Bob Dylon quote
"There is a distinguished gentlemen here who came...I want to introduce him – named Alan Lomax. I don't know if many of you have heard of him. Yes, he's here, he's made a trip out to see me. I used to know him years ago. I learned a lot there and Alan...Alan was one of those who unlocked the secrets of this kind of music. So if we've got anybody to thank, it's Alan. Thanks, Alan."

Both John's first wife Bess Brown Lomax, who died at the age of 50, and his second wife Ruby Terrill Lomax supported John in his research into folk songs and in the establishment of an archive for the Library of Congress.

Bess Sr. sang folksongs herself. She had learned songs and ballads from her mother, who was from Virginia. Which, in turn, she taught to her children.

Ruby (married in 1934, Professor of Classics and Dean of Women at the University of Texas) and his sons and daughters assisted with his folksong research and with the daily operations of the Archive: Shirley (first child), who performed songs taught to her by her mother; John Jr., who encouraged his father's association with the Library; Alan Lomax who accompanied John on field trips and who from 1937 to 1942 served as the Archive's first paid (though very nominally) employee as Assistant in Charge; and Bess, who spent her weekends and school vacations copying song texts and doing comparative song research.

Some of these recorded traditions became part of American culture. Cowboy Jack Thorp collected sagebrush songs in Texas in 1889 and produced a booklet titled Songs of the Cowboys in 1908. Based on that publication and John Lomax’s 1910 publication, Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads, the oral history of Western music seeped into mainstream American culture. As a direct result, the 1920s saw the creation of an archetype, the singing cowboy, on radio and records.

Lomax first heard “Home on the Range” in 1908 from a Black barkeep in San Antonio.

Here is the recollection in Ms. Lebermann’s own words (as described on Michael Corconan.net):

The story of home on the range
One day in June 1908, Mr. John Lomax turned up in a colored saloon beyond the Southern Pacific depot in San Antonio, Texas, lugging an old-fashioned Edison recording machine about the size of a hay wagon.
The Negro proprietor had been a camp cook and for years had sung songs up and down the Chisholm Trail. Lomax found him behind the saloon, under a tree, asleep. He punched him in the ribs and told him that he wanted to record one of his songs.
“Come back tomorrow,” mumbled the singer.
This Lomax did, and under the mesquite where he had previously found him, the first recording of “Home On the Range” was made.
Finally, Mr. Lomax’s interest in the cowboy ballad brought him to our door. He came because he had heard of the musical ability of my husband Henri Leberman (note: Virginia always used the less-German one “n” spelling of her married name and spelled Henry Lebermann’s first name in the French way.) I remember so well the day he came to our house, carrying with him a satchel full of old Edison records that he had made —not only of the old Negro’s singing, but of cowboys singing around the campfire at night while they were camped on the range.
....
I didn’t know at the time that I would live to see “Home On the Range” become the favorite song of our President, Frankin D. Roosevelt, and one loved by all Americans.

The complex history of the song "Home on the Range" involves the history of the American west, the struggles of the pioneers, and the working life of the cowboy. It also demonstrates the difficulty of finding the origins of a song passed on by word of mouth over time.

Listen to a field recording of the song sung by James Richardson at State Farm, Raiford, Florida and recored by John and Ruby Lomax in 1939 at the link.
Home on the Range on Libary of Congres.

Another version of "Home on the Range" sung to a different melody by Herman Meyers and recorded by Alan Lomax in 1938 is also available.

Lead Belly remains one of the Lomaxes’ most lasting discoveries. They worked with him to record classics like “Midnight Special” and “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?”. Their partnership proved to be short-lived, though, partly because Lead Belly didn’t like the Lomaxes’ practice of claiming a share of royalties for songs they didn’t write. The Lomaxes felt they deserved partial credit for locating and recording the songs.

The Lomaxes ultimately recorded more than 10,000 songs, some of them now ingrained in the fabric of American culture, including “House of the Rising Sun,” which Kentucky teenager Georgia Turner taught them as “Rising Sun Blues” in 1937.

Carrying on his father’s work, Alan Lomax was the first to record Woody Guthrie in 1940. Two years earlier he found Jelly Roll Morton playing piano in Washington, D.C. He recorded Morton’s music and an invaluable oral history. Rounder Records released them as an eight-disc set in 2005.

For six decades, Alan Lomax gave a voice to Indigenous musicians who may have otherwise been ignored. His work took him all over the world and enhanced the efforts of his father, who died in 1948 at age 81. In 1983, Alan founded The Association for Cultural Equity, a New York-based nonprofit that manages his archive and works to repatriate recording rights and royalties to original folk artists and their estates. Alan lived to be 87, passing away in 2002.

Among the artists Lomax is credited with discovering and bringing to a wider audience include blues guitarist Robert Johnson, protest singer Woody Guthrie, folk artist Pete Seeger, country musician Burl Ives, Scottish Gaelic singer Flora MacNeil, and country blues singers Lead Belly and Muddy Waters, among many others. "Alan scraped by the whole time, and left with no money," said Don Fleming, director of Lomax's Association for Culture Equity. "He did it out of the passion he had for it, and found ways to fund projects that were closest to his heart".

The Folklife Center and Association for Cultural Equity released in 2012 a digital archive (Alan called the Global Jukebox); 5,000 hours of sound recordings, 400,000 feet of film, 3,000 videotapes, and 5,000 photographs.