John A. Lomax

John Avery Lomax was born in 1867 in Goodman, Mississippi, and grew up on a Texas ranch, where he first heard the cowboy songs he would later collect. After studying at the University of Texas and Harvard, he began systematically gathering folk songs from cowboys, prisoners, and rural communities. His landmark collection "Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads" (1910) established him as a leading folklorist. "Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp" (1919) further documented the musical heritage of the American frontier. Lomax also served as a curator of the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress. His work, often done with his son Alan, preserved thousands of songs that might otherwise have been lost, profoundly influencing American folk music scholarship and appreciation.