John and Alan Lomax were two white musicologists and folklorists living at the time that Blues was beginning to take off. The two searched throughout the South looking to record different styles of Folk music as it pertained to the Black communities at the time. They visited work-farms and penitentiaries and stumbled upon Lead Belly. Lead Belly was a convicted murderer turned giant in the Blues genre with a recognizable voice and sound that caught like wildfire. The Lomax’s recorded him in 1934 and were on and off involved in the rest of Lead Belly’s career however, I personally don’t appreciate their involvement in Lead Belly’s career. Of course, there would’ve been no way for Lead Belly to get out of prison and start a musical career if it weren’t for the Lomax’s, but I still don’t like the idea of a white man profiting and acting as a white savior to Lead Belly. It reminds me of the commodification of the genre and how immediately after the genre was popularized by the Black community, white musicians began to play, sell sheet music, and appropriate it.
In the 1970’s White people really started to fall into and perform the blues genre. For the white people that were performing and listening to Blues music, It was typically perceived as a rebellious genre that pushed the envelope in white households in terms of sexual and political views. Artists like Eric Clapton, John Hammond Jr., and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band are all popular white Blues artists.