JOHN COHEN
The High & Lonesome Sound:
The Legacy of Roscoe Holcomb
Steidl
 
 
 

One day in 1959 in Daisy, KY, John Cohen got lucky. Cohen – musician, documentary photographer, fledgling filmmaker, and charter member of the newly founded New Lost City Ramblers – had been searching for and recording old-time banjo players in eastern Kentucky. He was about to return to New York. Then he stumbled upon Roscoe Holcomb. When Holcomb tuned a guitar and sang “Across the Rocky Mountains” the hair on the back of Cohen’s neck stood on end and he knew that “this was the music I was looking for, although I’d never heard it before.” Cohen called it “the high lonesome sound.”

By now, many people have had the experience of being riveted – chilled, even – by Holcomb, whether he was singing an unaccompanied hymn, accompanying a keening blues on guitar, picking a driving, hard-as-nails banjo tune, or, occasionally, squeezing mournful notes from his harmonica. The fortunate among us even got to see him perform (he died in 1981) after Cohen persuaded the reclusive, unemployed laborer to share his talents at coffee houses, colleges, and festivals. What we saw was a thin, short, neatly-dressed man, looking a bit uncomfortable as he released music of great intensity that was steeped in the old Scotts-Irish mountain culture but that was also deeply personal and that transcended any specific place and time. It was the music of a man struggling to maintain his lifestyle and survive in the face of his once-agricultural region’s 20th century dependence on coal and lumber companies and the allure of commercial, mass culture to which even his family and neighbors had by then largely succumbed.

We have Cohen to thank for that as we do for his latest book – a collection of his photographs from that 1959 trip along with a series of essays and other documents, a CD of Holcomb songs, and a DVD of Cohen’s first film, “The High Lonesome Sound,” and footage from some later Southern excursions.

The book begins with the images, starting with a full-page portrait of Holcomb, hat bedecked and suited, holding his banjo and looking directly into the camera, a somewhat wary but also curious look on his creased face. More black-and-white portraits of Roscoe and others follow, along with seemingly off-handed shots of everyday objects, slices of life, work, worship, and music. Some have appeared on album covers and in liner notes and other books, but many appear here for the first time. Never pretty but always beautiful, like Holcomb’s music, the photographs neither glorify nor patronize their subjects.

There’s no forward or introduction and Cohen presents the pictures without explanation. Only an occasional document – a couple pages from a Baptist hymnal, a snatch of song lyric, a quote from Holcomb – breaks up the visual flow. Perhaps this reflects Holcomb’s own taciturnity, perhaps the influence of photographer Walker Evans, who, with writer James Agee documented several 1930s Alabama share-cropper families in “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.” (Fittingly, Agee’s son, Joel, worked on the Holcomb film with Cohen.) What it certainly does is to require us to look closely in order to try to understand the people and world Cohen encountered and to provide a context for the raw, intense sounds on the CD.

Cohen expands that context with some photographs from beyond eastern Kentucky, including pictures of Ralph Stanley, Doc Watson, and Bill Monroe. Holcomb came to know these musicians through his public performances. Different as each man was, they and their music had much in common.

But although Holcomb appeared throughout the US and in Europe, he never considered himself a to be musician. Even praise from notables including Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton seemed to have meant nothing to him. Rather, he was primarily concerned about his fragile health and constant need for money. We learn this from the excerpts from Holcomb’s letters to Cohen in which the word “hard” appears frequently. But the letters also contain moments of genuine tenderness and make Roscoe’s affection for Cohen clear. Cohen, in turn, explores their relationship in “The Inside Dialog,” in which, along with some analysis of Holcomb’s music, he attempts to understand Roscoe as “another human being” and not simply as a subject or “informant” for an outsider folklorist.

Other sections contain excerpts, some quite wonderful, from Hazard, KY high school students’ essays about folk music and quotes from reviewers and critics of Holcomb’s recordings and Cohen’s film (I, writing in Sing Out!, am among them). There’s also an interview with Holcomb and remembrances from some of his neighbors. Finally, the DVD and CD bring Roscoe fully to life. I recommend listening to the CD while exploring the photographs. Then watch “The High Lonesome Sound.” Together they present the story of a simple but extraordinary man, who never sought fame but who deeply touched and affected many who heard his music. John Cohen’s luck was ours as well.

— Mark Greenberg