Margaret talks with Bridget Todd about the origins of folk music and the man who dedicated his life to preserving traditional art
Sources:
https://acousticguitar.com/alan-lomaxs-steel-string-discoveries/
https://pinemountainsettlement.net/biography-a-z/alan-and-elizabeth-lomax-visitors/
Alan Loman: The Man who Recorded the World, John Szwed
Bring Judgment Day: Reclaiming Lead Belly's Truths from Jim Crow's Lies, Sheila Curran Bernard
Andy Cohen, personal correspondence
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loYoTc7Aw0A
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hello, and welcome to cool People who had cool stuff.
You're a weekly reminder that there's cool stuff happening, and
it's often done by cool people. Although also it's your
weekly reminder that people who seem really cool when you
tell really short versions of their story, actually it become
very complicated and real when you tell the longer versions
of their story. Because nobody's perfect except our guest today
(00:25):
and our producer today, Bridget Todd.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Hi, how are you?
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Hi? Margaret?
Speaker 4 (00:30):
I like this idea that I'm perfect, you know what,
I'm not going to push back.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
I am.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Yeah, No, that's what I'm saying. And also perfect is
Sophie our producer. Hi, Sophie, Hi, I am perfect. Bridget.
You are the host of a podcast as a shameful
thing to be.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
It is just a dirtbag podcaster life, you know.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Well, yeah, you are the host of There Are No
Girls on the Internet, which is a podcast that people
can listen to, except it just took a break. Maybe
what's going on?
Speaker 4 (00:57):
Yeah, we are taken in brief pause, but will be
real soon. Folks'll check it out if you're interested in
the intersection of identity and technology and social media and
some of the wormiest little pieces of dung on the
Internet and what they're up to you to make our
lives miserable.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Come check us out.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
You also have a book that's about to come out.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
That is right.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
Thank you for asking about the book. It is an
audiobook with Simon and Schuster called Love at First Prompt
AI and the Future of Intimacy, and it's all about
folks who have intimate connections with AI.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Okay, the two things that are interesting me about that immediately. One,
I've never heard of an audio only book.
Speaker 4 (01:37):
I had not heard of it before making one either,
So it is not a physical book. It is audio
only for now. Somebody was like, oh, can you sign
it for me? And I thought, well, would that be
a voice note?
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Yeah, like a postcard? Like interesting? I mean I listened to, honestly,
everything I'm not reading for work, I listened to audio
books for so it actually makes perfect sense to me.
Although I'm like, if I ever had to listen to
it for work, I'd be really sad because then I
have to listen to it, whereas I read very quickly
for work. But when we were talking about this book
(02:10):
before we started recording, you are presenting it in like
kind of a more complicated way. I'm going to rudely
guess most of the people who are listening are anti AI,
and your whole thing is that we should shame people
who are lonely by being really mad at them and
not blaming structural problems. Is that the basis of.
Speaker 4 (02:28):
Your book basically, yes, only the opposite. Oh right, yeah,
I mean, I don't think I'm giving anything away, no
spoilers and saying that I'm not the most pro AI
person out there. But the reality is a whole host
of growing people are using AI for intimacy, whether that's
you know, platonic connection, romantic connection, a lot of sexual
(02:52):
connection through things like erotic role play.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
And I feel that.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
So much of the conversation about these people is demonizing
and shaming.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Right, look at these losers your insults.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
Yeah, look at these pathetic losers who are getting their
jollys off to an AI girlfriend or AI porn or.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
What have you.
Speaker 4 (03:10):
I totally get that stance. But we're so busy gawking
and finger pointing at the individual that the sam Altmans
and the Elon Musks and the Mark Zuckerberg's of the
world are like great, keep making fun of what you
see as these pathetic losers will go continue to commodify
and make money from, you know, people who might be
(03:30):
vulnerable and the most intimate parts of what it means
to be a human. And so I really want to
shift the conversation away from just gawking at individuals and
really put our scrutiny where I feel it belongs on
AI companies and the people who run them, and how
they are not really being good stewards of the increasingly
intimate human spaces that they are trying to make money from.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
I appreciate that because I think when I imagine lonely people,
I don't really imagine people who are like afraid of
being made fun of. They probably hate being made fun of,
like more likely to be kind of used to it,
and like it doesn't seem like a very useful If
mockery is ever a socially useful thing, it's only useful
when it is presented in an upward fashion, you know,
(04:12):
like mock the king, not the peasant, even if the
peasant has a wayfoo. Why I don't know how to
pronounce this A pillow that is a person you know,
like you still don't mock them for like, and maybe
I'm like overly empathy empathetic, but I'm like when people
are like, this person married their pillow, and I'm like,
I don't want to make fun of them. I feel
(04:33):
sorry for them, and maybe that's just as bad to them.
Speaker 4 (04:36):
But so that's such an insightful point, and I think
it really tells us a lot about what's going on
when we talk about people who are having intimacy with AI.
The people who have intimacy with AI, they actually from
doing the research on the book, they can tell us
a lot about what the impacts are from people who
are in kind of increasingly intimate connections with AI. And
(04:59):
even if you're somebody who was like, oh, I would
never be friends with AI, I would never, you know,
want to have sex with AI?
Speaker 3 (05:05):
What have you? I would put myself in that camp.
Speaker 4 (05:08):
Tech leaders like Mark Zuckerberg has been super clear that
the future that he is designing is one where he
thinks all of us, everybody listening, will want to have
intimate AI connections. Now, whether that's true for you or not,
that is the future that tech leaders have invested in
and are busy building. And so I think it would
be wove us to talk to the people who are
(05:29):
currently having connection with AI in this way, listen to
what they're saying, and sort of take away like, Okay,
well what does this mean for the rest of us?
But I think that when we're making fun of.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
Them and shaming them, we're actually not learning from them.
Speaker 4 (05:42):
We're not hearing what they say. And I guess for me,
I'm just a curious cat. Like it's really tempting to
shut these conversations down through things like, you know, looking
down on them and making fun of them. I get it,
but you don't learn when you're not being curious. And
so I really tried to approach this conversation from a
really a place of curiosity.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
I am really excited to listen to this now. I
admit if I just read the tagline, I'm like, Heydai,
why would I read this? But you just answered that right,
and like, because I spend a lot of my time
thinking about Like, but I love gadgets. I am obsessed
with gadgets. I learned how to program in CUE Basic
longer ago than a lot of the people listening to
this were alive.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
It's such a nerd and I love it. So much, Margaret.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
But now I'm like age verification, I'm done. I'm like, nope,
I don't want the government that should have nothing to
I've become a grouchy old lady on a rocking chair
in Appalachia kind of literally, and now just like, no
get away from me. I never want to have a
conversation with a chatbot. Every time I do, it's because
I'm angrily trying to deal with customer service.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
And I even have mastered this is really important to
our topic. It's completely unrelated to our topic. I've even
kind of mastered the art of when I'm a human
that I'm talking to in customer service and I'm very mad.
I've gotten very good at being like, I am incredibly
frustrated and not at you as a person. I recognize
that you're doing your job. I am incredibly upset about
the what's happening right now. But you can't do that
(07:09):
with an AI. They have taken away my one skill,
which was getting mad at people without getting mad at them,
and I don't know what to do anymore.
Speaker 4 (07:19):
I'm so glad that you brought that up, because so like,
even if you're somebody who you're like I avoid AI
like the plague. There are times when you find yourself
interacting with AI kind of against your will, and there
are all these insidious, sneaky little ways that they design
it to try to mimic intimacy, even when you are
(07:39):
having what is essentially like a non consensual connection with AI,
where when you're like, hey, Exminity Comcast, my internet is out.
It's a problem, and their AI chatbot is like, oh,
that must be so frustrating for you. I really hear
what you're saying that that's so frustrating. Let me help you.
I'm like, don't try to empathize with me.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
You're not a humane I'm so mad sneak intimacy into
this interaction.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Oh no, this is such an important point because I
think about the other main interaction I have with AI
is that I don't have a publicly available email, kind
of by design because macgrassy old lady lives in, has
a rocking chair and a shotgun. So it really just
everyone's just stay away. I love people, but anyway people
have figured out I assume if you ask an AI
how to reach me, you get one of my publishers,
(08:25):
And so I get these emails forwarded to me all
the time that are people being like, hey, I really
loved your book, and I particularly loved the themes of
the following comma, the following comma and the following I
also really like how the characters experienced as the following
comma and the following and comma the following And we're
trying to reach you to do X y Z. I
don't even know what the scam is, but I've like,
(08:46):
stop trying to appeal to me, to be like, I
understand your book, so you should talk to me.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
I get those every five seconds.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Oh my god, that's probably just your life.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
People trying to get booked on things.
Speaker 4 (08:57):
Yeah, and it's like, you know the person. First of all,
you can tell it's written by aie. It's in personal,
but it's written in such a way that it is
meant to appeal to your like flattery. Like I'm super
so I shouldn't even say this on my podcast, but
I'm super susceptible to flattery. Somebody gives me a compliment,
I'm like, oh, thank you for noticing. Well, you're so observant.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Well, it's because you're empathic that you're susceptible. To flattery.
That's what I've always You're very good at that.
Speaker 4 (09:22):
Thank you, Margaret. Oh wow, you're so insightful, Thanks Margaret.
But like it's these AI generated please are meant to
appeal to these like human qualities about us, you know,
our ego are, you know, susceptibility to flattery, things like that. Yeah,
but like once we put on our critical hats, we
can see how empty and hollow they actually are. And
(09:44):
so it's not like you're actually booking the person who
sends you this email that's clearly AI generated. Oh I
really liked X, Y and Z from your book. Yeah,
but you know, I guess I would argue that companies
know this, and they design, you know, AI to speak
in this way to appeal to us in these ways
that are playing on what I would argue you are
the sort of human qualities that we all have. And
(10:08):
I guess I just think, you know, even though I
have a tech podcast, I consider myself a bit of
a luttite, not in the sense that I don't like.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
Technology, I really do.
Speaker 4 (10:17):
I want to ask questions about who is benefiting from technology, right.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
Like that's what the lunites were all about.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, No, they were like they wanted to
be able to make stuff in a cottage instead of
a factory. This is very reasonable. If they had succeeded,
everyone's life would be better. There probably wouldn't have been
a fucking British empire, like to the same degree. Like anyway,
But I believe that by the end of this episode
we will find a way to tie in that conversation
(10:45):
to this topic. But this topic is entirely different. Bridget
Have you ever heard of music? I think I have
heard a little bit of music. Yeah, okay, what about
American music?
Speaker 3 (10:58):
I am a little bit familiar. Americans make music?
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Sure, yeah, yeah, Well, whether you know it or not,
your world has been shaped by a sickly white communist
from Texas named Alan Lomax. You ever heard of Alan Lomax?
Speaker 3 (11:14):
I have heard of Alan Lomax? What am I thinking of?
Oh Brother, We're Out Thou?
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Wait? Is he in that or something?
Speaker 3 (11:21):
I think?
Speaker 1 (11:21):
I think that's absolutely what his time period is.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
Fact check this.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
Yeah, I is he the guy who records them in
that movie?
