John Cohen in Eastern Kentucky: Documentary Expression and the Image of Roscoe Halcomb During the Folk Revival
Scott Matthews, Hollins University
Essay Sections:
Preface | Introduction | Cohen's Awakening | In the Folk Revival | Kentucky, 1959 | Portraying Roscoe Holcomb | Mountain Music of Kentucky | Mythologizing Halcomb | Documenting Halcomb | The High Lonesome Sound | Reception | Aftermath | Conclusion | Notes | Recommended Resources
Documenting Halcomb:
| New recordings and folk festival appearances exposed Halcomb to a larger audience, but Cohen still thought they fell short of conveying the complexity and depth of Halcomb's life and the social and economic forces that helped shape his music. In 1961 he traveled again to Kentucky, picking up Halcomb for the Chicago Folk Festival. Driving through the eastern Kentucky landscape, he thought he needed a more immediate and powerful way to present Halcomb's home and music to an audience fascinated by both. On this trip he wondered about the "tensions, contradictions and beliefs" that made the man. By themselves, listening to Halcomb's music and seeing Cohen's photographs of Kentucky musicians and the mining and agricultural worlds of Perry County could not communicate "the feeling of having these things happen at the same time." Cohen decided to "make a movie to bring sound and image together, to try to capture some of the music, culture and countryside."64 |
 |
Peter Feldman, Roscoe Halcomb at a folk festival, 1963. |
John Cohen's knowledge of documentary film at this time was limited. As a child
he had seen Robert Flaherty's seminal 1922 depiction of Eskimo life, Nanook
of the North. He had also seen The River, a 1938 film Pare Lorentz made for the Farm Security Administration that showed the social and economic
importance of the Mississippi River to America and the ecological effects of
wasteful farming and logging practices. The other documentary film Cohen recalled
seeing before making his own in Kentucky was Helen Levitt's 1941 In the Street,
a collaborative effort with James Agee. The film's unobtrusive and poetic depiction
of daily life in Spanish Harlem bore all the hallmarks of Levitt's photography
through the fleeting theatricality of children playing in the streets.
The photographers had a mutual respect for one another: Cohen was familiar with Levitt's work even before In
the Street, and Levitt appreciated Cohen's photography. Once, when a friend visited Cohen's apartment, he noticed a photograph taken by Cohen in Peru and told him that Levitt had this same photograph on her mantel.65
Once Cohen decided he wanted to make a film, he needed an assistant. He asked Levitt if she knew anyone who might be interested. She sent Cohen a young man about his age named Joel Agee, the son of her friend James Agee, who grew up in Germany but was now living in the United States looking for direction. Agee, like his father, was interested in filmmaking but had never ventured into the North American interior. Neither he nor Cohen knew the first thing about operating a movie camera when they borrowed one from Albert Maysles, who along with his brother David, pioneered direct cinema in the United States. Cohen had worked on the set of Robert Frank's experimental film Pull My Daisy, but only as a set photographer. Before Cohen and Agee left for their six-week filming expedition in Perry County, Kentucky, they decided to practice operating the camera, a 16mm Arriflex. They went on top of a neighboring building with the intention of filming the roofs of the Village, birds, and whatever else caught their eyes. But before they began, a friend of Cohen's, dropped by and wanted them to hear some new songs he had written, so they ended up making a three-minute film of Bob Dylan.66
Once Cohen decided he wanted to make a film, he needed an assistant. He asked Levitt if she knew anyone who might be interested. She sent Cohen a young man about his age named Joel Agee, the son of her friend James Agee, who grew up in Germany but was now living in the United States looking for direction. Agee, like his father, was interested in filmmaking but had never ventured into the North American interior. Neither he nor Cohen knew the first thing about operating a movie camera when they borrowed one from Albert Maysles, who along with his brother David, pioneered direct cinema in the United States. Cohen had worked on the set of Robert Frank's experimental film Pull My Daisy, but only as a set photographer. Before Cohen and Agee left for their six-week filming expedition in Perry County, Kentucky, they decided to practice operating the camera, a 16mm Arriflex. They went on top of a neighboring building with the intention of filming the roofs of the Village, birds, and whatever else caught their eyes. But before they began, a friend of Cohen's, dropped by and wanted them to hear some new songs he had written, so they ended up making a three-minute film of Bob Dylan.66
 |
John Cohen, Joel Agee
at a Holiness church, Daisy,
KY, 1962.
