We’re teaching a bunch of Al Minns and Leon James stuff at the moment, so I’m revisiting a lot of fun footage. Al Minns worked with people like Lennart Westerlund in the earliest days of the lindy hop revival. We hear a lot of stories from these revivalist dancers about how they discovered the old timers, so I especially like the way that story is tipped upside down in Al’s description of the Swedish Mafia in this video: (linky: Al Minns Part 2 (the story of the Sweds))
Category Archives: history
notes
John Lomax
Alan Lomax
Library of Congress’ Archive of Folk Culture
The American folk music revival (NB the blues revival, and the American musicians touring Europe)
the Jelly Roll Morton Library of Congress recordings
The Smithsonian folkways label