Speaker 4 (11:29):
I sound like such a nerd, but I have the
soundtrack on CD to Oh Brother, We're Out Thou.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
And it kind of slaps, So don't come for me.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
Yeah, no, no, that's good music.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
He is involved in it, like his legacy is involved
in that. Sound correct, That.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Is what we will be talking about today. Oh brother,
where art thou? Sinners? And there's one other movie that
I was like thinking about while I was reading all
this that I was like, Oh, this is just that,
Like this is just what this is about.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
I'm so fucking excited.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
And actually Sinners is even the most what it's about,
because it's also about this is a story that into
colonization and racism and recording and what is and isn't
our folk heritage as like people, and there's so much
in this story.
Speaker 4 (12:11):
Did you pick this specifically because you thought it would
be my shit?
Speaker 3 (12:14):
Because it very much is.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
My Oh I'm very excited it's your shit. No. What
happened was this was going to be last week's episode,
and then I learned what Alan Lomax's dad did to
led Belly Huddy Ledbetter, which was do him real fucking dirty,
and so I had to switch. And last week I
just recorded about Huddy Led Better, but I couldn't get
(12:36):
out of my head, and I thought you might be
into this, so I'm very excited.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
You thought right, Magpie.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
So Alan Lomax did more than probably anybody in history
anywhere in the world that I'm aware of. Whenever I
say statements like that, I'm probably wrong. Did more than
anyone in history to record folk music, the music of people,
the people people. I don't know what you're capitalizing or
putting the on front of it, however you do it.
(13:03):
He was there across cultures and continents. Without him, people
have made clear there would be no rock and roll.
It's likely that without him an awful lot of blues,
jazz and work songs would have simply died away. Also,
a lot of like traditional voodoo music would possibly be gone.
And it depends on how you know robust the oral
(13:23):
tradition would be. But there's so many genres where we
barely have any of their music. Anything that Helen Lomax
showed up and cared about we know the songs also
left out of the story always this is his wife Elizabeth,
who did all of that work alongside him for twelve
years and has been more or less written out of history,
(13:44):
which is you're making your I'm not surprised face.
Speaker 4 (13:48):
I'm disappointed in myself, because that's always the story. Of course,
there's a woman somewhere who didn't get her due, who
was very involved.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
And I'm a.
Speaker 4 (13:58):
Little bit familiar with Lomax's work, but it never even
occurred to me to think, like, well, was there a
woman in the mix who is the reason why his
work is, you know, has the status that it does.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
I like, I can say that they were married for
twelve years, and they were traveling doing that work together
most of that time. And he went on to continue
to do it for decades and decades, and she went
on to have a different career. So he's a little
bit more of the driving force, but she did twelve
years of this work, which is a lot of time,
and like thousands of songs, you know, and they recorded
(14:35):
thousands and thousands of folk musicians, the overwhelming majority of
whom never saw any commercial success. So just like recording
these songs, and it's a remarkably American story, and it's
a story about how people came together to tell the
American story. And because it's the American story, it's like
cut through with racism and colonialism the whole goddamn time
(14:57):
in ways that I wish it was, but it is because,
unfortunately for all of us, the story of Alan Lomax
begins with his father who did this work before him,
named John Lomax. John Lomax, the technical word for him
was that he was a racist, colonizing piece of shit,
and he even came across a sort of progressive on
(15:22):
racist US at his time. But he's like, we have
his letters to his wife. He's just a racist. He's
a horrible fucking racist, and like it's just left out
of the histories. I found one book, it's about Howey
Ledbetter that talks about all of this, and it completely
disrupted everything. Like I was saying, I realized that a
(15:44):
small detour around Howdy Ledbetter needed to become an entire
two episodes, So last week we covered Hotty Ledbetter, better
known by his stage name Led Belly, one of the
finest blues musicians the world has ever seen. Led Belly
persevered through just about everything. He was pretty big into
self defense, so he went to jail a lot because
it was a rough time to be a black Southern
(16:06):
man who's into self defense in the Jim Crow South.
He went to prison a lot. For anyone who didn't
listen last week the first time hatt he led better
got out of prison. He did it by just breaking
out he was on a chain gang. And this is, oh, brother,
we're art that moment in my mind. But I have
to sell the same anecdote I told last time, which
is that my grandfather was also on a chain gang
(16:27):
in the nineteen thirties. He stole a car and then
he didn't snitch out the people he stole a car with.
And my family presents this. I never talked about my
family on here. What am I doing? My family presents
this as this like really wholesome story about how he
takes responsibility for his crimes. And I'm like, n because
he's no snitch.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
Yeah, is that like your family legacy is like we
don't snitch.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
No.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
They take the wrong answer out of it, because like
they see his like hobo days as kind of this
like quaint aside and like focus more on his later work, right,
and whereas I'm like, I've written freight trains. I want
to talk to my grant. I can't or I can't
only but he's dead, so it's a different version of
talking anyway. Whatever. As soon as I found out I
worked a changgang. I have no idea for how long.
(17:12):
Whenever I read about changangs, I get really excited. Led
Belly decided he didn't want to work on a chain gang,
so they burned a hole in the floor of the
wooden wagon and they just left and had no brother
were at that Probably he changed his name. The second
time he was in prison, he literally sang his Way
to Freedom because the governor would come by and like
(17:33):
check on the prisons, and he wrote a song that
was like, oh, Governor, you should this is totally not
the melody. You should release me. It would be the
Christian thing to do.
Speaker 4 (17:44):
You know how convincing of a song. That song had
to have slapped where it's like, all right, let.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Him go now. They're actually are recordings and it's completely
different than the way I just sang it. This man
was called the King of the twelve string Guitar, which
is actually interesting. He learned it. It was a Mexican
instrument when he learned it in Dallas. So he sings
his way to freedom. The third time he's in prison,
he had the fortune and misfortune to meet John fucking Lomax.
John Lomax didn't get him out of prison, but took
(18:11):
credit for getting him out of prison. Haddy Ledbetter jailhouse
lawyered himself out of prison by successfully connecting bureaucratic dots
between Texas and Louisiana while imprisoned in the South in
the nineteen thirties. Wow, and got himself out of prison.
But John Lomax takes all the credit. After that, Huddy
(18:34):
Ledbetter became the unpaid servant for John Lomax. And along
the way to introduce a little bit, or we'll go
back and start with Alan's story. Alan's seventeen and with
his dad when all this happens. So some of Alan's
formative moments of doing this work is this exploiting black
(18:56):
man who just got out of prison. So once again,
howe he Ledbetter had to find his way to freedom.
It's not in prison, but he's trapped in this like
really messed up contract where he's only getting a third
of the money that he's producing. It's like almost like
a model for like exploitative like how the music industry
works today.
Speaker 4 (19:14):
You know, I was gonna say, it doesn't sound that
different from my friends who are recording artists or musicians
or entertainers. What they describe today, and it does come
feel like a modern day colonialistic situation where it's like, Okay,
so I do all the work, you get all the
money and credit and that's.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
That and also the fucking copyright. And that was actually
the thing because like I always sort of knew that
record deals are often real bad, and like book deals
are complicated because they're like often a similar low percentage
of your work, but you usually still kind of own
the work, and the contract is like more likely to
have a like if we stop publishing this, you get
your rights back. Like the book industry is bad, the
(19:54):
music industry is worse. And it was so interesting to
be like I can draw the connection. John his parents
owned people, and they called themselves like everyone refers to
them as basically bootstrapping their way up, and it's like
left out that the reason that they did that is
because they fucking owned a bunch of families of people,
you know, because they're fucking.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
Strapping via owning enslaved people.
Speaker 4 (20:15):
Yeah, you know, like an owning essentially like enslaving people
and taking their money.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (20:20):
Yeah, it's like, oh, we're making our own way yeah,
through very fucked up mes.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
Yeah, left out of that basically every story. But so
it's like I can draw a direct line to the
music industry through that and how they you know. And
so he's going around when John is going around to
the South, he's going around and he's collecting folk songs
and copywriting them like and not paying the musicians. And
(20:46):
that's like the race. It's like a race between all
these folk song collectors. So this is why I was like,
I can't cover Alan Lomax yet. What if Alan Lomax
is a piece of shit? He's not. He's actually really cool.
He's genuinely a cool guy. But he grew up in
this horrible industry of exploitation, you know.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
Can I ask a question? Yeah, I don't want to
jump ahead, yea, And I don't know.
Speaker 4 (21:08):
The answer to this is cutting out the ownership and
profit and copyright, you know, of the people who are
actually making the thing.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
Do you think that is intentional, like we.
Speaker 4 (21:21):
Are taking the product from other people and benefiting ourselves
or is it more sort of like it's just like
not how people thought about it at the time. At
the time, it's like, why would these people expect ownership
or a profit from this thing that they are creating.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
Do you know what I'm asking?
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Yeah, no, totally. And what's interesting is I think the
answer is literally in the colonization of say Africa. I've
been listening to Behind the Bastard. It's like a terrible person.
And same the recent episodes about Zimbabwe when it had
a worse name, about how British people were like, look
at this empty land. It's not being used. I am
(21:56):
going to be the one to do something with this.
I think it's that they literally don't see ownership or
value produced by especially black people, but also just poor
people in general. Because they're also doing this to hillbilly music,
which is funny because black people weren't allowed to play
it if they became commercially successful. Same with cowboy songs.
(22:17):
Black people like Huddy Ledbetter was literally a cowboy from
Texas and he wasn't allowed to play cowboy songs when
he got big, you know, because that's white people music.
He can't do that. But still overall, largely a racial
component to this, and I think it's colonization. I think
it's literally believing this is empty land. Okay, this is
the best comparison I can come up with, and it's
(22:38):
a weird one. Until I came out as trans I
didn't know what size I was as a person, I
had dysphoria. I would look in the mirror and see
something different than everyone else saw, right. I think that
white colonists are essentially insane. I'm not defending them. They're
still criminally liable. They can't use it as a defense
(23:00):
in court. But I think they genuinely were like, look
at this empty land. Yeah, and you're like you're literally
talking to a man in English about ownership of the
land and buying it from him, and yet you don't
see what's happening. That's my best guess ay.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
Almost in a kind of dysmorphia where you just can't
see what's actually there.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
Interesting.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
I don't even think that they were like, I mean,
they were profit motivated, but like not like fuck, yeah,
I'm gonna go exploit people today.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
You know.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
They were like I'm just gonna go collect the fruits
of the wild and like, honestly, like when I talk
about led Belly in the last episodes, like he wasn't
even a circus act. He was a zoo act, you know,
until he took charge found white lawyers who helped him
get out of the contract, and he like fucking broke
free and then had a career and then became a
leftist labor singer and wrote anti fascist songs and was
(23:52):
cool as fuck. But the last time he went to prison.
Alan Lomax dropped out of grad school to help raise
money to help get him out. So that was when
I was like, all right, Alix is cool.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
That's pretty cool. That's first of all, as a grad
school dropout. Dropping out of grad school's pretty cool just
in general, but that's specifically very cool.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
Years later, students would ask advice, and he often was like,
drop out of school.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
It's great advice. I've give that advice to anybody.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
I'm also a college drop out.
