639 once have been as a nineteen thirty nine Ford de Luxe, 100 00:06:35.879 --> 00:06:38.480 the model Lomax was driving when he pulled up to 101 00:06:38.519 --> 00:06:42.040 the cabin, its trunk propped open to show the kind 102 00:06:42.079 --> 00:06:46.079 of hefty recording equipment Lomax used to record and cut 103 00:06:46.240 --> 00:06:51.720 sixteen inch acetate discs. Two days earlier, in Memphis, I'd 104 00:06:51.720 --> 00:06:56.360 met with Gordon Waters's biographer. He had plenty of interesting 105 00:06:56.399 --> 00:07:00.360 and complex opinions to share about Lomax, including a discription 106 00:07:00.480 --> 00:07:04.000 of an awkward scene in his recent documentary Newport and 107 00:07:04.040 --> 00:07:08.839 the Great Folk Dream, where Lomax seems paternalistically controlling of 108 00:07:08.879 --> 00:07:11.720 a group of blues artists rehearsing for the nineteen sixty 109 00:07:11.759 --> 00:07:15.680 four festival, but Gordon, none the less reaffirmed what he 110 00:07:15.800 --> 00:07:20.879 sees as Lomax's central achievement. I think Alan Lomax found 111 00:07:20.959 --> 00:07:24.720 great artists, and he made great field work recordings some 112 00:07:24.879 --> 00:07:27.399 of them. Man, he is cutting into the red and 113 00:07:27.439 --> 00:07:30.480 they are just all the more powerful for it. You know, 114 00:07:30.600 --> 00:07:34.959 he's getting the grit of it. He understands it. Lomax 115 00:07:35.000 --> 00:07:39.160 returned to Mississippi several times. Far from all the recordings 116 00:07:39.160 --> 00:07:43.160 he made there involved blues artists, he also collected oral 117 00:07:43.279 --> 00:07:47.879 histories and children's songs, and extensively documented diverse forms of 118 00:07:47.959 --> 00:07:52.040 religious expression at church services, drawing on a wide range 119 00:07:52.040 --> 00:07:56.600 of musical idioms. Perhaps most notably, in nineteen forty two, 120 00:07:56.759 --> 00:08:00.600 Lomax met near the small town of Senatobia, a blind 121 00:08:00.759 --> 00:08:05.360 multi instrumentalist named Sid Hempel, who, among his many skills, 122 00:08:05.399 --> 00:08:09.560 played the cane fife, a simple side blown flute. Fife 123 00:08:09.600 --> 00:08:12.720 and drum bands were a Civil War era military staple, 124 00:08:13.160 --> 00:08:15.759 but the version of fife and drum music that had 125 00:08:15.800 --> 00:08:19.360 developed in this pocket of the South was something distinct 126 00:08:19.720 --> 00:08:23.480 an outcropping of African music in North America, Lomax would 127 00:08:23.480 --> 00:08:28.879 excitedly proclaim. Hemphill suggested that Lomax come the following day 128 00:08:29.199 --> 00:08:31.600 to one of the picnics, where fife and drum bands 129 00:08:31.600 --> 00:08:36.120 played for hours. Lomax did so, recorder in hand, and 130 00:08:36.200 --> 00:08:38.200 toward the end of his life he would describe this 131 00:08:38.360 --> 00:08:41.840 as the main find of my whole career, the African 132 00:08:42.000 --> 00:08:46.840 fife and drum dance bands of the Mississippi Hills. Lomax 133 00:08:46.879 --> 00:08:51.440 returned to Mississippi again during his nineteen fifty nine Southern Journey, 134 00:08:51.840 --> 00:08:55.759 where he revisited and recorded hemph Heel then eighty three 135 00:08:55.919 --> 00:08:59.600 for the final time. He also made one further discovery 136 00:08:59.679 --> 00:09:03.759 when while recording some other musicians near by, their neighbor, 137 00:09:03.919 --> 00:09:06.559 a farmer in his mid fifties who had been picking 138 00:09:06.600 --> 00:09:10.480 cotton all day, walked out of the surrounding trees, carrying 139 00:09:10.519 --> 00:09:14.519 his guitar and started playing for Lomax. This was the 140 00:09:14.559 --> 00:09:18.879 man who, following this serendipitous encounter, would go on to 141 00:09:18.919 --> 00:09:22.799 have a significant degree of late life fame as Mississippi 142 00:09:22.799 --> 00:09:26.480 Fred mc dowell. But it was a recording made at 143 00:09:26.519 --> 00:09:30.679 another Mississippi stop during those nineteen fifty nine travels that 144 00:09:30.840 --> 00:09:34.759 would much later have perhaps the most improbable after life 145 00:09:34.759 --> 00:09:42.720 of all six Mississippi incarceration. The Mississippi State Penitentiary was 146 00:09:42.799 --> 00:09:46.960 colloquially known, as it still is to this day, as Parchment. 147 00:09:47.720 --> 00:09:50.919 It was a place Lomax visited several times, first with 148 00:09:51.000 --> 00:09:54.799 his father and later without him. What had initially drawn 149 00:09:54.840 --> 00:09:58.960 the elder Lomax was the notion that prisoner's isolation might 150 00:09:59.039 --> 00:10:03.519 preserve a pure wellspring of song, particularly songs sung during 151 00:10:03.600 --> 00:10:08.720 forced labor, untainted by modernity. His son, who had recorded 152 00:10:08.720 --> 00:10:11.519 there twice in the late nineteen forties, had a more 153 00:10:11.639 --> 00:10:15.519 nuanced and complex read. He'd write of how the prisoner's 154 00:10:15.519 --> 00:10:19.960 songs conveyed quote verse after verse of sardonic irony and 155 00:10:20.080 --> 00:10:23.320 of veiled protest end quote. But he was clearly also 156 00:10:23.440 --> 00:10:26.799 drawn by what could be heard in this sequestered world. 157 00:10:27.480 --> 00:10:30.480 When he went back in September nineteen fifty nine, he 158 00:10:30.639 --> 00:10:34.000 was hoping to capture the kind of prisoner's repertoire he'd 159 00:10:34.039 --> 00:10:37.399 heard before. With the more modern equipment. He now had 160 00:10:37.840 --> 00:10:42.320 a suit case size Ampex stereo reel to reel tape recorder. 161 00:10:43.279 --> 00:10:47.360 The visit lasted three or four days. On the last 162 00:10:47.679 --> 00:10:51.480 Lomax recorded a group of prisoners singing, accompanied by the 163 00:10:51.519 --> 00:10:55.919 staggered syncopation of their axes hitting tree trunks, the rhythm 164 00:10:56.000 --> 00:10:59.279 of work, the rhythm of song, the rhythm of punishment. 165 00:11:00.120 --> 00:11:03.720 Among the many songs Lomax recorded were two versions of 166 00:11:03.799 --> 00:11:07.759 po Lazarus, about a man named Lazarus being hunted down 167 00:11:07.840 --> 00:11:11.279 and shot. The second version was led by a prisoner 168 00:11:11.399 --> 00:11:14.759 named James Carter. The song went on for more than 169 00:11:14.799 --> 00:11:19.399 eleven minutes. At the beginning, Lomax encourages the prisoners to 170 00:11:19.480 --> 00:11:23.720 get their axe drops in time. Later on he interjects again, 171 00:11:24.440 --> 00:11:28.320 go ahead. A minute more after Lomax discusses with them 172 00:11:28.360 --> 00:11:31.519 the song's history, then concludes, well, I think we got 173 00:11:31.519 --> 00:11:35.600 something good. The final few minutes of this version would 174 00:11:35.600 --> 00:11:38.799 appear a couple of years later on an LP titled 175 00:11:38.840 --> 00:11:43.000 bad Man Ballads, one of a series of Southern Journey compilations. 