Just mentioning the Lomax recordings reminded me of the conversation Ken Layne and I had under the stars about those recordings, and the fabulous archive that the Library of Congress maintains online for your downloading pleasure. I found it almost a year ago, after researching southern, rural music.

Here is the main page to the Lomax recordings of Southern music from 1939.

Warning: this collection is vast, with almost as many photographs and field notes as mp3s of the music itself. You could get very, very lost in this collection if it's your thing. Navigation is also not so easy. If you click on Audio Title, you'll get all 686 songs listed alphabetically. Better to pick a subject that sounds interesting. Say work songs, or drinking songs, or field hollers.

Personally, I like this as a starting point. It organizes the recordings somewhat chronologically, according to the actual recording expedition by the Lomaxes, breaking it down by state, which is useful if you know you're more interested in say Delta blues than south Texas canciones.

There's at least one sort of famous musician in the archive. That's Washington "Barrel House" White, later and better known as Bukka White. He was recorded as an inmate at Parchman State Penitentiary in Mississippi. This is the same--and very non-fictional--Parchman that's mentioned repeatedly by Faulkner in several of his books.

If you dig archival field recordings, and you like the roots of modern american music, then this collection is for you. I'm amazed by it quite frankly.

That's not all. You can broaden this far beyond the south and the Lomaxes here. Want Appalachian Fiddle tunes? Done. California folk music from the 30s? Get it here. Hispanic music of the Rio Grande? Find it here.

Moving beyond music altogether, here's the master index for all the LOC American Memory collections. There's enough archival information here to keep you busy for a short lifetime.

I unfortunately need to try to buy red oak lumber and get it ripped down to my weirdo dimensions. Maybe this--the third attempt--will be successful. Wish me luck.

Intriguingly a lot of the Lomax Library Of Congress recordings were released in England in the 70s & 80s by a small archivist label Saydisc/Matchbox. They also compiled a lot of obscure country blues recordings: Texas Alexander, Peg Leg Howell, Bo Weavil Jackson, Lonnie Johnson...

In the Lomax Texas recordings, check Pete Harris. I'm not sure why I like his stuff so much. Maybe because there's a real immediacy about it. Jack o' diamonds... jack o' diamonds...

On the same tip, there are the Lawrence Gellert recordings - in the Indiana University Archives of Traditional Music (it says on the sleeve). Gellert lived with a black woman and had the trust of the singers he was recording so the lyrics are unlike those in any other archive; i.e. they're not censored for a white audience.

Apart from the lyrics, there's also some astonishing guitar playing - astonishing in that it was so early (1924), i.e. before there were any similar commercial recordings.

It's been ages since I played these records. I'll have to go and pull them out again.