BESS (LOMAX) HAWES, : Singer, guitarist, mandolinist, songwriter, folklorist. Born Austin, Texas, January 21, 1921.

In the 1960s, the effect of the Lomax clan on folk music literally spanned the country. On the East Coast, Alan Lomax continued ably to carry on the tradition of his father, John, by collecting folk songs from all over the world and lecturing on folk music at leading universities. Across the continent, in Santa Monica, California, his younger sister, Bess Hawes, ranked as one of the foremost unofficial authorities on folk music in the west.

Bess naturally grew up in an environment conducive to musical scholarship. Her father had established a reputation as one of the foremost collectors of folk material in the nation and, in general, enjoyed the arts. However, when she was old enough to participate in musical activities, he had left university work to become an official in a Texas bank. Thus she had more exposure to classical music than to folk material during elementary school.

Her family started her on piano lessons and she showed excellent potential as a pianist. By the time she was 10, she had received intensive training in the classics and in basic musical theory. Then several hard blows changed the course of all the Lomaxes. Just as the Depression began to erupt, her mother's death sent Bess to a boarding school in Dallas. In 1932, the effects of the Depression caused cutbacks in the banking field and her father was laid off.

While Bess continued her studies in Dallas, her father and brother Alan embarked on new careers in folk music collecting, based on a book contract from The Macmillan Company. Bess proved a precocious student, walking off with honors in school. At 15, she was able to enter the University of Texas.

By now, folk music was a way of life with the Lomax family and Bess met many of the great artists discovered by her father. These included Leadbelly and the Gant family.

In 1937, she left Texas to join her family, now living in Washington, D.C. She worked on transcribing material from field recordings for her menfolks' second book, "Our Singing Country." When her father remarried soon after the book was finished, he took her along to Europe on his honeymoon. To keep busy on the trip, Bess bought a second-hand guitar for $15 and taught herself to play it. By the time the journey was over, she already had mastered part of the art of guitar playing.

When the family settled down in the U.S. once more, Bess enrolled in Rryn Mawr College. She soon met many of the folk music artists then living in New York and was welcomed as a talented artist and kindred spirit. Among those with whom she sometimes performed in folk music gatherings were Pete Seeger, Butch Hawes, Earl Robinson, Woody Guthrie and Burl Ives. Soon a new, somewhat amorphous singing group was formed, called The Almanac Singers. She became a part of it and later married one of the group members, Butch Hawes. During these years, she learned a second stringed instrument, the mandolin, with the great Woody Guthrie as her teacher.

When World War II caused the Almanacs to break up, Bess decided to help the war effort by joining the Office of War Information. She served with the Music Division, helping prepare so material for broadcast to Europe and the Near East.

After the war, she and husband Butch Hawes moved to Boston. An informal songfest she gave at a nursery school attended by one of her children resulted in requests from parents for guitar instruction. She then set up her first class and was on the way to a reputation as one of the best folk music teachers in the country.

While in Boston, Bess took an active part in political campaigns. For one of these she wrote "The M.T.A. Song" with Jacqueline Steiner. The song later was made into a national hit by the Kingston Trio.

In the 1950s, when the Hawes family moved to California, she found herself in as much demand as ever as a music instructor. She also was sought out by many major folk artists when they traveled in the west, and received many invitations to perform at both West Coast and national festivals. She accepted many of these, traveling east to Newport for several Folk Festivals in the 1960s. In addition, she was featured at the Berkeley and UCLA Folk Festivals and at other local concerts and festivals in Los Angeles, San Diego, and Newport. Throughout the 1950s and '60s, she was also much in demand for appearances at coffee houses, concerts, and theaters in many parts of the country.

She continued to increase her stature as a teacher, joining the faculty of San Fernando Valley State College. As an instructor in anthropology, she advanced to the rank of associate professor by 1968. In the 1960s, she took on additional teaching responsibilities as a member of the summer faculty of the folk music workshops at Idyllwild School of Music and the Arts, Idyllwild, California.