176 00:11:43.759 --> 00:11:47.879 Then it was largely forgotten, but nearly four decades after that, 177 00:11:48.279 --> 00:11:52.120 the music producer T. Bone Burnett putting together music for 178 00:11:52.159 --> 00:11:55.519 the Cohen Brothers movie O Brother where Art thou set 179 00:11:55.519 --> 00:11:59.600 the film's evocative plantation chain Gang opening to this recording. 180 00:12:00.440 --> 00:12:03.480 The film met great success, and its sound track was 181 00:12:03.519 --> 00:12:07.440 a sensation. It won multiple Grammy Awards and sold more 182 00:12:07.480 --> 00:12:11.960 than eight million copies in the United States alone. Afterward, 183 00:12:12.080 --> 00:12:16.000 a search began for James Carter. Perhaps against the odds, 184 00:12:16.039 --> 00:12:19.240 he was found, a then seventy six year old man 185 00:12:19.279 --> 00:12:22.000 who had been living in Chicago since his release from 186 00:12:22.000 --> 00:12:26.519 prison in nineteen sixty seven. Carter, who subsequently gave a 187 00:12:26.559 --> 00:12:29.840 couple of interviews in which he seemed both gratified and 188 00:12:29.919 --> 00:12:34.480 bemused by the attention, recalled little of being recorded by Lomax, 189 00:12:34.879 --> 00:12:37.919 though he did remember learning the song itself from an 190 00:12:37.919 --> 00:12:41.320 older convict named Red Kid. He was a knife man, 191 00:12:41.879 --> 00:12:45.120 and he certainly remembered how they would sing as they labored. 192 00:12:45.799 --> 00:12:49.519 See back in them days, work was work, swingin' that axe. 193 00:12:50.080 --> 00:12:52.279 But you get that song going, you can get along 194 00:12:52.320 --> 00:12:56.840 pretty good. Lomax's daughter brought Carter a check for twenty 195 00:12:56.840 --> 00:13:00.519 thousand dollars, just the first advance on more royalties to 196 00:13:00.559 --> 00:13:04.919 come and a platinum disk. Knowing that I was going 197 00:13:04.960 --> 00:13:08.279 to be in Mississippi, I imagined that I would drive 198 00:13:08.360 --> 00:13:11.600 down to the prison stand outside and take in whatever 199 00:13:11.720 --> 00:13:16.320 distance sense I could of where Lomax was I expected 200 00:13:16.360 --> 00:13:20.679 little more. Prisons are rarely much keener to let people 201 00:13:20.759 --> 00:13:24.080 in than they are to let people out. But when 202 00:13:24.080 --> 00:13:28.519 I wrote to the authorities anyway, they responded positively, And 203 00:13:28.600 --> 00:13:31.559 when I turned up at the appointed time, I was 204 00:13:31.600 --> 00:13:34.879 met by an inmate named Huston Jones, who was waiting 205 00:13:34.879 --> 00:13:38.559 inside the front gate. I soon came to realize why 206 00:13:38.600 --> 00:13:41.320 he may have been chosen to guide me. In the 207 00:13:41.399 --> 00:13:45.360 nineteen sixties, an inmate band known simply as the Parchment 208 00:13:45.440 --> 00:13:49.759 Band garnered a degree of attention. They issued an album 209 00:13:49.879 --> 00:13:53.159 in nineteen sixty nine, and around three years ago some 210 00:13:53.399 --> 00:13:57.759 inmates restarted the band with Jones at its center. More 211 00:13:57.799 --> 00:14:00.799 than that, he is clearly trusted within the prison system 212 00:14:01.639 --> 00:14:05.320 and is a personable and persuasive advocate for how Parchment 213 00:14:05.440 --> 00:14:09.840 has been changing. After meeting with Scott Middlebrooks, then