The Mary Lomax Ballad Book

Charles Seeger once said that a folk song is not a text and a tune, but a text and a tune and a mode of performance that comes from a singer's life and culture. Mary Lomax (and her sister Bonnie Loggins) embody this threefold hallmark of authenticity. Their repertoire of ballads, songs, and religious songs were learned from their father Lemuel Payne, and they sing them as they learned them: unadorned, without drama, and with honesty and skill. This collection documents a way of life that is rapidly vanishing. It contains the lyrics of 79 songs and includes two CDs containing 59 songs from the collection.