Lonesome Traveler: The Life of Lee Hays

By Doris Willens

Book Overview

During the Great Depression, Lee Hays, the son of a Southern Methodist minister, used his music to life the hearts of sharecroppers and miners and union organizers. He helped bring black music to... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393025640
• ISBN13: 9780393025644
• Release Date: January 1988
• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc
• Length: 303 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 1.0" x 1.0"

Customer Reviews

From Out of the Black(list)

This is a fine biography of a significant socio-politic-musical figure who was subsumed in the anti-Communist hysteria of the American 1940's and 50's. With Pete Seeger, Hays was a co-founder of two musical groups that were effectively blacklisted: the Almanac Singers (eventually joined by Woody Guthrie), and of the seminal folk-pop group The Weavers, whose hit recording of "Goodnight Irene" forever changed the relationship between folk music and popular culture. Hays himself is revealed as a complex and colorful man, of considerable musical and literary talent, personal flaws, and a blazing social conscience that propelled all his work and regularly made him a target of established political hierarchies. With ample excerpts of Hays' writing, photos from the period, and first-hand narrative (Hays roomed with the author's family, and performed with him as part of the "Babysitter's Quartet", which included then-folksinger-now-actor Alan Arkin) this book gives an entertaining and easy-to-appreciate portrait of a remarkable man. It also offers a fascinating glimpse into a period of important, still-difficult American history.