the 214 00:14:09.840 --> 00:14:14.200 prison's superintendent, Jones and I headed out to explore just 215 00:14:14.279 --> 00:14:18.080 the two of us in an ATV. Parchment doesn't fit 216 00:14:18.159 --> 00:14:22.840 conventional archetypes of what a prison is. Its boundaries extend 217 00:14:22.919 --> 00:14:26.759 over eighteen thousand acres or about twenty eight square miles, 218 00:14:27.120 --> 00:14:29.840 and around much of its perimeter there is no solid 219 00:14:29.879 --> 00:14:34.039 barrier Over the next couple of hours, we visited several 220 00:14:34.159 --> 00:14:37.840 now vacant housing units, walking through deserted old cells and 221 00:14:37.960 --> 00:14:42.159 common areas. It appears that when buildings are abandoned here, 222 00:14:42.559 --> 00:14:45.399 they are just that, left as they had been on 223 00:14:45.440 --> 00:14:48.840 the last day they were used, then allowed to fall apart, 224 00:14:49.200 --> 00:14:53.679 roofs collapsing in like an experiment in entropy. The most 225 00:14:53.720 --> 00:14:57.200 overgrown of all what was once camped for, we reached 226 00:14:57.200 --> 00:15:01.639 by gunning the ATV off track through the undergrowth. It's 227 00:15:01.679 --> 00:15:04.080 going to be a bumpy ride in there, Jones predicted, 228 00:15:04.399 --> 00:15:07.840 but I think it's worth it. The vegetation took over, 229 00:15:08.240 --> 00:15:12.279 even inside the crumbling stone structures, creepers making their way 230 00:15:12.320 --> 00:15:16.679 across the ground, rubble standing there, the past oozes all 231 00:15:16.720 --> 00:15:20.639 around you. Even so, what I'd really hoped to find 232 00:15:20.840 --> 00:15:24.159 was one of the places where Lomax actually recorded in 233 00:15:24.240 --> 00:15:27.879 nineteen fifty nine. I knew that the place where Carter 234 00:15:28.000 --> 00:15:31.559 sang Pohl Lazarus was at the former Camp B on 235 00:15:31.679 --> 00:15:34.159 another site that was no longer part of the prison, 236 00:15:34.600 --> 00:15:38.279 but I'd hoped to find either Camp seven or Camp eleven, 237 00:15:38.600 --> 00:15:43.559 where Lomax spent whole days recording. But Jones, who knows 238 00:15:43.600 --> 00:15:47.159 this land fairly well told me that they no longer exist, 239 00:15:47.440 --> 00:15:51.639 and that he had no idea where they had been. Instead, 240 00:15:51.720 --> 00:15:54.320 I did what I told myself Lomax would have done, 241 00:15:54.879 --> 00:15:57.720 just listened to understand what I could of what is 242 00:15:57.759 --> 00:16:01.919 here now. We toured an active area Unit twenty eight, 243 00:16:02.360 --> 00:16:05.879 the housing unit for the prison's garment factory, where, among 244 00:16:05.960 --> 00:16:09.519 other things, prisoners make the striped clothing they all wear. 245 00:16:10.320 --> 00:16:13.200 Jones is in green and white, the most permissive of 246 00:16:13.279 --> 00:16:17.559 four categories, and we passed field after field where inmates 247 00:16:17.679 --> 00:16:22.360 farm soybeans, watermelon, and turnip greens. We visited the horse barn, 248 00:16:22.440 --> 00:16:28.559 swept past a lake where Jones said he's seen bald eagles, coyotes, bobcats, otters, beavers, 249 00:16:28.600 --> 00:16:31.519 and muskrats. And we went to the inmates church, where 250 00:16:31.559 --> 00:16:34.279 I met an affable man named Henry, who has been 251 00:16:34.320 --> 00:16:37.559 at Parchment for more than thirty years. I could but 252 00:16:37.679 --> 00:16:40.600 