|
In August 1962 Cohen and Agee left New York City for Perry County. Though Agee
"grew up with" Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, and Cohen had
read it when it was reissued in 1960, neither of them thought much about the
parallels
between their trip and the one Walker Evans and James Agee made in the summer
of 1936 to Hale County, Alabama. Joel Agee has said that he never focused on
the analogy "very strenuously" and that "there was no project" to
do
something similar to his father. Cohen contrasted their foray by saying that
they did not
have "the perspective of the people as social — in a social setting." For
Cohen, "it
was more about the task of getting the film made and what we would do tomorrow
and who we were going to meet tonight and getting to understand and really liking
Roscoe." This lack of a social "perspective" had more to do with a
predominant concern with aesthetics rather than politics. Cohen never ignored
the unique,
complex social and economic forces affecting eastern Kentucky. He wrote about
the ongoing depression and labor struggles in his liner notes to Mountain
Music of Kentucky. If Cohen lacked social "perspective" it was because
he searched the economic depression for aesthetic reasons, for the powerful music
and art poverty supposedly produced. It is no surprise that he described eastern
Kentucky's depression in 1959 and 1960 as "basically a silent affair with tensions
felt but seldom seen." He saw the "vacant" and "ghost-town like
mining
communities," he
knew why they were there and he photographed them, not as exhibits for social
analysis but as an artist hoping to capture the look and feel of a place very
different from his own. As Cohen later acknowledged, he did not want to "use"
the
rural places he visited as "examples" or as propaganda. "I didn't
want
to point
out, 'Look at the poverty here' or 'Look at what the capitalist system has done.'"67
Cohen's acknowledgement of these felt tensions and their musical and visual embodiment in Roscoe Halcomb and the eastern Kentucky landscape reveals the potential of documentary expression to transform poverty into poetry, human misery into high art. Cohen's purpose was not to expose the poverty and exploitation of Kentucky mountain people, but to acknowledge and celebrate their music and culture. His work by no means celebrates poverty, but it does emphasize art produced in conditions of poverty as an aesthetic rather than a political phenomenon.
Cohen's and Agee's aesthetic interests flowed from different sources. Cohen marveled at Agee's response to Kentucky since Agee had never seen the interior of America. Agee wondered about Cohen's fascination for rough, mountain living. The killing of animals (chickens and turtles) for food startled Agee, and he felt bewildered by Cohen's lack of revulsion. Cohen told Agee: "we'll make a man of action of you." According to Agee, "That was his fantasy for himself, going South with a banjo." If Agee winced at the sight of their "dinner still half alive mangled and fluttering in the bushes," he believed Cohen thought he was "ignorant of the inseparable beauty and cruelty of life." Cohen did not say this outright, but Agee felt their "talk took place in the nimbus of some such meaning." While Cohen embraced and encouraged Agee to read Issac Babel's short story about a young Jew conscripted into a Red Army detachment of Cossacks who had to prove his grit with violent acts, Agee responded with the poetry of William Butler Yeats and in particular a line from "The Second Coming" that reads: ". . . and everywhere/The ceremony of innocence is drowned." Agee imagined the image coming to Yeats from the common practice in the English countryside of drowning kittens with a sack weighted with stones. Cohen disagreed and told Agee the poem was not about pity, its point of view was "cosmic, not human," it was the "icy lake, not the kittens. And that's something country people know in their bones." Agee, flustered with anger, managed with "an air of philosophic dispassion," to tell Cohen he "didn't believe in the virtue of blood and cathartic violence."68
The disagreement between Agee and Cohen over the meaning of violence at the hands of locals who killed animals for food represented aesthetic and philosophical tensions simmering just below the surface. For Cohen, the violence, perhaps, represented the vestiges of "the old pioneer spirit" he detected in the eastern Kentucky mountains during his first visit in 1959. Three years later, the bloody act of a man killing a turtle in front of the two served as a vivid confirmation of this persistent spirit for Cohen, while Agee saw it as nothing more than brutality.
Despite disagreements and tensions, Cohen and Agee lived peacefully together in a rented little house in the timber village of Daisy, a place, Agee remembered as consisting of "some twenty wooden houses scattered in a valley among rugged hills." Roscoe Halcomb lived at the very end of the hollow. Agee's first impressions of Halcomb were of a man with a "long, haggard face . . . looking old in his early sixties, with thin sad lips and creased cheeks, deep-set puzzled pale blue eyes shaded by a wide-brimmed hat . . ." They spent their days shooting footage at coal mines, churches, roadhouses, train yards, and in the homes of local residents including Halcomb's. For the most part, Cohen shot most of the film except for some scenes at the Shepherd family’s house, at the train yards, and in the streets of Hazard. "I was unaware of film grammar," Cohen recalled, "which was very fortunate because I didn't shoot cutaways, I didn't think of close-ups versus this and that. None of that training, none of that vocabulary, therefore none of that framework to work against. I was just trying to get the sound and picture together in a strange way."69
Because Cohen's camera did not allow for synchronized sound, he had to film and record separately, which occasionally created a feeling of artificiality for him and, especially, for Roscoe Halcomb. When Cohen first arrived at Halcomb's house, he recorded "Across the Rocky Mountain," then played it back for Halcomb to sing with while he filmed. Cohen stood on top of a long table with the camera set on a tripod as Halcomb sat playing on the porch. The scene was contrived and unnatural. For Halcomb, playing music was a personal, emotional experience and the awkward recording process felt like manipulation. "I don't feel like singing anymore," he told Cohen after recording "Across the Rocky Mountain." "And he didn't feel like singing for the next five weeks," Cohen recalled.70
Cohen's acknowledgement of these felt tensions and their musical and visual embodiment in Roscoe Halcomb and the eastern Kentucky landscape reveals the potential of documentary expression to transform poverty into poetry, human misery into high art. Cohen's purpose was not to expose the poverty and exploitation of Kentucky mountain people, but to acknowledge and celebrate their music and culture. His work by no means celebrates poverty, but it does emphasize art produced in conditions of poverty as an aesthetic rather than a political phenomenon.