Speaker 4 (24:23):
Yet wouldn't you repeat that advice? If somebody was like,
I'm in grad school and it sucks, I have no money,
what should I do? It's like, how have you considered
dropping out?
Speaker 1 (24:30):
I remember giving me to talk out of college, and
this like person raised their hand, They're like I remember
they like asked me how to handle certain things with college,
and I was just like, look, I dropped out. Like
now your school's paying me to talk to you. I
don't know what to tell you I'm not encouraging that
one way or the other. Everyone's conditions are very different
from each other. But do you know what I can
(24:51):
wholeheartedly recommend because I have personally added none of lay
it on me the products and services that support this
podcast of which I have no knowledge.
Speaker 4 (25:00):
It will never not pack me up. How y'all do
your ad breaks. It is my favorite fucking thing in
the world.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
I think they secretly know that anti advertising is still advertising,
that's my best guess. Or they just don't listen, but
you should listen or not here they are enter back.
So this week I am mad at my sources. I
am particularly mad. I have never talked shit on a
(25:26):
specific source book before on the four or five years
of been doing this show. I am mad at the
biography Alan Lomax, the man who Recorded the World by
John Zwd from twenty ten, because twenty ten is way
too recent of a book to have such wild either
apology of racism that's either conscious or just sure didn't
(25:46):
look deep. Because this is a book about Alan Lomax.
It's the book about Alan Lomax that I can find,
and so it's my main source for a lot of
this stuff. But because one of the most important things
in Alan's early life and one of the main things
that this book starts off talking about. This book just
basically like gives the like John Lomax in his family
(26:07):
bootstrap themselves, and here he is like off trying to
care about people and doesn't mention any of the like
it's just defending the contract that he traps. Howe he
ledbetter and over and over and over again, even when
like no one's asking, you know, it's like going out
of the way to be like instead of saying something
that might be fucked up and then defending it, it
starts off by defending it.
Speaker 4 (26:27):
You know.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
It frames made to work morning till night as an
unpaid servant as didn't charge him rent.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
Ah, and like, oh, like isn't that great for him?
What a bargain? Right?
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Like literally, this man when they bring up I think
Martha is her name, Huddy's wife to come stay with
them in Connecticut while they're recording up from Texas or
maybe Louisiana. It's been a moment. They're like, all right,
we're gonna let your you know, girlfriend come up here
and you get married. And it's presented as like reuniting
the two. Literally, John Lomax was writing letters to his
(27:02):
wife that were like, helly, and now I have two
one paid servants like that being left out. I'm not
a big lies biomission, girl, That's a fucking lie biomission.
And it completely leaves out how they wrote a racist
caricature of Ledbetter and then claimed that Ledbetter wrote it
and then didn't give him any of the money for it,
(27:23):
and it's just it's disinfuriating. I was so mad that
I almost didn't do this episode, and then I kept
reading and I was like, goddamn, Alan Lomax is actually
really cool. His dad's a piece of shit. But I
don't trust my source, so maybe he was also a
piece of shit, and it's just not fucking mentioned. But
I do have a lot of counterfactual I have a
lot of like Alan Lomax being really cool.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
Okay, good.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
That is my long aside. I believe Alan Lomax was
nothing like his father, and this story is maybe essential
for understanding the construction of folk identity in America, an
America's conception of its own music and literature. But Alan
Lomack thirty minutes into our episode, that's actually honestly faster
(28:04):
than sometimes for this show. Alan Lomax was born on
January thirty first, in the Year of Our Lord, nineteen fifteen,
in Austin, Texas. I believe he was the third child,
and he was a sickly kid. He had asthma and earaches,
and he struggled to put on weight. And this is
going to follow him his whole life, that he just
is a kind of likes getting sick. It's like a hobby.
(28:27):
Their parents were overachievers who wanted their kids to be
overachievers too, and all their kids were ranked against each other,
like whenever a kid started reading, they were like, oh, well,
Susie started reading at three and a half, what are
you fucking doing at three and nine months, you fucking
lazy asshole, you know. And they were all taught to
sing and do math and just do all the overachiever shit,
(28:49):
and they like would have been in competitive soccer leagues
one hundred years later, but instead he's actually gonna end
up being forced to play football even though he's a tiny,
sickly child. Alan was pretty direct about how he felt
about this period in his life. Quote, I was given
an absurd notion of my capacities. I don't know how
I survived. I was pushed ahead of my class although
I wasn't brighter than anybody else, that made me like him.
(29:13):
I was just like, oh, I like this guy. Alan
grew up in a household that believed his own legend
that there were all these like you know, bootstrappers who
you know, would successfully get into Harvard and shit like that,
and they demanded greatness of their kids. Alan got perfect grades,
but he missed class because he was sick all the time.
He went to the fanciest private school with tiny classes,
(29:35):
but he could never truly impress his father despite getting
all a's, because he wasn't a real Texas man's man.
So he was signed up for football and he was
shipped off during the summer to work on ranches that
would like, you know, build him up or whatever he
laid around sick, take him man, Yeah, yeah, exactly. He
would just go to the ranches and then be like
deathly ill in a ranch instead of at home, you know.
(29:57):
And at one point he's at this ranch, he sends
letters home to his family. He's probably fourteen or something
at this point, because he goes off to school at fifteen,
So he writes letters home to his family and he's like,
I'm so sick that I think I'm going to die
and I've made peace with it. And his dad wrote
him back, and of course did naturally the one thing
a father should do in the circumstance, which is chastise
(30:19):
him for making spelling mistakes in the letter and tell
him that he should be proofreading his letters before he
sends them.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
His dad is a real son of a bitch. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
No, it's just absolute fucking nightmare.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Man.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
He's going to be woven into way too much of
this story. His other older brother, John Junior, used to
beat him up all the time, and their parents ignored
it because they figure it it's sort itself out. Ironically,
Alan is going to end up his dad's favorite, despite
having screaming matches about politics their entire lives.
Speaker 3 (30:51):
I know that game.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Possibly Dad is going Possibly, I've read two versions of this.
Dad is going to turn him into the FBI for
being a communist. But they're still the favorite.
Speaker 4 (31:12):
What are the other siblings like where it's like, yeah,
I turned him into the FBI, but so I can better.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
It's because they both do the same work with folklore.
I think I don't know, or like maybe dad knows
that Dad's a piece of shit, and it's just like
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (31:30):
Maybe it's like a I don't know, if you watched
the show Succession, maybe.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
It's sort of like I got you what is it?
Speaker 3 (31:37):
You know, where it's like we don't get.
Speaker 4 (31:38):
Along, but I have a begrudging respect for the fact
that you like go out on your own and you try. Yeah,
maybe it's like that a little bit of a roy
family dynamic.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
Like when Kendall like exposes his dad and his dad
like secretly smile.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Yeah, he's kind of into it because it's like, well,
we don't get along, but I respect that you're like
taking a shot.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
I love you, but you're not serious.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
Where's people?
Speaker 1 (32:03):
I actually think that is happening. And because even his
whole life, Allan is going to be like I hate
my father's politics. My father has done terrible things, but
also he kind of refuses to be like fuck by dad.
He's always a little bit like but I understand and
respect him. It's kind of an interesting dynamic, and like,
I don't know, if I had a piece of shit kid,
(32:24):
like I don't know, it'd be so hard, right, like
what have you had a kid in there? A piece
of shit? Like what do you even do? I don't
know anyway, so I have some respect for the respect
for dad. At like fourteen or fifteen, he goes off
to a finishing school in Connecticut on a full scholarship
and he's off to New England to become a fancy person.
But he doesn't have any money, like spending money, and
his family pretty genuinely didn't have any spending money for
(32:47):
him either. Dad was usually working for this or that university,
but was unemployed a lot, and his work as a
folklorist was often ignored. It's worth knowing that his dad's history.
His dad loves cowboy songs and he wants it to
be taken seriously in academia, and most people kind of
just laugh at him about it. And so that's kind
of why he started breaking into being like, well, what
(33:08):
if I record black people instead? And people are like, oh,
that sells people like the race music as it was
called at the time, which is funny because like we
call it like race music as if we're like so
much more enlightened now, but like, yeah, it's the same
concept truly can we sell this to white people?
Speaker 4 (33:26):
All of this sounds like it's so like, you know,
back in the old days. It is actually very much
still around. The legacy of all this is like very contemporary.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
I mean, fuck, I don't know how it works about
people like walking around and finding people like freestyling on
the street and then just being like, I'm gonna make
you a stock kid, you know, stick with me.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
It goes straight to the town.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
Yeah, I do still run across people getting absolutely screwed
by producers over that.
Speaker 3 (33:53):
You know.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
So young Alan, he's in Connecticut and he wants to
go on a date, so he asks his parents for
money to quote that book Alan Lomax, the manner recorded
the world quote. His mother wrote a thirteen page letter
that listed each of his cousins who had been a
failure because of some girl or another and contrasted them
with those like his older brother, who had succeeded because
(34:15):
of their single minded devotion to their work.
Speaker 4 (34:20):
It's like Rick and Morty style, like, don't think about girls,
just focus on side and then you know it'll yeah,
it'll just confuse you and distract you.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
But Alan Lomax's clever as shit. This is like nineteen thirty,
he's doing this. He writes back, basically, look, if you
don't give me money to date this girl, I've been
looking at boys a lot lately. Boys are kind of cute,
am I right? Car, Yeah, he's already turning out very
(34:53):
differently from his father. He spends his freshman year of
college at the University of Texas, and he resigns from
the school paper because he wants to publish. Okay, the
pope says birth control is bad. Here's an encyclical about it,
and so Alan writes a birth control is good, Fuck you,
mister pope, and the school won't publish it. So he's like,
(35:15):
then I quit. You won't listen to my pro birth
control arguments, I'm fucking out of here. And his friend
group was radical as fuck, including a guy who later
became the lawyer who wrote the arguments used to desegregate
schools in Brown versus the Board of Education. And then
there are a whole bunch of other names that were
listed that I was like, oh, I should look up.
That's too many rabbit holes. A lot of his friends
(35:36):
went on to go do civil rights shit in pretty
cool ways. He was born to be a Bohemian, but
not actually from Bohemia, because that's actually Bohemi is like
in Bohemian as a concept, it's like an early Orientalism.
Well it's about the same time as regular Orientalism, but
like Bohemia is a place. It's in eastern Europe. It's
like part of the Czech Republic now, right, But being
a Bohemian is like I am exotic and different, you know,
(36:00):
and we like let that one be, which is fine.
I don't believe that Bohemians are ethnically oppressed, but anyway,
he's born to be a Bohemian by the style of
the time in the nineteen and thirties in America, he
risks expulsion to go to a black music venue, like
if a school finds out he's like going to where
black people hang out, he can get expelled. He does
it anyway, and his second year of college, his family
(36:23):
manages to get him into Harvard on a scholarship to
study philosophy. He goes there. He keeps a goldfish in
a rat as pets I think, in his dorm room.