imagine what he had seen. Even if the kind of 253 00:16:40.679 --> 00:16:44.759 slave labor institution Lomax visited is long in the past, 254 00:16:45.240 --> 00:16:48.720 some horrific accounts of events and practices here are far 255 00:16:48.840 --> 00:16:52.399 more recent, but Jones argued that this prison has been 256 00:16:52.399 --> 00:16:56.320 making great changes Parchment now if you have to be 257 00:16:56.360 --> 00:16:58.440 an inmate. This is a great place to do it, 258 00:16:58.519 --> 00:17:00.840 he attested, there are so so many things to be 259 00:17:00.879 --> 00:17:05.240 involved in. Another place we stopped was a metal shed 260 00:17:05.519 --> 00:17:08.839 where the new Parchment Band rehearses, and where later that 261 00:17:08.880 --> 00:17:13.319 afternoon I sat and watched a long rousing rehearsal. They're 262 00:17:13.319 --> 00:17:17.559 good and talked a little with the band members. Naturally, 263 00:17:17.720 --> 00:17:20.559 they have a variety of stories, but many of them, 264 00:17:20.799 --> 00:17:25.480 like Jones, have murder convictions. Before that, though, at lunch time, 265 00:17:25.720 --> 00:17:29.359 supposedly at the end of our explorations, Jones took me 266 00:17:29.400 --> 00:17:33.000 to the Rudimentary Museum, in a building near the prison entrance, 267 00:17:33.519 --> 00:17:37.319 a precursor to something more substantial. The prison is planning. 268 00:17:38.079 --> 00:17:42.240 One large room displayed a few historical documents, and looking 269 00:17:42.279 --> 00:17:45.039 at the exhibits, there's a copy of the nineteen sixty 270 00:17:45.119 --> 00:17:49.240 nine Parchment Band album, for instance. I came across a 271 00:17:49.319 --> 00:17:53.799 hand drawn map, clearly old but undated, of the prison site, 272 00:17:54.119 --> 00:17:58.680 apparently drawn by a prisoner, and it indicated many old camps, 273 00:17:58.799 --> 00:18:03.440 including Camp seven. I took a photograph for reference and 274 00:18:03.559 --> 00:18:06.200 asked Jones whether we could try to find it. He 275 00:18:06.319 --> 00:18:09.319 was willing to. Day is an adventure that is for sure, 276 00:18:09.359 --> 00:18:13.440 he said. So. After lunch, we headed back out several 277 00:18:13.480 --> 00:18:18.119 miles toward the prison's western perimeter. Eventually we came to 278 00:18:18.200 --> 00:18:21.359 an open area used for burning trash, but there was 279 00:18:21.400 --> 00:18:24.279 no sign at all of any buildings past or present. 280 00:18:25.119 --> 00:18:27.960 Looking at the map, Camp seven should have been a 281 00:18:27.960 --> 00:18:31.359 little north of here. It was not easy going. The 282 00:18:31.480 --> 00:18:35.200 vegetation was often above head height, much of it brambles, 283 00:18:35.559 --> 00:18:40.279 and the ground underfoot was chaotically uneven. But feeling stubborn 284 00:18:40.319 --> 00:18:44.839 about it, I pushed on Jones gamely followed. Just when 285 00:18:44.839 --> 00:18:47.799 it seemed like nothing but folly, I came across a 286 00:18:47.839 --> 00:18:51.839 few broken bricks. Soon we were clambering over a huge 287 00:18:52.079 --> 00:18:57.039 ramshackle brick pile, until suddenly the vegetation fell away and 288 00:18:57.119 --> 00:18:59.759 we were on the flat stone floor of a long 289 00:18:59.799 --> 00:19:05.680 gold I stopped. Alan Lomax's day here at Parchman's Camp 290 00:19:05.759 --> 00:19:09.200 seven came right toward the end of his prime recording years. 