Folk music recordings provide glimpse of U.P.’s history

Musicologist Alan Lomax made some very famous field recordings of American folk music, but his recordings made in Michigan haven’t been as well known, until now.

Excerpt: The collection includes acoustic blues from southern transplants, including Sampson Pittman and one-time Robert Johnson collaborator Calvin Frazier; a lumberjack ballad called “Michigan-I-O” sung solo by an old logger named Lester Wells; and a similar lament about life deep in the copper mines of the Upper Peninsula called “31st Level Blues,” performed by the Floriani family, who were of Croatian descent.

The whole article is online here.

Source: Associated Press