Bess Lomax Hawes, Sing It Pretty. Urbana And Chicago, Il: University Of Illinois Press, 2008. Us$19.95. 216 Pp

摘要

The enormous contributions made by John and Alan Lomax to the collection and scholarship of American folk song are broadly recognized. The work of Bess Lomax Hawes is less well known, but certainly deserving of widespread attention and respect. This welcome memoir by her should help to redress the balance. The book begins with her early family life in Texas, and her early experiences of music. Her mother died in 1931 when Bess was 10 years old, and after attending a couple of schools in Dallas, she lived with her sister Shirley in Lubbock until her father remarried and she moved with him and his new wife to Austin. This was in the mid-1950s when John Lomax was engaged in his famous field recordings. The book makes reference to these but has more detail on the work that went into Our Singing Country, and of the woman who in the late 1930s was Bess's guide and mentor, the remarkable Ruth Crawford Seeger. Bess tells the tale of the Almanac Singers, her marriage to Butch Hawes, her work at the Office of War Information broadcasting unit during the Second World War, and the start of her teaching career before taking us through her life in California and how this led up to her formative role in the development of state and federal programmes supporting folk culture and traditional arts.