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
The Film's Reception:
|
That fall, while Cohen wondered what
kind of reception the newly-released film would have, New York Times journalist
Horace Bigelow traveled to eastern Kentucky to report on "the poverty,
squalor and idleness." In a front-page story, Bigelow wrote that "In
the Cumberland Mountains, tens of thousands of unemployed coal miners
and subsistence farmers face another winter of idleness and grinding
poverty."
Those who ventured into the area, he observed, "seldom see the pinched
faces of hungry children, the filth and squalor of cabins, the unpainted
shacks
that serve
as schoolhouses. These dramatic manifestations of want and governmental
neglect are usually tucked away in narrow valleys, the 'hollows,' off
the main road."79 |
 |
Entrance to Old Black Gold Mine,
Perry County, Kentucky, late 1950s from www.hazardkentucky.com.
|
Bigelow's descriptions of eastern Kentucky, like many other media accounts during the 1960s, focused on conventional images of poverty in the region instead of foregrounding the mining industry's exploitative practices. By focusing
on unpainted shacks and isolated hollows, Bigelow reinforces the idea
of Appalachian difference from the rest of America. The region becomes
again an aberration, a place left behind by modernity and in need of
government help to bring it in line with mainstream America. Like Cohen's
depiction of Halcomb in front of his own unpainted shack instead of his
wife's nice
white home, Bigelow's descriptions seem to confirm Appalachia as a place
in, but not of, America. In both cases, the true causes of poverty are
traded for symbolic images that certify the region as a strange place
apart.
Earlier in that summer of 1963, Halcomb wrote a letter to Cohen that provided glimpses of the desperation he and others faced.
Around the same time, during a New Lost City Ramblers tour, Cohen premiered The High Lonesome Sound at a UCLA documentary film class taught by Colin Young. It made a strong impression. One of the students, James Blue, went on to make documentaries for UNESCO. The film also impressed David and Judith MacDougall, who were also in the class and who later pioneered a new form of visual ethnography called observational cinema, which functioned as the ethnographic equivalent of cinema vérité. L.A.'s Ash Grove club, where the Ramblers played, retained a copy of the film, and Cohen later learned from Paul Rothschild, an A&R man for Elektra Records, that Jim Morrison of The Doors viewed it there on many occasions while a film student at UCLA. Bessie Jones of the Georgia Sea Island Singers also saw The High Lonesome Sound at Ash Grove and later told Cohen: "Oh, is that the kind of film you make? Well, come to my place in the Georgia Islands. It's exactly the same, exactly the same." "Marvelous," Cohen replied.81
Cohen returned to Hazard, Kentucky to present the film at the local library. When the showing ended, the only response Cohen heard was about how Aunt Mary Jane had since painted her house. Paul Nelson, who reviewed The High Lonesome Sound for Sing Out!, was the rare critic who Cohen felt understood the film. "From the standpoint of pure film," Nelson declared, "John Cohen's 'The High Lonesome Sound' is the best folk music film I have yet seen. It is the only film that can stand on its own two feet, independently of the viewer's interest in folk music." Nelson acknowledged Halcomb as the documentary's "hero" and applauded Cohen's ability to integrate his story into a larger picture of the place. "John Cohen's film is a real achievement," Nelson concluded, "both as a film and as a serious study of a folksinger and his region. Highly recommended."82
Eight years after its release, Rolling Stone reviewed The High Lonesome Sound alongside Cohen's 1967 documentary about North Carolina singer Dillard Chandler, The End of an Old Song. Reviewer Michael Goodwin praised the film for portraying Roscoe Halcomb "firmly in the context of the land and the people with which he had spent his life." Though Goodwin thought the technique was "a little awkward," its "deep compassion and thoughtful insight more than made up for its cinematic failings." The most revealing part of the review, however, was Goodwin's belief that both films presented a view of "a way of life that has changed hardly at all while the rest of America has been rushing headlong into the future, destroying the land and heritage with equal alacrity." Goodwin perceived the film with a familiar romantic sensibility, imagining Appalachia as a static culture outside of time and at a healthy remove from the rest of modern America. Recognizing that much of Appalachia had experienced modernization along with environmental devastation would have ruined the illusion of cultural difference and replaced romanticism with familiarity.83
