There really are people who get up before sunrise and set off, not with a rifle, but a recording device, to capture animal sounds in the wild. A “field recording” is simply a recording that is not made in a studio. Yet the term covers not just recordings of various sounds found in nature. Initially people used it primarily for documentation, ranging from major events like politicians’ speeches to people living beyond all civilization making music in a rocking chair on their veranda.

One of the field recording pioneers was John Lomax. He devoted himself to preserving traditional folk songs. His family moved to Texas in 1869 and he grew up on a horse and cattle farm. As a boy, Lomax was fascinated by the legendary Wild West and the cowboy songs he picked up there. He left his parents’ farm at 21 and, despite an incomplete school education, finally made it to Harvard University, which at the time was the center for studies in American folklore. Later on he co-founded the Texas Folklore Society and published a book of cowboy songs in 1910 that garnered significant attention. However, it was to be a long time before he started his long field recording tours – not until he was 65. He started with recordings of prisoners in Texan jails. Under the patronage of the Library of Congress in Washington, between 1933 and 1942 he traveled through more than half the American states. He collected over 10,000 songs for the Archive of American Folk Song department on these excursions. From the very start, his son Alan traveled with him. And of course the “phonograph”, the device which, mounted in the trunk of their car, “wrote” the recordings on uncoated aluminum records.

Phonography is another term for field recording and means “writing with sound” – the similarity to the word photography is completely deliberate. It was no easy task to transport, assemble and prepare a phonograph weighing almost 150 kilos. The recording itself was no less complex. While Lomax was busy with a set of headphones trying to get the best recording possible, at the same time he quickly had to remove the shavings produced from the so-called “cut of the record”. These aluminum records were later replaced by specially coated records which could produce a better sound. This was a major advantage over the wax cylinders previously used, because both sides could be used and the recordings played back directly afterwards. This may have been some compensation to the pair for the (not particularly ideal) recording conditions.

On their first trip together, father and son discovered blues singer and guitarist Huddie Ledbetter, known as Lead Belly. He was imprisoned in the infamous Angola State Prison for attempted murder, but was released early soon after because of good behavior. In order to be able to show his parole officer that he had a permanent job, Lead Belly worked as assistant and driver for the pair for a short time. Lomax Senior, inexperienced in the music industry, even assumed the role of manager and helped Lead Belly bag a record contract. Yet the relationship did not last long and the two went their separate ways on bad terms. This did not stop Alan Lomax from later continuing to support the now legendary musician, and rightly so, for Lomax & Lomax had indeed found a very talented man in Lead Belly. Incidentally, his interpretation of the folk song Goodnight Irene is one of the first recordings Lomax & Lomax made for the Library of Congress.