He doesn't really make a lot of friends because all
of his classmates are pretentious conservative assholes.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
And also the pet rat probably didn't know. Hello.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
Yeah, No, he's a weird kid. He is absolutely a
weird kid.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
Hygiene my guy.
Speaker 1 (36:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
And he wrote his.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
Dad constantly, and his dad wanted letters about Harvard life,
being like, ah, I want to live through you, Like
what are you doing? What amazing learnings are you doing?
And Alan sends him letters about communism, and he sends
his dad letters about communism with a capital C that
has flames coming out of it.
Speaker 3 (37:07):
Oh my god, this is big f you, dad, energy,
which I'm here for.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
But it's also like he's like, Dad, I've discovered the
most amazing thing you know. And Dad is having a
hard time. He keeps losing his job, his health is declining,
and his wife, Alan's mom dies and so he gets
a lot out of corresponding with his weird communist son.
So he's like writing these letters that are like you're
my only human connection. Tell me about what's happening. And
(37:35):
he's kids like have you ever heard of from each
according to ability, to each according to need?
Speaker 3 (37:44):
I've drawing it with flames around.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
It for you. Here's the stucy esa or the coolest
or whatever. I love it. It was just like a
no one ever changes the moment to learn that he's drying. Yes,
communism flames come out.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
It's up also sid iconic reference.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
I think now they're caught it coolest. But when I
was in school, there's a Stuss and so he doesn't
like Harvard and he writes and he's like, Dad, let
me just like go around and collect music with you. Instead,
he wants to go to the coal miner strike in
Kentucky because that's where all the writers go to get
it arrested, because there's no real free speech in America.
(38:25):
And if you go right like pretty like famous people
were going there to cover it, and we're getting interested
for covering it. But he also is like he's a
Sessi communist. So he's like, Dad, no, wait, I have
new idea. You should put me on a ship somewhere
in like the South Pacific, and I'm going to learn
how to do stuff with my hands, be a sailor,
you know which, like I don't know. I mean, I
also want to learn that, but I actually don't want
(38:46):
to do it in that style. And he's watching all
these Soviet films which glorified the good worker and put
down the intellectual and he knows that, despite being somewhat
a poor text, and he's probably made fun of a
lot for this, he is certainly the bourgeoisie. And I
almost spelled that word correctly when I wrote it into
my script, but I did not. I get to write.
(39:07):
About half the time, he gets himself arrested for protesting
the deportation of a Polish labor organizer, which surprised him
because he hadn't actually broken the law. He had just
spoken at a rally. So this was kind of his
like Pikachu shock face that, like he's like, wait, but
it's gonna happen to me, Like, hold on, I'm not
a poor Polish worker or a Kentuckian minor, or like
(39:29):
a black person from the South.
Speaker 3 (39:31):
Do they know of my affiliation with Harvard?
Speaker 2 (39:33):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (39:34):
Well, fortunately the dean of Harvard bailed him out.
Speaker 3 (39:37):
Oh good.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
He only makes it one year at Harvard. Money is
tight and his grades are shit because he's too distracted
trying to be a Bohemian communist. And I'm not a
communist at least not in the capital c with flaming
letters kind of way. But honestly, this is still relatable
to my art school dropout self and he heads back
to the University of Texas. But school was never going
(40:03):
to be where this man excelled. He is much better
on the road doing the work he was born to do,
which is record people's songs. He starts doing that during
his next summer break, when he is all of seventeen
years old. But do you know who else gets a break?
Tell me, we get a very short break, and you,
the listener, get either a short or long break, depending
(40:23):
on whether or not you've discovered the skip Ford thirty
seconds button. Here's a bunch of ads, and we're back.
Speaker 3 (40:33):
See.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
His dad had sold a book to McMillan, which is
funny to me because I have also sold books to McMillan,
saying that he would travel around the country recording and
transcribing an anthology of American folk music, and the Library
of Congress signed off on them working in a volunteer
capacity on the project, which gives them like cred right,
They're like, oh, we're working for McMillan and also the
(40:57):
Library of Congress. So nineteen thirty two, father and son
drove around the country, camping as they went and recording,
and the timeline's a bit blurry to me, does this
a couple summers in a row. I might acidently conflate
some stuff. John is out there doing colonialism. He doesn't
see it that way. He sees himself as a serious
academic researcher. But he records people's music and then copyrights
(41:18):
it and sells it. Alan learns there's something more to
it right away. That first summer they recorded a singer
named Blue, who sang the song stagger Lee, which I
first heard with Nick Cave's stagger Lee because I learned
it once a white Australian man saying it, and since
Blue knew he was being recorded, Blue said on the
(41:40):
recording quote, now, mister President, you just don't know how
bad they're treating us folks down here. I'm singing to you,
and I'm talking to you. So I hope you will
come down here and do something for us poor folks
in Texas. And so Alan heard in this the realization
that folk recording could be part of social change, part
(42:01):
of bringing people's voices directly to people with less mediation.
But most people straight up wouldn't sing for these two
white dudes, two white men driving around a car offering
to record them and not paying them any money, no
thank you. And one biographer was like that I read
about this was like, yeah, that makes sense. People they
(42:22):
want to be exploited. Well, the other one was like,
I'm paraphrasing rudely here. Those silly superstitious savages. They didn't
use that word, but they meant it. Didn't know what
recording was all about. You're gonna make money on this,
And I'm fucking not.
Speaker 4 (42:37):
Like, yeah, I'm glad to hear this, because I do
think there's this attitude. I don't know, it just reminds
me of how much savvy and asiency these folks actually had,
because it's so easy to think of these folks as
like not having savviness and agency and like them being like, oh,
you want to record me and take my voice and
(42:57):
I get no money, no thank you, continue about your way,
like it's a good reminder that these folks were pretty.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
Savvy and like no one ever like they're traveling around
with incredibly expensive equipment, no one's ever like robbing them.
People are just like which I straight up wouldn't be
mad if they did, honestly, but like everyone's just like not,
I don't want anything to do with that one performer
who didn't record put it clearly, it's like, look, if
I record with you, actually this ties into AI in
(43:25):
an interesting way. If I record with you, even if
you pay me, who's going to hire me to play
their bar anymore? If they can just put on a
record of me.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
Margaret as a voice professional.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
Huh.
Speaker 4 (43:38):
I am having these same conversations today in twenty twenty
six that this person that you just quoted was having
back then. Not a damn thing change, my friends, not
a damn thing change.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
And when they do find people who are willing to record,
people are willing to record spirituals but not secular songs,
not the sinful songs to use a way that they
are sometimes called sometimes by the black folks and definitely
by people trying to sell them to white folks, by
white people trying to sell the songs who call them sinful.
But people know they're not supposed to play those songs
in mixed company, so they're not going to play it
(44:12):
on a recording, so they're not getting the real authentic stuff,
you know. And the whole time that they're driving around
the South with five hundred pounds of recording equipment in
the trunk literally two seventy five pound batteries. It's fucking
wild because it's the two of them. They're just arguing
about politics and about racism and like whether what they're
(44:32):
doing is racism, and about prisons because they're also been
going to prisons and recording people there, you know, which
is funny because they're like, oh, I know, who was
willing to sing for me, someone who is literally incarcerated
and not free?
Speaker 3 (44:47):
I would I gotta say, though, I I want to
be a fly on the dashboard of conversation. I know
this would be a good movie.
Speaker 1 (44:56):
It really would. God yeah, Like, especially once they have
led back are like yeah. And eventually they find Hote
he led better in prison, and Huddy is smart and
he realizes these two white guys might be his ticket out.
He actually, you know, had done the jailhouse lawyery and
to secure his own freedom, but that hadn't really gone
through yet, and so he's like, one, I'm going to
record and he sings that same song, the like hey Governor,
(45:19):
let me go song. He's like, you got to give
this to the governor. And it's unclear whether or not
they ever do, but it's not what gets him out,
but he's like, these two white guys might get me
to New York. They might be my ticket to a
real career once I get myself out of here. So
when he gets out, they spend a couple months driving
around the South, the three of them, and in last
week's episodes they get into it in detail, but basically
(45:39):
they didn't pay him a dime, they expected him to
be their servant and also literally didn't let him leave
when he wanted to. Alan is seventeen and probably doesn't
have a lot of agency in this, but whatever, Like
he's like, yeah, kind of shitty. Will you let me
go home? Can you give me bus fare or let
me borrow the car or drive me back? And they're like,
ahh he'll get over it, you know. Yeah. John Lomax
(46:03):
got Pikachu shock face when he found out that Huddy
wasn't actually grateful and wanted to get out of the
exploited of contract. But Alan really looked up to Houdey
and the two eventually became friends, and eventually they became
part of the same New York City leftist folk music
scene that churned out about half the shit that became
popular music of like just fucking every genre. And that
(46:27):
is where we're gonna leave the story for now.
Speaker 3 (46:29):
WHOA, you could not have picked a story that I
am more invested in. I'm on the edge of my seat.
Speaker 4 (46:36):
Mark.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
It's fun when I get to do related topics two
weeks in a row, because then I get to be
like extra obsessed with it and extra insufferable to everybody
that is around me physically. But like, I kind of
love the episodes that I have to rewrite so many
times because I flip flop on how I feel about
all of it because of some great reveal somewhere along
the way. Although what was interesting is that the great
(46:57):
reveal here was that, like, Allan's actually pretty fucking chill.
Speaker 3 (47:01):
Yeah. I was waiting. I was like, is Alan going
to be a jerk? This whole time?
Speaker 4 (47:06):
I've been listening to the Oh Brother, We're out that soundstrack,
and it's like, oh, actually he's not a cool guy.
I'm happy to know that isn't really the case.
Speaker 1 (47:12):
Yeah, I wouldn't date him.
Speaker 4 (47:15):
Well, that's the threshold. You talk about a lot of
cool people, some of them I would date. Wendy Carlos
call me.
Speaker 1 (47:21):
If I think although okay, some people's problem is that
they're terrible to the people that they date. And some
people's problem is that polyamory hadn't hit yet. Yes, Yes,
and Honey Ledbetter and Alan Lomax polyamory hadn't hit yet. Wow,
they would have been fine. They would have been perfectly responsible.
(47:41):
I think, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (47:44):
I like that.
Speaker 1 (47:44):
I think yeah. I like to imagine emotional responsibility can
look like a lot of things and a lot of
different types of relationships. Anyway, if people want to hear
things that you're excited about. Besides this, is there a
podcast they can listen to?
Speaker 4 (48:01):
There certainly is. You can listen to my podcast on
iHeart called there Are No Girls on the Internet, and
you can check out my audiobook which is available on
July fourteenth, called Love at First prompt at Love Atfirsthprompt
dot AI.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
And I'm really proud of myself for not making the
joke I've made. I think every time you've been in
a guest, which is that we're proving otherwise there are
girls on the Internet. But I didn't make that joke.
Speaker 3 (48:23):
So you keep I apprecia takes a joke, keep making
it all right?
Speaker 1 (48:29):
Well, we will see you all on whatever day of
the other episode comes out Wednesday. Woo Cool People Who
Did Cool Stuff is a production of pool Zone Media.
