James "Iron Head" Baker and Moses "Clear Rock" Platt

Common card · No. 477162

James "Iron Head" Baker (March 18, 1884 – February 23, 1944) and Moses "Clear Rock" Platt (around 1867 – after 1939) were African American traditional folk singers imprisoned in the Central State Prison Farm in Sugar Land, Texas. The men made a number of field recordings of convict work songs, field hollers and other material with John Lomax for the Library of Congress Archive of American Folk Music in the 1930s. After Lomax was refused entry to the Huntsville Penitentiary, in July 1933, the pair would become the first two convicts in Texas that Lomax was permitted to record. Both men performed solo, but responded to and encouraged one another. This gave Lomax an overview of the idiom and a number of songs to seek out in future collecting. Over the years a number of their recordings have been released on 78 rpm, on LP and on CD by the Library of Congress and other record labels.

Read on Wikipedia · Image Alan Lomax, Public domain