Search - Alan Lomax :: Concert & Radio: Ballad Operas

This "ballad opera" is perhaps the most unlikely of all Alan Lomax projects. Recorded in 1944 for the BBC and reissued as part of the Lomax Collection's Concert and Radio Series, The Martins and the Coys was based on a 1936 "imitation hillbilly" novelty hit by bandleader Ted Weems about feuding families similar to the Hatfields and the McCoys. The two families are eventually united by their love for America and mountain life, and by their hatred of fascism. Lomax blended together narration, instrumentals, and traditional and topical songs, performed by urban and rural folk artists such as Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger (both then unknown outside Manhattan folk circles), Burl Ives, and Grand Ole Opry great, Fiddlin' Arthur Smith. "Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair" (Ives) and "Nine Hundred Miles" (Guthrie) are stunning. For collectors only, but it's that rarest of period pieces, one with style and substance. Listening to the unabashed patriotism of these performers, it's incomprehensible that within a decade, many would be blacklisted as un-American. --John Morthland