Alan Lomax

Revered by all music-loving peoples as the Patron Saint of Folk Preservation, Alan Lomax wandered around early America's prison camps, honky-tonks and bordellos with recording equipment in an ongoing mission to document the deep-rooted music of the Southland's everyday layman. What he recorded back then was simply called music. Today we have come to know the styles of these recordings as acoustic blues, Delta blues, Appalachian folk and (perhaps most famous) the field hollers that are simply regarded today as "field recordings." Lomax discovered Leadbelly and Mississippi Fred McDowell. He was also the first to ever record Muddy Waters and Woody Guthrie.