Cohen's and Agee's aesthetic interests flowed from different sources. Cohen marveled at Agee's response to Kentucky since Agee had never seen the interior of America. Agee wondered about Cohen's fascination for rough, mountain living. The killing of animals (chickens and turtles) for food startled Agee, and he felt bewildered by Cohen's lack of revulsion. Cohen told Agee: "we'll make a man of action of you." According to Agee, "That was his fantasy for himself, going South with a banjo." If Agee winced at the sight of their "dinner still half alive mangled and fluttering in the bushes," he believed Cohen thought he was "ignorant of the inseparable beauty and cruelty of life." Cohen did not say this outright, but Agee felt their "talk took place in the nimbus of some such meaning." While Cohen embraced and encouraged Agee to read Issac Babel's short story about a young Jew conscripted into a Red Army detachment of Cossacks who had to prove his grit with violent acts, Agee responded with the poetry of William Butler Yeats and in particular a line from "The Second Coming" that reads: ". . . and everywhere/The ceremony of innocence is drowned." Agee imagined the image coming to Yeats from the common practice in the English countryside of drowning kittens with a sack weighted with stones. Cohen disagreed and told Agee the poem was not about pity, its point of view was "cosmic, not human," it was the "icy lake, not the kittens. And that's something country people know in their bones." Agee, flustered with anger, managed with "an air of philosophic dispassion," to tell Cohen he "didn't believe in the virtue of blood and cathartic violence."68
The disagreement between Agee and Cohen over the meaning of violence at the hands of locals who killed animals for food represented aesthetic and philosophical tensions simmering just below the surface. For Cohen, the violence, perhaps, represented the vestiges of "the old pioneer spirit" he detected in the eastern Kentucky mountains during his first visit in 1959. Three years later, the bloody act of a man killing a turtle in front of the two served as a vivid confirmation of this persistent spirit for Cohen, while Agee saw it as nothing more than brutality.
Despite disagreements and tensions, Cohen and Agee lived peacefully together in a rented little house in the timber village of Daisy, a place, Agee remembered as consisting of "some twenty wooden houses scattered in a valley among rugged hills." Roscoe Halcomb lived at the very end of the hollow. Agee's first impressions of Halcomb were of a man with a "long, haggard face . . . looking old in his early sixties, with thin sad lips and creased cheeks, deep-set puzzled pale blue eyes shaded by a wide-brimmed hat . . ." They spent their days shooting footage at coal mines, churches, roadhouses, train yards, and in the homes of local residents including Halcomb's. For the most part, Cohen shot most of the film except for some scenes at the Shepherd family’s house, at the train yards, and in the streets of Hazard. "I was unaware of film grammar," Cohen recalled, "which was very fortunate because I didn't shoot cutaways, I didn't think of close-ups versus this and that. None of that training, none of that vocabulary, therefore none of that framework to work against. I was just trying to get the sound and picture together in a strange way."69
Because Cohen's camera did not allow for synchronized sound, he had to film and record separately, which occasionally created a feeling of artificiality for him and, especially, for Roscoe Halcomb. When Cohen first arrived at Halcomb's house, he recorded "Across the Rocky Mountain," then played it back for Halcomb to sing with while he filmed. Cohen stood on top of a long table with the camera set on a tripod as Halcomb sat playing on the porch. The scene was contrived and unnatural. For Halcomb, playing music was a personal, emotional experience and the awkward recording process felt like manipulation. "I don't feel like singing anymore," he told Cohen after recording "Across the Rocky Mountain." "And he didn't feel like singing for the next five weeks," Cohen recalled.70
Essay Sections:
Preface | Introduction | Cohen's Awakening | In the Folk Revival | Kentucky, 1959 | Portraying Roscoe Holcomb | Mountain Music of Kentucky | Mythologizing Halcomb | Documenting Halcomb | The High Lonesome Sound | Reception | Aftermath | Conclusion | Notes | Recommended Resources
