Person · 1915–2002 · Mississippi Delta [33.80, -90.40]
Alan Lomax
The folklorist Alan Lomax carried portable recording equipment for the Library of Congress into the rural South, documenting musicians who would otherwise have gone unheard. His 1941 and 1942 field trips to the Mississippi Delta captured Son House and a young Muddy Waters at Stovall Plantation, fixing the era's sound just before its great migration north. As a collector and broadcaster he did much to define how later generations heard, and named, the Delta blues.
Evidence2
- Wikidata: Alan LomaxWikidata
www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q558104
accessed 2026-06-04
- MusicBrainz: Alan LomaxMusicBrainz
musicbrainz.org/artist/09920eef-ba69-4c46-96ae-a93f885af533
accessed 2026-06-04
Connections1
collaborates with → Muddy Waters
Alan Lomax's 1941 visit to Stovall Plantation gave Muddy Waters his first recordings and his first hearing of his own voice played back. The encounter between the traveling folklorist and the plantation tractor driver became one of the most consequential meetings in American music. It closed the documentary record of the prewar Delta and pointed Waters toward the future.