-- Bio and image from Stambler and Landon, “Encyclopedia of Folk, Country and Western Music.” New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1969.

Along with her brother, Alan Lomax, Bess Lomax Hawes has continued the Lomax family tradition of achieving fame for significant contributions to the field of folk music. She is a self-taught guitarist, and her early years were highlighted by her participatory role in the influential Almanac Singers. Before her recent move to Washington, D.C., she had established a reputation on the West Coast as one of its foremost guitar teachers and performers, as a professor of anthropology at California State University at Northridge (formerly San Fernando Valley State College), and as a summer faculty member at the Idyllwild School of Music and the Arts.

Bess Lomax was born on January 21, 1921, in Austin, Texas. As a child, she was influenced by her father's interest in music, and she studied classical piano for a number of years. After some years in the business field, John A. Lomax returned to a full-time involvement with folk music, and he and his son Alan contracted with the Macmillan Company to write American Ballads and Folk Songs. After her mother's death, Bess Lomax was sent to a Dallas boarding school�where she excelled in her studies-while her father and brother traveled widely in search of authentic folk material.

She entered the University of Texas when she was fifteen, and her involvement with folk music expanded as she was introduced to traditional singers, including Leadbelly, by her father and brother. She decided to pursue an academic study of the subject, but, at the time, did not consider a career as a performer. When she was sixteen, she helped to transcribe field recordings for the Lomaxes' second book, Our Singing Country, and while she was working with them in Washington, D.C., she assisted Ruth Crawford Seeger in transcribing tunes.

After learning to play the guitar while in Europe, she soon gravitated toward others involved in folk music and joined up with the newly formed Almanac Singers in New York City. Woody Guthrie taught her to play the mandolin, and she met scores of people in the field, including her future husband, Butch Hawes, and his older brother John ("Pete"), who were also members of the Almanac Singers. Baldwin (nicknamed "Butch" by his friends) Hawes was born on September 21, 1919, in Boston, Massachusetts. During the thirties, he temporarily abandoned his pursuit of an art career and turned to music in hopes of finding a more straightforward and relevant medium for expressing his social and political views. As a member of the Almanac Singers, Butch Hawes played primarily backup guitar, sang tenor vocal accompaniment, composed songs (his best-known composition is probably "Arthritis Blues"), and met Bess Lomax, whom he married in 1942. In later years, he returned to fine art and commercial illustration, and before his brother Pete took up residence in Puerto Rico, they often sang together.

When the Almanac Singers disbanded at the beginning of World War II, Bess Lomax Hawes went to work in the Music Division of the Office of War Information (OWI). In the latter forties, Butch and Bess Lomax Hawes moved to Boston, where she began teaching a folk instrument class and composed songs for the Progressive mayoral candidate, Walter F. O'Brien. A collaborative work (with Jacqueline Steiner) of this period, "M.T.A. Song," was later popularized by the Kingston Trio.

The fifties found the Hawes family out on the West Coast, where Bess Lomax Hawes continued her teaching and performing. Her vast knowledge of folk music brought her a reputation as one of Southern California's leading authorities in the field. Today, when she is not teaching, she is frequently lecturing or participating in panel discussions on the subject. Bess Lomax Hawes has been a featured performer at such major festivals as Newport, Berkeley, San Diego, and UCLA, and at numerous concerts, clubs, and workshops.

In addition to teaching folklore and folk music at California State University at Northridge during the sixties, she joined the summer teaching staff of the Idyllwild School of Music and the Arts in Idyllwild, California. She is the co-author (with Bessie Jones) of a book of Afro-American children's

games. Step It Down (Harper & Row, 1972). Bess Lomax Hawes is currently living in Washington, D.C., and working for the Division of the Performing Arts, Smithsonian Institution.

Butch Hawes died in late 1971 after a long history of spinal arthritis. (Sec also The Almanac Singers.) -- 

Folk Music: More Than a Song; Copyright � 1976 by Kristine Baggelaar and Donald Milton. Thomas Y. Crowell Company, New York, NY.