About the session: In 1966, Alan Lomax arranged for a crew to film and record portions of that year’s Newport Folk Festival, some aspects of which he had programmed. These included a "blues cutting" (featuring Son House, Skip James, and Bukka White); a "gospel battle" (with the Dixie Hummingbirds, Swan Silvertones, and Dorothy Love Coates and the Original Gospel Harmonettes); and a fiddle contest (including Clark Kessinger, Angus Chisholm, and the Coon Creek Girls). In addition to impromptu recordings of some festival participants—such as Canray Fontenot and Alphonse "Bois Sec" Ardoin, Joe Heaney, Dock Boggs, Bessie Jones, and Janie Hunter—Lomax also arranged for the filming of performances by House, White, James, Howlin' Wolf, and Rev. Pearly Brown in an ersatz juke joint he designed on the premises.
