Alan Lomax

Appalachian Journey is one of five films made from footage that Alan Lomax shot between 1978 and 1985 for the PBS American Patchwork series (1991). It offers songs, dances, stories, and religious rituals of the Southern Appalachians. Preachers, singers, fiddlers, banjo pickers, moonshiners, cloggers, and square dancers recount the good times and the hard times of rural life there. Performers include Tommy Jarrell, Janette Carter, Ray and Stanley Hicks, Frank Proffitt Jr., Sheila Kay Adams, Nimrod Workman and Phyllis Boyens, Raymond Fairchild, and others, with a bonus of a few African-Americans from the North Carolina Piedmont. Narrated by Alan Lomax.Read More »

Featuring Skip James, Howlin’ Wolf, Son House, Rev. Pearly Brown, Bukka White

Imagine you have stumbled into a juke joint where the mentor of Robert Johnson, Son House, and the idol of the Rolling Stones, Howlin’ Wolf, dis one another. Picture a place where Wolf taunts Bukka White while the robust Parchman Farm alumnus spins his proto-funk dance grooves and the spectral skip James weaves his haunting “Devil Got My Woman.” It’s an archetypal blues “crossroads” where legends of the 1920s Delta and 1950s Chicago share the same musical space, suspended out of time in a super-real present, a non-specific blues time. Read More »