The biographer of Sun Ra and Miles Davis chronicles the life and times of Alan Lomax, a man who has been instrumental in preserving America’s musical heritage. Armed with a tape-recorder and his own near-flawless good taste Lomax spent years travelling the US, particualrly the South, bringing the obscure into the light, by recording the work of such famed musicians as Muddy Waters and Lead Belly. Packed with evocative detail, and based on inside knowledge (the author was acquinted with Alan Lomax), The Man who Recorded the World takes the reader, in 392 pages, into the country, following the road when it turns from tar to gravel. Elementary reading!