291 00:19:09.839 --> 00:19:13.480 He filled two reels of tape with sixteen songs. Scribbling 292 00:19:13.559 --> 00:19:15.839 on the front of the tape box the names of 293 00:19:15.880 --> 00:19:19.039 the prisoners he was recording, the titles of the songs, 294 00:19:19.279 --> 00:19:23.400 and in the margins occasional notes and observations, large group 295 00:19:23.480 --> 00:19:29.559 hoeing and lovely singing and recording, and tender sweet in truth. 296 00:19:29.720 --> 00:19:33.000 Beyond the former camp's crumbling floor, there was not much 297 00:19:33.039 --> 00:19:36.160 to see, just a few twisted bits of metal and 298 00:19:36.240 --> 00:19:39.519 an old broken payphone relics that looked a little too 299 00:19:39.599 --> 00:19:43.160 modern to have been there in nineteen fifty nine, and 300 00:19:43.400 --> 00:19:47.440 in fact, later studying old satellite photos, I saw that 301 00:19:47.480 --> 00:19:51.519 there was a structure here as recently as twenty ten. Evidently, 302 00:19:51.640 --> 00:19:54.759 in this part of Mississippi, it doesn't take long for 303 00:19:54.839 --> 00:19:58.519 the wild to reclaim its own. Even so, just finding 304 00:19:58.559 --> 00:20:02.279 this place felt like a small triumph. Maybe the most 305 00:20:02.319 --> 00:20:06.240 obvious lesson of this search for Alan Lomax's elusive imprint 306 00:20:06.480 --> 00:20:11.519 across Mississippi was that very elusiveness. He didn't document and 307 00:20:11.599 --> 00:20:15.440 record what would always be here. He documented and recorded 308 00:20:15.480 --> 00:20:18.400 what would soon be gone. He's not here, and the 309 00:20:18.440 --> 00:20:20.880 men he was with are not here, but what he 310 00:20:20.960 --> 00:20:25.720 recorded remains. Maybe his true achievement is measured less by 311 00:20:25.720 --> 00:20:29.079 what he helped popularize in his day, and more by 312 00:20:29.079 --> 00:20:32.680 the huge well of music, along with the cultures, ways 313 00:20:32.720 --> 00:20:36.279 of life, and forms of expression it revealed and safeguards 314 00:20:36.759 --> 00:20:42.240 that he alone rescued from fading away into silence. Quiet now, everybody, 315 00:20:42.319 --> 00:20:45.519 Lomack's instructed at one point on that September day in 316 00:20:45.640 --> 00:20:49.160 nineteen fifty nine, here at Camp seventh, before preserving for 317 00:20:49.240 --> 00:20:53.200 all to hear the yearning beautiful unaccompanied voice of a 318 00:20:53.240 --> 00:20:56.640 man named Leroy Jackson, which rang out in the air 319 00:20:56.759 --> 00:21:00.960 somewhere close to where I stood. Really quiet, Okay, now 320 00:21:01.039 --> 00:21:07.400 go ahead and accompanying this article key takeaways tracking Alan 321 00:21:07.480 --> 00:21:12.319 Lomax's essential early travels. Beginning when he was eighteen, Lomax 322 00:21:12.359 --> 00:21:15.279 criss crossed the country to make recordings for the Library 323 00:21:15.319 --> 00:21:19.039 of Congress, first traveling in nineteen thirty three with his father, 324 00:21:19.440 --> 00:21:25.400 John Lomax, across Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia. 325 00:21:26.160 --> 00:21:28.640 By June nineteen thirty five on his own for the 326 00:21:28.640 --> 00:21:33.920 first time, he recruited two folklorists, Zora Neil Hurston and 327 00:21:34.039 --> 00:21:37.799 Mary Elizabeth Barnacle, to join him in Florida and Georgia, 328 00:21:38.039 --> 00:21:42.079 where he recorded blues music work, songs, ring shouts, children's 329 00:21:42.079 --> 00:21:46.559 field calls, ryebald ballads, and oral histories from people born 330 00:21:46.640 --> 00:21:50.079 before the Civil War. In nineteen thirty seven, he made 331 00:21:50.119 --> 00:21:53.960 recordings in Washington, d c. And visited Kentucky and Ohio, 332 00:21:54.359 --> 00:21:58.039 and the next year. Between Washington recording sessions, he traveled 333 00:21:58.079 --> 00:22:02.839 to Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey before clocking eighty 334 00:22:02.839 --> 00:22:06.720 four hundred miles in three months while touring the Upper Midwest, 335 00:22:06.960 --> 00:22:10.519 where he captured everything from Balkan folk music to Michigan 336 00:22:10.599 --> 00:22:15.000 lumberjack songs and lake sailor tales. He closed out nineteen 337 00:22:15.039 --> 00:22:18.759 thirty eight in New York City recording performances and interviews 338 00:22:18.799 --> 00:22:22.799 connected to Carnegie Hall's spirituals to Swing concert, as well 339 00:22:22.839 --> 00:22:28.279 as sessions with Lead Belly. Next, the man who created 340 00:22:28.359 --> 00:22:31.519 a written language for the Cherokee did it so efficiently 341 00:22:31.559 --> 00:22:36.759 and elegantly his peers thought it was magic. Sekoya's Syllabarry 342 00:22:37.039 --> 00:22:41.160 faced suspicion initially, but after a demonstration his version of 343 00:22:41.440 --> 00:22:45.759 talking leaves was widely embraced, and then the word spread 344 00:22:46.519 --> 00:22:50.960 by Andrew Lawler. At first they laughed, then they scoffed. 345 00:22:51.359 --> 00:22:55.880 Finally they accused him of witchcraft. The Cherokee silversmith named 346 00:22:55.960 --> 00:23:00.559 Sequoya had spent years scratching strange marks on paper. In 347 00:23:00.640 --> 00:23:04.839 eighteen twenty one, his fellow tribespeople disturbed by his obsession, 348 00:23:05.119 --> 00:23:10.000 put him on trial for practicing black magic. Sekoya insisted 349 00:23:10.039 --> 00:23:13.839 his invention would allow Cherokee speakers to write out Iroquoian 350 00:23:14.000 --> 00:23:18.240 language for the first time. To test his claim, tribal 351 00:23:18.279 --> 00:23:23.119 elders ordered Secoia's young daughter, Aeoka to another room. Father 352 00:23:23.200 --> 00:23:26.559 and daughter separately made marks on paper and told their 353 00:23:26.599 --> 00:23:30.119 minders in each room what the marks said. Then the 354 00:23:30.160 --> 00:23:33.559 papers were exchanged. When each was able to read the 355 00:23:33.599 --> 00:23:39.160 other's messages aloud, suspicion turned to wonder. The astonished elders 356 00:23:39.240 --> 00:23:43.440 immediately asked him to teach them his revolutionary transcription method. 357 00:23:44.279 --> 00:23:48.599 Within six months, one in four Cherokee or Zilagi could 358 00:23:48.599 --> 00:23:52.759 read and write. Within a quarter century, Cherokee people had 359 00:23:52.799 --> 00:23:55.960 achieved a higher rate of literacy than the country's non 360 00:23:56.039 --> 00:24:01.400 native population. The unprecedented development came after years of work 361 00:24:01.440 --> 00:24:04.680 by a man whose name means pig's foot, perhaps a 362 00:24:04.720 --> 00:24:10.359 reference to his pronounced limp. Born in seventeen seventies, Tennessee 363 00:24:10.519 --> 00:24:14.079 to a Cherokee mother and a white father, Secoya was 364 00:24:14.160 --> 00:24:17.640 raised in his mother's culture and didn't read or write English. 