The more podcasts and pool Zone Media, visit our website
rule zonemedia dot com, or check us out on I
(48:50):
Heard Radio, appp A Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hello, and welcome to cool People who had cool stuff.
You're a weekly reminder that there's cool stuff happening, and
it's often done by cool people. Although also it's your
weekly reminder that people who seem really cool when you
tell really short versions of their story, actually it become
very complicated and real when you tell the longer versions
of their story. Because nobody's perfect except our guest today
(00:25):
and our producer today, Bridget Todd.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
Hi, how are you?
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Hi? Margaret?
Speaker 4 (00:30):
I like this idea that I'm perfect, you know what,
I'm not going to push back.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
I am.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Yeah, No, that's what I'm saying. And also perfect is
Sophie our producer. Hi, Sophie, Hi, I am perfect. Bridget.
You are the host of a podcast as a shameful
thing to be.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
It is just a dirtbag podcaster life, you know.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Well, yeah, you are the host of There Are No
Girls on the Internet, which is a podcast that people
can listen to, except it just took a break. Maybe
what's going on?
Speaker 4 (00:57):
Yeah, we are taken in brief pause, but will be
real soon. Folks'll check it out if you're interested in
the intersection of identity and technology and social media and
some of the wormiest little pieces of dung on the
Internet and what they're up to you to make our
lives miserable.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Come check us out.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
You also have a book that's about to come out.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
That is right.
Speaker 4 (01:18):
Thank you for asking about the book. It is an
audiobook with Simon and Schuster called Love at First Prompt
AI and the Future of Intimacy, and it's all about
folks who have intimate connections with AI.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Okay, the two things that are interesting me about that immediately. One,
I've never heard of an audio only book.
Speaker 4 (01:37):
I had not heard of it before making one either,
So it is not a physical book. It is audio
only for now. Somebody was like, oh, can you sign
it for me? And I thought, well, would that be
a voice note?
Speaker 1 (01:48):
Yeah, like a postcard? Like interesting? I mean I listened to, honestly,
everything I'm not reading for work, I listened to audio
books for so it actually makes perfect sense to me.
Although I'm like, if I ever had to listen to
it for work, I'd be really sad because then I
have to listen to it, whereas I read very quickly
for work. But when we were talking about this book
(02:10):
before we started recording, you are presenting it in like
kind of a more complicated way. I'm going to rudely
guess most of the people who are listening are anti AI,
and your whole thing is that we should shame people
who are lonely by being really mad at them and
not blaming structural problems. Is that the basis of.
Speaker 4 (02:28):
Your book basically, yes, only the opposite. Oh right, yeah,
I mean, I don't think I'm giving anything away, no
spoilers and saying that I'm not the most pro AI
person out there. But the reality is a whole host
of growing people are using AI for intimacy, whether that's
you know, platonic connection, romantic connection, a lot of sexual
(02:52):
connection through things like erotic role play.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
And I feel that.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
So much of the conversation about these people is demonizing
and shaming.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Right, look at these losers your insults.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
Yeah, look at these pathetic losers who are getting their
jollys off to an AI girlfriend or AI porn or.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
What have you.
Speaker 4 (03:10):
I totally get that stance. But we're so busy gawking
and finger pointing at the individual that the sam Altmans
and the Elon Musks and the Mark Zuckerberg's of the
world are like great, keep making fun of what you
see as these pathetic losers will go continue to commodify
and make money from, you know, people who might be
(03:30):
vulnerable and the most intimate parts of what it means
to be a human. And so I really want to
shift the conversation away from just gawking at individuals and
really put our scrutiny where I feel it belongs on
AI companies and the people who run them, and how
they are not really being good stewards of the increasingly
intimate human spaces that they are trying to make money from.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
I appreciate that because I think when I imagine lonely people,
I don't really imagine people who are like afraid of
being made fun of. They probably hate being made fun of,
like more likely to be kind of used to it,
and like it doesn't seem like a very useful If
mockery is ever a socially useful thing, it's only useful
when it is presented in an upward fashion, you know,
(04:12):
like mock the king, not the peasant, even if the
peasant has a wayfoo. Why I don't know how to
pronounce this A pillow that is a person you know,
like you still don't mock them for like, and maybe
I'm like overly empathy empathetic, but I'm like when people
are like, this person married their pillow, and I'm like,
I don't want to make fun of them. I feel
(04:33):
sorry for them, and maybe that's just as bad to them.
Speaker 4 (04:36):
But so that's such an insightful point, and I think
it really tells us a lot about what's going on
when we talk about people who are having intimacy with AI.
The people who have intimacy with AI, they actually from
doing the research on the book, they can tell us
a lot about what the impacts are from people who
are in kind of increasingly intimate connections with AI. And
(04:59):
even if you're somebody who was like, oh, I would
never be friends with AI, I would never, you know,
want to have sex with AI?
Speaker 3 (05:05):
What have you? I would put myself in that camp.
Speaker 4 (05:08):
Tech leaders like Mark Zuckerberg has been super clear that
the future that he is designing is one where he
thinks all of us, everybody listening, will want to have
intimate AI connections. Now, whether that's true for you or not,
that is the future that tech leaders have invested in
and are busy building. And so I think it would
be wove us to talk to the people who are
(05:29):
currently having connection with AI in this way, listen to
what they're saying, and sort of take away like, Okay,
well what does this mean for the rest of us?
But I think that when we're making fun of.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
Them and shaming them, we're actually not learning from them.
Speaker 4 (05:42):
We're not hearing what they say. And I guess for me,
I'm just a curious cat. Like it's really tempting to
shut these conversations down through things like, you know, looking
down on them and making fun of them. I get it,
but you don't learn when you're not being curious. And
so I really tried to approach this conversation from a
really a place of curiosity.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
I am really excited to listen to this now. I
admit if I just read the tagline, I'm like, Heydai,
why would I read this? But you just answered that right,
and like, because I spend a lot of my time
thinking about Like, but I love gadgets. I am obsessed
with gadgets. I learned how to program in CUE Basic
longer ago than a lot of the people listening to
this were alive.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
It's such a nerd and I love it. So much, Margaret.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
But now I'm like age verification, I'm done. I'm like, nope,
I don't want the government that should have nothing to
I've become a grouchy old lady on a rocking chair
in Appalachia kind of literally, and now just like, no
get away from me. I never want to have a
conversation with a chatbot. Every time I do, it's because
I'm angrily trying to deal with customer service.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
And I even have mastered this is really important to
our topic. It's completely unrelated to our topic. I've even
kind of mastered the art of when I'm a human
that I'm talking to in customer service and I'm very mad.
I've gotten very good at being like, I am incredibly
frustrated and not at you as a person. I recognize
that you're doing your job. I am incredibly upset about
the what's happening right now. But you can't do that
(07:09):
with an AI. They have taken away my one skill,
which was getting mad at people without getting mad at them,
and I don't know what to do anymore.
Speaker 4 (07:19):
I'm so glad that you brought that up, because so like,
even if you're somebody who you're like I avoid AI
like the plague. There are times when you find yourself
interacting with AI kind of against your will, and there
are all these insidious, sneaky little ways that they design
it to try to mimic intimacy, even when you are
(07:39):
having what is essentially like a non consensual connection with AI,
where when you're like, hey, Exminity Comcast, my internet is out.
It's a problem, and their AI chatbot is like, oh,
that must be so frustrating for you. I really hear
what you're saying that that's so frustrating. Let me help you.
I'm like, don't try to empathize with me.
Speaker 3 (07:57):
You're not a humane I'm so mad sneak intimacy into
this interaction.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Oh no, this is such an important point because I
think about the other main interaction I have with AI
is that I don't have a publicly available email, kind
of by design because macgrassy old lady lives in, has
a rocking chair and a shotgun. So it really just
everyone's just stay away. I love people, but anyway people
have figured out I assume if you ask an AI
how to reach me, you get one of my publishers,
(08:25):
And so I get these emails forwarded to me all
the time that are people being like, hey, I really
loved your book, and I particularly loved the themes of
the following comma, the following comma and the following I
also really like how the characters experienced as the following
comma and the following and comma the following And we're
trying to reach you to do X y Z. I
don't even know what the scam is, but I've like,
(08:46):
stop trying to appeal to me, to be like, I
understand your book, so you should talk to me.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
I get those every five seconds.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Oh my god, that's probably just your life.
Speaker 3 (08:54):
People trying to get booked on things.
Speaker 4 (08:57):
Yeah, and it's like, you know the person. First of all,
you can tell it's written by aie. It's in personal,
but it's written in such a way that it is
meant to appeal to your like flattery. Like I'm super
so I shouldn't even say this on my podcast, but
I'm super susceptible to flattery. Somebody gives me a compliment,
I'm like, oh, thank you for noticing. Well, you're so observant.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
Well, it's because you're empathic that you're susceptible. To flattery.
That's what I've always You're very good at that.
Speaker 4 (09:22):
Thank you, Margaret. Oh wow, you're so insightful, Thanks Margaret.
But like it's these AI generated please are meant to
appeal to these like human qualities about us, you know,
our ego are, you know, susceptibility to flattery, things like that. Yeah,
but like once we put on our critical hats, we
can see how empty and hollow they actually are. And
(09:44):
so it's not like you're actually booking the person who
sends you this email that's clearly AI generated. Oh I
really liked X, Y and Z from your book. Yeah,
but you know, I guess I would argue that companies
know this, and they design, you know, AI to speak
in this way to appeal to us in these ways
that are playing on what I would argue you are
the sort of human qualities that we all have. And
(10:08):
I guess I just think, you know, even though I
have a tech podcast, I consider myself a bit of
a luttite, not in the sense that I don't like.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
Technology, I really do.
Speaker 4 (10:17):
I want to ask questions about who is benefiting from technology, right.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
Like that's what the lunites were all about.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, No, they were like they wanted to
be able to make stuff in a cottage instead of
a factory. This is very reasonable. If they had succeeded,
everyone's life would be better. There probably wouldn't have been
a fucking British empire, like to the same degree. Like anyway,
But I believe that by the end of this episode
we will find a way to tie in that conversation
(10:45):
to this topic. But this topic is entirely different. Bridget
Have you ever heard of music? I think I have
heard a little bit of music. Yeah, okay, what about
American music?
Speaker 3 (10:58):
I am a little bit familiar. Americans make music?
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Sure, yeah, yeah, Well, whether you know it or not,
your world has been shaped by a sickly white communist
from Texas named Alan Lomax. You ever heard of Alan Lomax?
Speaker 3 (11:14):
I have heard of Alan Lomax? What am I thinking of?
Oh Brother, We're Out Thou?
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Wait? Is he in that or something?
Speaker 3 (11:21):
I think?
Speaker 1 (11:21):
I think that's absolutely what his time period is.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
Fact check this.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
Yeah, I is he the guy who records them in
that movie?
