The New York Times reports on the impending launch of the Global Jukebox, a realization of the vision of Alan Lomax, the man who roamed the United States in the 50s and 60s recording the folk music that went on to influence the pop music revolution.
I was unaware that clips from those hundreds and hundreds of hours of recordings had been excerpted by, among others, Moby in his decade-old album, Play and in the soundtrack of the Coen Brothers film, O Brother Where Art Thou?
Lomax had a vision of creating an accessible digitized collection of the recordings, and up until his death in 2002, experimented with PCs and other digital music technologies to create a “global juke.” Later this month that vision will launch as the Global Jukebox.
Here’s a link to a compilation of some of the recordings Lomax made.
I remember that clip from “O Brother Where Art Thou”