365 00:24:18.319 --> 00:24:22.960 During the War of eighteen twelve, he served alongside American soldiers, 366 00:24:23.000 --> 00:24:28.079 sometimes using the English name George Guess. The experience likely 367 00:24:28.160 --> 00:24:32.720 exposed him to written language, or what he called talking leaves. 368 00:24:33.400 --> 00:24:37.759 After the war, Sequoya moved to Alabama and began experimenting 369 00:24:38.000 --> 00:24:41.680 with an idiogrammic approach to written Cherokee, in which each 370 00:24:41.759 --> 00:24:45.039 word was a symbol, but he abandoned that as cumbersome 371 00:24:45.119 --> 00:24:49.200 and too difficult to learn. Eventually, he hit on eighty 372 00:24:49.240 --> 00:24:54.200 six syllables that expressed specific sounds. Each syllable represented by 373 00:24:54.240 --> 00:24:59.039 symbols borrowed from Greek, Hebrew, and English, later reduced to 374 00:24:59.119 --> 00:25:04.240 eighty five symbols. Sequoia's celibarry was not simply a creative triumph, 375 00:25:04.640 --> 00:25:07.720 but a new means of self government and cultural memory. 376 00:25:08.519 --> 00:25:12.400 By eighteen twenty seven, the Cherokee had a written constitution, 377 00:25:12.839 --> 00:25:16.200 and everything from hunting guidance to sacred chance could be 378 00:25:16.279 --> 00:25:21.559 recorded for posterity. The Cherokee Phoenix, the first native newspaper 379 00:25:21.599 --> 00:25:24.759 in the United States, rolled off the press in eighteen 380 00:25:24.839 --> 00:25:30.240 twenty eight using his symbols. Others followed. The syllabary was 381 00:25:30.279 --> 00:25:34.599 widely lauded, as its phonetic accuracy and simplicity made it 382 00:25:34.680 --> 00:25:39.240 far easier to grasp than English. The superiority of Guess's 383 00:25:39.240 --> 00:25:43.079 alphabet is manifest and has been fully proved by experience, 384 00:25:43.319 --> 00:25:48.200 wrote Albert Gallatin, a U. S. Treasury secretary, diplomat and linguist, 385 00:25:48.680 --> 00:25:52.079 in eighteen thirty six. The boy learns in a few 386 00:25:52.119 --> 00:25:55.680 weeks that which occupies two years of the time of hours. 387 00:25:56.839 --> 00:26:00.000 Yet sudden mass literacy didn't curb the U. S. Governments, 388 00:26:00.160 --> 00:26:05.400 growing appetite for Cherokee homelands in North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, 389 00:26:05.480 --> 00:26:10.039 and Tennessee. Soon after Gallatin made his comments, the government 390 00:26:10.160 --> 00:26:13.599 forced tens of thousands of Cherokee to migrate along the 391 00:26:13.640 --> 00:26:18.440 Trail of Tears to a territory now called Oklahoma. Despite 392 00:26:18.480 --> 00:26:22.240 this tragedy, the Cherokee carried the syllaberry to their new 393 00:26:22.279 --> 00:26:26.440 home and maybe even across the Atlantic. In Liberia, a 394 00:26:26.519 --> 00:26:30.920 Cherokee named Austin Curtis, who married into the indigenous v community, 395 00:26:31.400 --> 00:26:33.880 is said to have used the syllaberry to devise a 396 00:26:33.920 --> 00:26:37.039 script for the Vy, which went on to inspire written 397 00:26:37.039 --> 00:26:42.079 works throughout West Africa. Sequoya himself moved to Mexico, where 398 00:26:42.079 --> 00:26:46.039 he died in eighteen forty three. Today, with only a 399 00:26:46.079 --> 00:26:50.480 few thousand Cherokee fluent in their ancestor's tongue. The syllaberry 400 00:26:50.640 --> 00:26:55.319 is a key tool in safeguarding Silagi culture. Teenagers use 401 00:26:55.359 --> 00:26:58.279