Speaker 4 (11:29):
I sound like such a nerd, but I have the
soundtrack on CD to Oh Brother, We're Out Thou.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
And it kind of slaps, So don't come for me.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
Yeah, no, no, that's good music.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
He is involved in it, like his legacy is involved
in that. Sound correct, That.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Is what we will be talking about today. Oh brother,
where art thou? Sinners? And there's one other movie that
I was like thinking about while I was reading all
this that I was like, Oh, this is just that,
Like this is just what this is about.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
I'm so fucking excited.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
And actually Sinners is even the most what it's about,
because it's also about this is a story that into
colonization and racism and recording and what is and isn't
our folk heritage as like people, and there's so much
in this story.
Speaker 4 (12:11):
Did you pick this specifically because you thought it would
be my shit?
Speaker 3 (12:14):
Because it very much is.
Speaker 1 (12:15):
My Oh I'm very excited it's your shit. No. What
happened was this was going to be last week's episode,
and then I learned what Alan Lomax's dad did to
led Belly Huddy Ledbetter, which was do him real fucking dirty,
and so I had to switch. And last week I
just recorded about Huddy Led Better, but I couldn't get
(12:36):
out of my head, and I thought you might be
into this, so I'm very excited.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
You thought right, Magpie.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
So Alan Lomax did more than probably anybody in history
anywhere in the world that I'm aware of. Whenever I
say statements like that, I'm probably wrong. Did more than
anyone in history to record folk music, the music of people,
the people people. I don't know what you're capitalizing or
putting the on front of it, however you do it.
(13:03):
He was there across cultures and continents. Without him, people
have made clear there would be no rock and roll.
It's likely that without him an awful lot of blues,
jazz and work songs would have simply died away. Also,
a lot of like traditional voodoo music would possibly be gone.
And it depends on how you know robust the oral
(13:23):
tradition would be. But there's so many genres where we
barely have any of their music. Anything that Helen Lomax
showed up and cared about we know the songs also
left out of the story always this is his wife Elizabeth,
who did all of that work alongside him for twelve
years and has been more or less written out of history,
(13:44):
which is you're making your I'm not surprised face.
Speaker 4 (13:48):
I'm disappointed in myself, because that's always the story. Of course,
there's a woman somewhere who didn't get her due, who
was very involved.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
And I'm a.
Speaker 4 (13:58):
Little bit familiar with Lomax's work, but it never even
occurred to me to think, like, well, was there a
woman in the mix who is the reason why his
work is, you know, has the status that it does.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
I like, I can say that they were married for
twelve years, and they were traveling doing that work together
most of that time. And he went on to continue
to do it for decades and decades, and she went
on to have a different career. So he's a little
bit more of the driving force, but she did twelve
years of this work, which is a lot of time,
and like thousands of songs, you know, and they recorded
(14:35):
thousands and thousands of folk musicians, the overwhelming majority of
whom never saw any commercial success. So just like recording
these songs, and it's a remarkably American story, and it's
a story about how people came together to tell the
American story. And because it's the American story, it's like
cut through with racism and colonialism the whole goddamn time
(14:57):
in ways that I wish it was, but it is because,
unfortunately for all of us, the story of Alan Lomax
begins with his father who did this work before him,
named John Lomax. John Lomax, the technical word for him
was that he was a racist, colonizing piece of shit,
and he even came across a sort of progressive on
(15:22):
racist US at his time. But he's like, we have
his letters to his wife. He's just a racist. He's
a horrible fucking racist, and like it's just left out
of the histories. I found one book, it's about Howey
Ledbetter that talks about all of this, and it completely
disrupted everything. Like I was saying, I realized that a
(15:44):
small detour around Howdy Ledbetter needed to become an entire
two episodes, So last week we covered Hotty Ledbetter, better
known by his stage name Led Belly, one of the
finest blues musicians the world has ever seen. Led Belly
persevered through just about everything. He was pretty big into
self defense, so he went to jail a lot because
it was a rough time to be a black Southern
(16:06):
man who's into self defense in the Jim Crow South.
He went to prison a lot. For anyone who didn't
listen last week the first time hatt he led better
got out of prison. He did it by just breaking
out he was on a chain gang. And this is, oh, brother,
we're art that moment in my mind. But I have
to sell the same anecdote I told last time, which
is that my grandfather was also on a chain gang
(16:27):
in the nineteen thirties. He stole a car and then
he didn't snitch out the people he stole a car with.
And my family presents this. I never talked about my
family on here. What am I doing? My family presents
this as this like really wholesome story about how he
takes responsibility for his crimes. And I'm like, n because
he's no snitch.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
Yeah, is that like your family legacy is like we
don't snitch.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
No.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
They take the wrong answer out of it, because like
they see his like hobo days as kind of this
like quaint aside and like focus more on his later work, right,
and whereas I'm like, I've written freight trains. I want
to talk to my grant. I can't or I can't
only but he's dead, so it's a different version of
talking anyway. Whatever. As soon as I found out I
worked a changgang. I have no idea for how long.
(17:12):
Whenever I read about changangs, I get really excited. Led
Belly decided he didn't want to work on a chain gang,
so they burned a hole in the floor of the
wooden wagon and they just left and had no brother
were at that Probably he changed his name. The second
time he was in prison, he literally sang his Way
to Freedom because the governor would come by and like
(17:33):
check on the prisons, and he wrote a song that
was like, oh, Governor, you should this is totally not
the melody. You should release me. It would be the
Christian thing to do.
Speaker 4 (17:44):
You know how convincing of a song. That song had
to have slapped where it's like, all right, let.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Him go now. They're actually are recordings and it's completely
different than the way I just sang it. This man
was called the King of the twelve string Guitar, which
is actually interesting. He learned it. It was a Mexican
instrument when he learned it in Dallas. So he sings
his way to freedom. The third time he's in prison,
he had the fortune and misfortune to meet John fucking Lomax.
John Lomax didn't get him out of prison, but took
(18:11):
credit for getting him out of prison. Haddy Ledbetter jailhouse
lawyered himself out of prison by successfully connecting bureaucratic dots
between Texas and Louisiana while imprisoned in the South in
the nineteen thirties. Wow, and got himself out of prison.
But John Lomax takes all the credit. After that, Huddy
(18:34):
Ledbetter became the unpaid servant for John Lomax. And along
the way to introduce a little bit, or we'll go
back and start with Alan's story. Alan's seventeen and with
his dad when all this happens. So some of Alan's
formative moments of doing this work is this exploiting black
(18:56):
man who just got out of prison. So once again,
howe he Ledbetter had to find his way to freedom.
It's not in prison, but he's trapped in this like
really messed up contract where he's only getting a third
of the money that he's producing. It's like almost like
a model for like exploitative like how the music industry
works today.
Speaker 4 (19:14):
You know, I was gonna say, it doesn't sound that
different from my friends who are recording artists or musicians
or entertainers. What they describe today, and it does come
feel like a modern day colonialistic situation where it's like, Okay,
so I do all the work, you get all the
money and credit and that's.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
That and also the fucking copyright. And that was actually
the thing because like I always sort of knew that
record deals are often real bad, and like book deals
are complicated because they're like often a similar low percentage
of your work, but you usually still kind of own
the work, and the contract is like more likely to
have a like if we stop publishing this, you get
your rights back. Like the book industry is bad, the
(19:54):
music industry is worse. And it was so interesting to
be like I can draw the connection. John his parents
owned people, and they called themselves like everyone refers to
them as basically bootstrapping their way up, and it's like
left out that the reason that they did that is
because they fucking owned a bunch of families of people,
you know, because they're fucking.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
Strapping via owning enslaved people.
Speaker 4 (20:15):
Yeah, you know, like an owning essentially like enslaving people
and taking their money.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (20:20):
Yeah, it's like, oh, we're making our own way yeah,
through very fucked up mes.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
Yeah, left out of that basically every story. But so
it's like I can draw a direct line to the
music industry through that and how they you know. And
so he's going around when John is going around to
the South, he's going around and he's collecting folk songs
and copywriting them like and not paying the musicians. And
(20:46):
that's like the race. It's like a race between all
these folk song collectors. So this is why I was like,
I can't cover Alan Lomax yet. What if Alan Lomax
is a piece of shit? He's not. He's actually really cool.
He's genuinely a cool guy. But he grew up in
this horrible industry of exploitation, you know.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
Can I ask a question? Yeah, I don't want to
jump ahead, yea, And I don't know.
Speaker 4 (21:08):
The answer to this is cutting out the ownership and
profit and copyright, you know, of the people who are
actually making the thing.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
Do you think that is intentional, like we.
Speaker 4 (21:21):
Are taking the product from other people and benefiting ourselves
or is it more sort of like it's just like
not how people thought about it at the time. At
the time, it's like, why would these people expect ownership
or a profit from this thing that they are creating.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
Do you know what I'm asking?
Speaker 1 (21:35):
Yeah, no, totally. And what's interesting is I think the
answer is literally in the colonization of say Africa. I've
been listening to Behind the Bastard. It's like a terrible person.
And same the recent episodes about Zimbabwe when it had
a worse name, about how British people were like, look
at this empty land. It's not being used. I am
(21:56):
going to be the one to do something with this.
I think it's that they literally don't see ownership or
value produced by especially black people, but also just poor
people in general. Because they're also doing this to hillbilly music,
which is funny because black people weren't allowed to play
it if they became commercially successful. Same with cowboy songs.
(22:17):
Black people like Huddy Ledbetter was literally a cowboy from
Texas and he wasn't allowed to play cowboy songs when
he got big, you know, because that's white people music.
He can't do that. But still overall, largely a racial
component to this, and I think it's colonization. I think
it's literally believing this is empty land. Okay, this is
the best comparison I can come up with, and it's
(22:38):
a weird one. Until I came out as trans I
didn't know what size I was as a person, I
had dysphoria. I would look in the mirror and see
something different than everyone else saw, right. I think that
white colonists are essentially insane. I'm not defending them. They're
still criminally liable. They can't use it as a defense
(23:00):
in court. But I think they genuinely were like, look
at this empty land. Yeah, and you're like you're literally
talking to a man in English about ownership of the
land and buying it from him, and yet you don't
see what's happening. That's my best guess ay.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
Almost in a kind of dysmorphia where you just can't
see what's actually there.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
Interesting.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
I don't even think that they were like, I mean,
they were profit motivated, but like not like fuck, yeah,
I'm gonna go exploit people today.
Speaker 3 (23:29):
You know.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
They were like I'm just gonna go collect the fruits
of the wild and like, honestly, like when I talk
about led Belly in the last episodes, like he wasn't
even a circus act. He was a zoo act, you know,
until he took charge found white lawyers who helped him
get out of the contract, and he like fucking broke
free and then had a career and then became a
leftist labor singer and wrote anti fascist songs and was
(23:52):
cool as fuck. But the last time he went to prison.
Alan Lomax dropped out of grad school to help raise
money to help get him out. So that was when
I was like, all right, Alix is cool.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
That's pretty cool. That's first of all, as a grad
school dropout. Dropping out of grad school's pretty cool just
in general, but that's specifically very cool.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
Years later, students would ask advice, and he often was like,
drop out of school.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
It's great advice. I've give that advice to anybody.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
I'm also a college drop out.
Speaker 4 (24:23):
Yet wouldn't you repeat that advice? If somebody was like,
I'm in grad school and it sucks, I have no money,
what should I do? It's like, how have you considered
dropping out?
