Recording - July 2019 - 64

Throwback

to the Future

To put it mildly, the Garwick gave the
Lomaxes trouble from the get-go. Upon its
delivery on July 15th, 1933, it weighed
in at over three hundred pounds-a
far cry from the less than one hundred
pounds Walter Garwick had promised
several weeks earlier. The batteries themselves, rechargeable Edisons, weighed
nearly 130 pounds and took about thirty-five hours to juice, leaving John Lomax
often hooking the unit up to his car battery. All that junk in the trunk made mobile recording a treacherous adventure
during the first expedition south. At John
Lomax's behest, an independent review
of the machine by C.P. Bonner, a professor of physics at UT Austin, showed that
the Garwick had poorly installed power
tubes that decreased frequency response
and actually increased distortion, among
a litany of other problems. So after some
coded correspondence with Walter Garwick, the Lomaxes ditched his machine in
favor of a Sound Specialties Sandscriber
built by Lincoln Thompson in 1936.
Even so, the first Lead Belly recordings
at Angola are a rare, emotional experience for any Blues fan. I was privileged
to hear them during my visit to the Library
of Congress not long ago. After all, the
recordings marked a pivotal moment in
the life of Huddie Ledbetter. His release
from prison in August of that year is said
to have been influenced in part by his
affiliation with the Lomaxes. But even after winning his freedom, his grave just
outside the town of Blanchard, Louisiana
is still surrounded by bars.
After many expeditions and several
different field recording machines, the Lomaxes settled on Presto recorders by the
early 1940s. Under a partnership with
Fisk University, Alan Lomax and fellow
folklorist John W. Work III embarked on
a sociological study of Cahoma County,
Mississippi in 1941. The primary focus
was to conduct a scientific examination
of African-American culture and field
songs within the Delta region. Their biggest discovery, however, would be the
28-year-old farmer who lived in a wooden cabin at the end of Stovall Road.
64 RECORDING July 2019

PreSTo Field recorder
On or around August 30th, Muddy
Waters played two songs for Alan Lomax and John Work right outside of his
home on Stovall Plantation. "Country
Blues" and "I Be's Troubled" were recorded onto 16" disc using the Presto
Model Y, and likely through a RCA Junior Velocity mic, according to Lomax's
equipment list. The Presto, leaps and
bounds beyond what the Lomaxes had
used in the past, was a lighter load,
coming in at only about 100 pounds.
It's amplifier boasted an impressive
frequency response of 30Hz-10kHz,
featured a treble and bass attenuator,
and even a 2-channel mixer. The cutting
table was equipped with a mechanism
preventing irregular groove depth, a
lever that could change speed to either
78 or 331/3 rpm, and dampers to eliminate vibration noise. Perhaps most interesting was the Presto's ability to cut
112 groove lines per inch, which on a
16" disc, opened up recording time to
approximately fifteen minutes per side.
It's not a wonder then that an illuminating interview with Muddy follows each
of his performances in these original
recordings, both of which were recently
made streamable by Delta State University at www.lomaxdeltastate.com.

After their initial encounter on Stovall,
Alan Lomax promised Muddy that he
would receive a copy of the records
he'd made once there was time to send
them. He kept his promise. As one of the
earliest examples of a hustling musician,
Muddy Waters had many side gigs-
bootlegging, fur trapping, a shuttle
service, and probably a few other odd
entanglements-but he always longed
to become a successful recording artist.
So after finally receiving a copy of his
first ever-recording session from Alan,
he knew it was possible. It wasn't long
after that he headed north, ultimately becoming the "Father of Chicago Blues."

Vintage vibes

When Muddy Waters left Mississippi
in 1943, the Blues sort of went along
with him. By the following summer, an
estimated 50,000 people had left the
region for Chicago, in the hopes for less
racism and more job opportunity. By the
time Leonard Chess had made Muddy
and Howlin' Wolf household names on
Chess Records, the Delta was a ghost
town. The emergence of B. B. King and
reel-to-reel tape gave way to multitrack
and Stevie Ray Vaughan, and with a few
Rolling Stones sprinkled somewhere in

http://www.lomaxdeltastate.com

Recording - July 2019

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