John Lomax

John Lomax
John Lomax (left) shaking hands with musician "Uncle" Rich Brown in Sumterville, Alabama
Background information
Birth name	John Avery Lomax
Born	(1867-09-23)September 23, 1867 Goodman, Mississippi, U.S.
Died	January 26, 1948(1948-01-26) (aged 80)
Occupation(s)	Folklorist, musicologist

John Avery Lomax (September 23, 1867 – January 26, 1948) was an American teacher, a pioneering musicologist, and a folklorist who did much for the preservation of American folk music. He was the father of Shirley Mansell, John Avery Lomax, Jr., Alan Lomax, also a distinguished collector of folk music, and Bess Lomax Hawes.

The Lomax family originally came from England with William Lomax, who settled in Rockingham County in what was then "the colony of North Carolina." John Lomax was born in Goodman in Holmes County in central Mississippi, to James Avery Lomax and the former Susan Frances Cooper. In December 1869, the Lomax family traveled by ox cart from Mississippi to Texas. John Lomax grew up in central Texas, just north of Meridian in rural Bosque County. His father raised horses and cattle and grew cotton and corn on the 183 acres (0.74 km²) of bottomland that he had purchased near the Bosque River. The cowboy songs to which he was exposed during his childhood influenced Lomax in such a way that his future choice of career already seemed confirmed. About 1876, the nine-year-old Lomax met and became close friends with Nat Blythe, a former slave who had just been hired as a farmhand by James Lomax. The friendship, "which perhaps gave my life its bent," lasted three years, and was crucial to Lomax's early development. Lomax, whose own schooling was sporadic because of the heavy farmwork he was forced to do, taught Blythe to read and write, and Blythe taught Lomax songs including "Big Yam Potatoes on a Sandy Land" and dance steps such as "Juba". When Blythe was 21 years old, he took his savings and left. Lomax never saw him again and heard rumors that he had been murdered. For years afterward, he always looked for Nat when he traveled around the South.