Speaker 1 (24:30):
I remember giving me to talk out of college, and
this like person raised their hand, They're like I remember
they like asked me how to handle certain things with college,
and I was just like, look, I dropped out. Like
now your school's paying me to talk to you. I
don't know what to tell you I'm not encouraging that
one way or the other. Everyone's conditions are very different
from each other. But do you know what I can
(24:51):
wholeheartedly recommend because I have personally added none of lay
it on me the products and services that support this
podcast of which I have no knowledge.
Speaker 4 (25:00):
It will never not pack me up. How y'all do
your ad breaks. It is my favorite fucking thing in
the world.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
I think they secretly know that anti advertising is still advertising,
that's my best guess. Or they just don't listen, but
you should listen or not here they are enter back.
So this week I am mad at my sources. I
am particularly mad. I have never talked shit on a
(25:26):
specific source book before on the four or five years
of been doing this show. I am mad at the
biography Alan Lomax, the man who Recorded the World by
John Zwd from twenty ten, because twenty ten is way
too recent of a book to have such wild either
apology of racism that's either conscious or just sure didn't
(25:46):
look deep. Because this is a book about Alan Lomax.
It's the book about Alan Lomax that I can find,
and so it's my main source for a lot of
this stuff. But because one of the most important things
in Alan's early life and one of the main things
that this book starts off talking about. This book just
basically like gives the like John Lomax in his family
(26:07):
bootstrap themselves, and here he is like off trying to
care about people and doesn't mention any of the like
it's just defending the contract that he traps. Howe he
ledbetter and over and over and over again, even when
like no one's asking, you know, it's like going out
of the way to be like instead of saying something
that might be fucked up and then defending it, it
starts off by defending it.
Speaker 4 (26:27):
You know.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
It frames made to work morning till night as an
unpaid servant as didn't charge him rent.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
Ah, and like, oh, like isn't that great for him?
What a bargain? Right?
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Like literally, this man when they bring up I think
Martha is her name, Huddy's wife to come stay with
them in Connecticut while they're recording up from Texas or
maybe Louisiana. It's been a moment. They're like, all right,
we're gonna let your you know, girlfriend come up here
and you get married. And it's presented as like reuniting
the two. Literally, John Lomax was writing letters to his
(27:02):
wife that were like, helly, and now I have two
one paid servants like that being left out. I'm not
a big lies biomission, girl, That's a fucking lie biomission.
And it completely leaves out how they wrote a racist
caricature of Ledbetter and then claimed that Ledbetter wrote it
and then didn't give him any of the money for it,
(27:23):
and it's just it's disinfuriating. I was so mad that
I almost didn't do this episode, and then I kept
reading and I was like, goddamn, Alan Lomax is actually
really cool. His dad's a piece of shit. But I
don't trust my source, so maybe he was also a
piece of shit, and it's just not fucking mentioned. But
I do have a lot of counterfactual I have a
lot of like Alan Lomax being really cool.
Speaker 3 (27:41):
Okay, good.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
That is my long aside. I believe Alan Lomax was
nothing like his father, and this story is maybe essential
for understanding the construction of folk identity in America, an
America's conception of its own music and literature. But Alan
Lomack thirty minutes into our episode, that's actually honestly faster
(28:04):
than sometimes for this show. Alan Lomax was born on
January thirty first, in the Year of Our Lord, nineteen fifteen,
in Austin, Texas. I believe he was the third child,
and he was a sickly kid. He had asthma and earaches,
and he struggled to put on weight. And this is
going to follow him his whole life, that he just
is a kind of likes getting sick. It's like a hobby.
(28:27):
Their parents were overachievers who wanted their kids to be
overachievers too, and all their kids were ranked against each other,
like whenever a kid started reading, they were like, oh, well,
Susie started reading at three and a half, what are
you fucking doing at three and nine months, you fucking
lazy asshole, you know. And they were all taught to
sing and do math and just do all the overachiever shit,
(28:49):
and they like would have been in competitive soccer leagues
one hundred years later, but instead he's actually gonna end
up being forced to play football even though he's a tiny,
sickly child. Alan was pretty direct about how he felt
about this period in his life. Quote, I was given
an absurd notion of my capacities. I don't know how
I survived. I was pushed ahead of my class although
I wasn't brighter than anybody else, that made me like him.
(29:13):
I was just like, oh, I like this guy. Alan
grew up in a household that believed his own legend
that there were all these like you know, bootstrappers who
you know, would successfully get into Harvard and shit like that,
and they demanded greatness of their kids. Alan got perfect grades,
but he missed class because he was sick all the time.
He went to the fanciest private school with tiny classes,
(29:35):
but he could never truly impress his father despite getting
all a's, because he wasn't a real Texas man's man.
So he was signed up for football and he was
shipped off during the summer to work on ranches that
would like, you know, build him up or whatever he
laid around sick, take him man, Yeah, yeah, exactly. He
would just go to the ranches and then be like
deathly ill in a ranch instead of at home, you know.
(29:57):
And at one point he's at this ranch, he sends
letters home to his family. He's probably fourteen or something
at this point, because he goes off to school at fifteen,
So he writes letters home to his family and he's like,
I'm so sick that I think I'm going to die
and I've made peace with it. And his dad wrote
him back, and of course did naturally the one thing
a father should do in the circumstance, which is chastise
(30:19):
him for making spelling mistakes in the letter and tell
him that he should be proofreading his letters before he
sends them.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
His dad is a real son of a bitch. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
No, it's just absolute fucking nightmare.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Man.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
He's going to be woven into way too much of
this story. His other older brother, John Junior, used to
beat him up all the time, and their parents ignored
it because they figure it it's sort itself out. Ironically,
Alan is going to end up his dad's favorite, despite
having screaming matches about politics their entire lives.
Speaker 3 (30:51):
I know that game.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Possibly Dad is going Possibly, I've read two versions of this.
Dad is going to turn him into the FBI for
being a communist. But they're still the favorite.
Speaker 4 (31:12):
What are the other siblings like where it's like, yeah,
I turned him into the FBI, but so I can better.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
It's because they both do the same work with folklore.
I think I don't know, or like maybe dad knows
that Dad's a piece of shit, and it's just like
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (31:30):
Maybe it's like a I don't know, if you watched
the show Succession, maybe.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
It's sort of like I got you what is it?
Speaker 3 (31:37):
You know, where it's like we don't get.
Speaker 4 (31:38):
Along, but I have a begrudging respect for the fact
that you like go out on your own and you try. Yeah,
maybe it's like that a little bit of a roy
family dynamic.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
Like when Kendall like exposes his dad and his dad
like secretly smile.
Speaker 3 (31:53):
Yeah, he's kind of into it because it's like, well,
we don't get along, but I respect that you're like
taking a shot.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
I love you, but you're not serious.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
Where's people?
Speaker 1 (32:03):
I actually think that is happening. And because even his
whole life, Allan is going to be like I hate
my father's politics. My father has done terrible things, but
also he kind of refuses to be like fuck by dad.
He's always a little bit like but I understand and
respect him. It's kind of an interesting dynamic, and like,
I don't know, if I had a piece of shit kid,
(32:24):
like I don't know, it'd be so hard, right, like
what have you had a kid in there? A piece
of shit? Like what do you even do? I don't
know anyway, so I have some respect for the respect
for dad. At like fourteen or fifteen, he goes off
to a finishing school in Connecticut on a full scholarship
and he's off to New England to become a fancy person.
But he doesn't have any money, like spending money, and
his family pretty genuinely didn't have any spending money for
(32:47):
him either. Dad was usually working for this or that university,
but was unemployed a lot, and his work as a
folklorist was often ignored. It's worth knowing that his dad's history.
His dad loves cowboy songs and he wants it to
be taken seriously in academia, and most people kind of
just laugh at him about it. And so that's kind
of why he started breaking into being like, well, what
(33:08):
if I record black people instead? And people are like, oh,
that sells people like the race music as it was
called at the time, which is funny because like we
call it like race music as if we're like so
much more enlightened now, but like, yeah, it's the same
concept truly can we sell this to white people?
Speaker 4 (33:26):
All of this sounds like it's so like, you know,
back in the old days. It is actually very much
still around. The legacy of all this is like very contemporary.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
I mean, fuck, I don't know how it works about
people like walking around and finding people like freestyling on
the street and then just being like, I'm gonna make
you a stock kid, you know, stick with me.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
It goes straight to the town.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
Yeah, I do still run across people getting absolutely screwed
by producers over that.
Speaker 3 (33:53):
You know.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
So young Alan, he's in Connecticut and he wants to
go on a date, so he asks his parents for
money to quote that book Alan Lomax, the manner recorded
the world quote. His mother wrote a thirteen page letter
that listed each of his cousins who had been a
failure because of some girl or another and contrasted them
with those like his older brother, who had succeeded because
(34:15):
of their single minded devotion to their work.
Speaker 4 (34:20):
It's like Rick and Morty style, like, don't think about girls,
just focus on side and then you know it'll yeah,
it'll just confuse you and distract you.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
But Alan Lomax's clever as shit. This is like nineteen thirty,
he's doing this. He writes back, basically, look, if you
don't give me money to date this girl, I've been
looking at boys a lot lately. Boys are kind of cute,
am I right? Car, Yeah, he's already turning out very
(34:53):
differently from his father. He spends his freshman year of
college at the University of Texas, and he resigns from
the school paper because he wants to publish. Okay, the
pope says birth control is bad. Here's an encyclical about it,
and so Alan writes a birth control is good, Fuck you,
mister pope, and the school won't publish it. So he's like,
(35:15):
then I quit. You won't listen to my pro birth
control arguments, I'm fucking out of here. And his friend
group was radical as fuck, including a guy who later
became the lawyer who wrote the arguments used to desegregate
schools in Brown versus the Board of Education. And then
there are a whole bunch of other names that were
listed that I was like, oh, I should look up.
That's too many rabbit holes. A lot of his friends
(35:36):
went on to go do civil rights shit in pretty
cool ways. He was born to be a Bohemian, but
not actually from Bohemia, because that's actually Bohemi is like
in Bohemian as a concept, it's like an early Orientalism.
Well it's about the same time as regular Orientalism, but
like Bohemia is a place. It's in eastern Europe. It's
like part of the Czech Republic now, right, But being
a Bohemian is like I am exotic and different, you know,
(36:00):
and we like let that one be, which is fine.
I don't believe that Bohemians are ethnically oppressed, but anyway,
he's born to be a Bohemian by the style of
the time in the nineteen and thirties in America, he
risks expulsion to go to a black music venue, like
if a school finds out he's like going to where
black people hang out, he can get expelled. He does
it anyway, and his second year of college, his family
(36:23):
manages to get him into Harvard on a scholarship to
study philosophy. He goes there. He keeps a goldfish in
a rat as pets I think, in his dorm room.
He doesn't really make a lot of friends because all
of his classmates are pretentious conservative assholes.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
And also the pet rat probably didn't know. Hello.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
Yeah, No, he's a weird kid. He is absolutely a
weird kid.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
Hygiene my guy.
Speaker 1 (36:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:46):
And he wrote his.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
Dad constantly, and his dad wanted letters about Harvard life,
being like, ah, I want to live through you, Like
what are you doing? What amazing learnings are you doing?
And Alan sends him letters about communism, and he sends
his dad letters about communism with a capital C that
has flames coming out of it.
Speaker 3 (37:07):
Oh my god, this is big f you, dad, energy,
which I'm here for.
Speaker 1 (37:13):
But it's also like he's like, Dad, I've discovered the
most amazing thing you know. And Dad is having a
hard time. He keeps losing his job, his health is declining,
and his wife, Alan's mom dies and so he gets
a lot out of corresponding with his weird communist son.
So he's like writing these letters that are like you're
my only human connection. Tell me about what's happening. And
(37:35):
he's kids like have you ever heard of from each
according to ability, to each according to need?
Speaker 3 (37:44):
I've drawing it with flames around.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
It for you. Here's the stucy esa or the coolest
or whatever. I love it. It was just like a
no one ever changes the moment to learn that he's drying. Yes,
communism flames come out.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
It's up also sid iconic reference.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
I think now they're caught it coolest. But when I
was in school, there's a Stuss and so he doesn't
like Harvard and he writes and he's like, Dad, let
me just like go around and collect music with you. Instead,
he wants to go to the coal miner strike in
Kentucky because that's where all the writers go to get
it arrested, because there's no real free speech in America.
(38:25):
And if you go right like pretty like famous people
were going there to cover it, and we're getting interested
for covering it. But he also is like he's a
Sessi communist. So he's like, Dad, no, wait, I have
new idea. You should put me on a ship somewhere
in like the South Pacific, and I'm going to learn
how to do stuff with my hands, be a sailor,
you know which, like I don't know. I mean, I
also want to learn that, but I actually don't want
(38:46):
to do it in that style. And he's watching all
these Soviet films which glorified the good worker and put
down the intellectual and he knows that, despite being somewhat
a poor text, and he's probably made fun of a
lot for this, he is certainly the bourgeoisie. And I
almost spelled that word correctly when I wrote it into
my script, but I did not. I get to write.
(39:07):
About half the time, he gets himself arrested for protesting
the deportation of a Polish labor organizer, which surprised him
because he hadn't actually broken the law. He had just
spoken at a rally. So this was kind of his
like Pikachu shock face that, like he's like, wait, but
it's gonna happen to me, Like, hold on, I'm not
a poor Polish worker or a Kentuckian minor, or like
(39:29):
a black person from the South.
Speaker 3 (39:31):
Do they know of my affiliation with Harvard?
Speaker 2 (39:33):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (39:34):
Well, fortunately the dean of Harvard bailed him out.
Speaker 3 (39:37):
Oh good.
Speaker 1 (39:43):
He only makes it one year at Harvard. Money is
tight and his grades are shit because he's too distracted
trying to be a Bohemian communist. And I'm not a
communist at least not in the capital c with flaming
letters kind of way. But honestly, this is still relatable
to my art school dropout self and he heads back
to the University of Texas. But school was never going
(40:03):
to be where this man excelled. He is much better
on the road doing the work he was born to do,
which is record people's songs. He starts doing that during
his next summer break, when he is all of seventeen
years old. But do you know who else gets a break?
Tell me, we get a very short break, and you,
the listener, get either a short or long break, depending
(40:23):
on whether or not you've discovered the skip Ford thirty
seconds button. Here's a bunch of ads, and we're back.
Speaker 3 (40:33):
See.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
His dad had sold a book to McMillan, which is
funny to me because I have also sold books to McMillan,
saying that he would travel around the country recording and
transcribing an anthology of American folk music, and the Library
of Congress signed off on them working in a volunteer
capacity on the project, which gives them like cred right,
They're like, oh, we're working for McMillan and also the
(40:57):
Library of Congress. So nineteen thirty two, father and son
drove around the country, camping as they went and recording,
and the timeline's a bit blurry to me, does this
a couple summers in a row. I might acidently conflate
some stuff. John is out there doing colonialism. He doesn't
see it that way. He sees himself as a serious
academic researcher. But he records people's music and then copyrights
(41:18):
it and sells it. Alan learns there's something more to
it right away. That first summer they recorded a singer
named Blue, who sang the song stagger Lee, which I
first heard with Nick Cave's stagger Lee because I learned
it once a white Australian man saying it, and since
Blue knew he was being recorded, Blue said on the
(41:40):
recording quote, now, mister President, you just don't know how
bad they're treating us folks down here. I'm singing to you,
and I'm talking to you. So I hope you will
come down here and do something for us poor folks
in Texas. And so Alan heard in this the realization
that folk recording could be part of social change, part
(42:01):
of bringing people's voices directly to people with less mediation.
But most people straight up wouldn't sing for these two
white dudes, two white men driving around a car offering
to record them and not paying them any money, no
thank you. And one biographer was like that I read
about this was like, yeah, that makes sense. People they
(42:22):
want to be exploited. Well, the other one was like,
I'm paraphrasing rudely here. Those silly superstitious savages. They didn't
use that word, but they meant it. Didn't know what
recording was all about. You're gonna make money on this,
And I'm fucking not.
Speaker 4 (42:37):
Like, yeah, I'm glad to hear this, because I do
think there's this attitude. I don't know, it just reminds
me of how much savvy and asiency these folks actually had,
because it's so easy to think of these folks as
like not having savviness and agency and like them being like, oh,
you want to record me and take my voice and
(42:57):
I get no money, no thank you, continue about your way,
like it's a good reminder that these folks were pretty.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
Savvy and like no one ever like they're traveling around
with incredibly expensive equipment, no one's ever like robbing them.
People are just like which I straight up wouldn't be
mad if they did, honestly, but like everyone's just like not,
I don't want anything to do with that one performer
who didn't record put it clearly, it's like, look, if
I record with you, actually this ties into AI in
(43:25):
an interesting way. If I record with you, even if
you pay me, who's going to hire me to play
their bar anymore? If they can just put on a
record of me.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
Margaret as a voice professional.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
Huh.
Speaker 4 (43:38):
I am having these same conversations today in twenty twenty
six that this person that you just quoted was having
back then. Not a damn thing change, my friends, not
a damn thing change.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
And when they do find people who are willing to record,
people are willing to record spirituals but not secular songs,
not the sinful songs to use a way that they
are sometimes called sometimes by the black folks and definitely
by people trying to sell them to white folks, by
white people trying to sell the songs who call them sinful.
But people know they're not supposed to play those songs
in mixed company, so they're not going to play it
(44:12):
on a recording, so they're not getting the real authentic stuff,
you know. And the whole time that they're driving around
the South with five hundred pounds of recording equipment in
the trunk literally two seventy five pound batteries. It's fucking
wild because it's the two of them. They're just arguing
about politics and about racism and like whether what they're
(44:32):
doing is racism, and about prisons because they're also been
going to prisons and recording people there, you know, which
is funny because they're like, oh, I know, who was
willing to sing for me, someone who is literally incarcerated
and not free?
Speaker 3 (44:47):
I would I gotta say, though, I I want to
be a fly on the dashboard of conversation. I know
this would be a good movie.
Speaker 1 (44:56):
It really would. God yeah, Like, especially once they have
led back are like yeah. And eventually they find Hote
he led better in prison, and Huddy is smart and
he realizes these two white guys might be his ticket out.
He actually, you know, had done the jailhouse lawyery and
to secure his own freedom, but that hadn't really gone
through yet, and so he's like, one, I'm going to
record and he sings that same song, the like hey Governor,
(45:19):
let me go song. He's like, you got to give
this to the governor. And it's unclear whether or not
they ever do, but it's not what gets him out,
but he's like, these two white guys might get me
to New York. They might be my ticket to a
real career once I get myself out of here. So
when he gets out, they spend a couple months driving
around the South, the three of them, and in last
week's episodes they get into it in detail, but basically
(45:39):
they didn't pay him a dime, they expected him to
be their servant and also literally didn't let him leave
when he wanted to. Alan is seventeen and probably doesn't
have a lot of agency in this, but whatever, Like
he's like, yeah, kind of shitty. Will you let me
go home? Can you give me bus fare or let
me borrow the car or drive me back? And they're like,
ahh he'll get over it, you know. Yeah. John Lomax
(46:03):
got Pikachu shock face when he found out that Huddy
wasn't actually grateful and wanted to get out of the
exploited of contract. But Alan really looked up to Houdey
and the two eventually became friends, and eventually they became
part of the same New York City leftist folk music
scene that churned out about half the shit that became
popular music of like just fucking every genre. And that
(46:27):
is where we're gonna leave the story for now.
Speaker 3 (46:29):
WHOA, you could not have picked a story that I
am more invested in. I'm on the edge of my seat.
Speaker 4 (46:36):
Mark.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
It's fun when I get to do related topics two
weeks in a row, because then I get to be
like extra obsessed with it and extra insufferable to everybody
that is around me physically. But like, I kind of
love the episodes that I have to rewrite so many
times because I flip flop on how I feel about
all of it because of some great reveal somewhere along
the way. Although what was interesting is that the great
(46:57):
reveal here was that, like, Allan's actually pretty fucking chill.
Speaker 3 (47:01):
Yeah. I was waiting. I was like, is Alan going
to be a jerk? This whole time?
Speaker 4 (47:06):
I've been listening to the Oh Brother, We're out that soundstrack,
and it's like, oh, actually he's not a cool guy.
I'm happy to know that isn't really the case.
Speaker 1 (47:12):
Yeah, I wouldn't date him.
Speaker 4 (47:15):
Well, that's the threshold. You talk about a lot of
cool people, some of them I would date. Wendy Carlos
call me.
Speaker 1 (47:21):
If I think although okay, some people's problem is that
they're terrible to the people that they date. And some
people's problem is that polyamory hadn't hit yet. Yes, Yes,
and Honey Ledbetter and Alan Lomax polyamory hadn't hit yet. Wow,
they would have been fine. They would have been perfectly responsible.
(47:41):
I think, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (47:44):
I like that.
Speaker 1 (47:44):
I think yeah. I like to imagine emotional responsibility can
look like a lot of things and a lot of
different types of relationships. Anyway, if people want to hear
things that you're excited about. Besides this, is there a
podcast they can listen to?
Speaker 4 (48:01):
There certainly is. You can listen to my podcast on
iHeart called there Are No Girls on the Internet, and
you can check out my audiobook which is available on
July fourteenth, called Love at First prompt at Love Atfirsthprompt
dot AI.
Speaker 1 (48:13):
And I'm really proud of myself for not making the
joke I've made. I think every time you've been in
a guest, which is that we're proving otherwise there are
girls on the Internet. But I didn't make that joke.
Speaker 3 (48:23):
So you keep I apprecia takes a joke, keep making
it all right?
Speaker 1 (48:29):
Well, we will see you all on whatever day of
the other episode comes out Wednesday. Woo Cool People Who
Did Cool Stuff is a production of pool Zone Media.
The more podcasts and pool Zone Media, visit our website
rule zonemedia dot com, or check us out on I
(48:50):
Heard Radio, appp A Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Margaret Killjoy
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