Six years after the Rolling Stone review, Keith Cunningham assessed The High Lonesome Sound and its cultural impact throughout the preceding decade for the Journal of American Folklore. "Such a great variety of folklore related films is being produced now," he wrote, "that it is difficult even to remember, much less explain, the excitement generated by the film. It became a combination eucharist and shibboleth, and Rolling Stone loved it. It is still widely praised and fondly remembered by many folklorists who can agree on little else." What made the film so appealing, Cunningham thought, was Cohen's keen sense of "verisimilitude" that echoed the "Flaherty tradition," though Cohen more consciously worked without a script and "photographed everything he saw." The High Lonesome Sound was a watershed documentary for folklorists because it overturned the model for folk music films. Cunningham compared it to To Hear Your Banjo Play (1947), produced by Irving Lerner and Willard Van Dyke with dialogue by Alan Lomax. That film featured wonderful footage of Woody Guthrie and Texas Gladden but, in Cunningham's words, "it was marred by its tight structure." By contrast, Cohen's film transcended simple depictions of folk musicians playing their instruments. Most viewers, Cunningham believed, remembered the striking visual images of a close-up of spider web at Roscoe Halcomb's house, dogs playing in the morning mist, a room with old newspapers covering the walls, a young girl holding a kitten in her living room, and the extreme close-ups of Halcomb himself. Cohen's untrained style also gave the film an "intense amateurish quality which only adds to its impact."84
While Cunningham thought The High Lonesome Sound's realism and its "comprehensiveness" makes it "a good and useful film," he believed what makes it a "great film is its great theme." The film endured and remained vital because it shared a kinship with "Sandburg's poetry, Steinbeck's fiction, Agee's reporting, Evans' photography, Benton's murals, and Dorson's loving description of J. D. Suggs. Through its images, the music it records, and its narration ('Music is the celebration of life') the film speaks subliminally, as do all the works mentioned above, of the awe-inspiring dignity, beauty, and art of the common man in the face of adversity and hardship." Hardship, here, becomes a mere obstacle — something to fight nobly against, much as Cohen and his peers imagined life during the Great Depression. Replacing the caricatures of the "hillbilly" that festered in popular culture during 1950s and 1960s and the old associations of Appalachian folk singers as pure Anglo-Saxon relics was a new romantic focus on the interior life and existential struggles of a singular male hero whose passionate but sad music sprung not solely from isolation but from a search for the meaning of life.85
Earlier in that summer of 1963, Halcomb wrote a letter to Cohen that provided glimpses of the desperation he and others faced.
Hi John. How are you fine I hope . . . this leaves me OK. I have been working in the garden as I haven't got no other work to do. I lost my job an I don't know where I will find a nothern' at. Well John, I got a letter from Peat Seeger. He said he really like the way I played and sang. John I have been getting letters from just about everywhere. . . . I sure glad to hear that I hope to get more pretty soon if I don't I will have to leave here to find work. . . . So try to get some more work for us — very far I have to go somewhere to find some work. . . . from your old friend, little Rascal Halcomb.80Letters from Pete Seeger and other fans materially meant nothing unless there was a prospect for employment, a way to provide for his family. Halcomb traveled and performed nationally and, later, internationally, for the money, not the fame.
Around the same time, during a New Lost City Ramblers tour, Cohen premiered The High Lonesome Sound at a UCLA documentary film class taught by Colin Young. It made a strong impression. One of the students, James Blue, went on to make documentaries for UNESCO. The film also impressed David and Judith MacDougall, who were also in the class and who later pioneered a new form of visual ethnography called observational cinema, which functioned as the ethnographic equivalent of cinema vérité. L.A.'s Ash Grove club, where the Ramblers played, retained a copy of the film, and Cohen later learned from Paul Rothschild, an A&R man for Elektra Records, that Jim Morrison of The Doors viewed it there on many occasions while a film student at UCLA. Bessie Jones of the Georgia Sea Island Singers also saw The High Lonesome Sound at Ash Grove and later told Cohen: "Oh, is that the kind of film you make? Well, come to my place in the Georgia Islands. It's exactly the same, exactly the same." "Marvelous," Cohen replied.81
Cohen returned to Hazard, Kentucky to present the film at the local library. When the showing ended, the only response Cohen heard was about how Aunt Mary Jane had since painted her house. Paul Nelson, who reviewed The High Lonesome Sound for Sing Out!, was the rare critic who Cohen felt understood the film. "From the standpoint of pure film," Nelson declared, "John Cohen's 'The High Lonesome Sound' is the best folk music film I have yet seen. It is the only film that can stand on its own two feet, independently of the viewer's interest in folk music." Nelson acknowledged Halcomb as the documentary's "hero" and applauded Cohen's ability to integrate his story into a larger picture of the place. "John Cohen's film is a real achievement," Nelson concluded, "both as a film and as a serious study of a folksinger and his region. Highly recommended."82
Eight years after its release, Rolling Stone reviewed The High Lonesome Sound alongside Cohen's 1967 documentary about North Carolina singer Dillard Chandler, The End of an Old Song. Reviewer Michael Goodwin praised the film for portraying Roscoe Halcomb "firmly in the context of the land and the people with which he had spent his life." Though Goodwin thought the technique was "a little awkward," its "deep compassion and thoughtful insight more than made up for its cinematic failings." The most revealing part of the review, however, was Goodwin's belief that both films presented a view of "a way of life that has changed hardly at all while the rest of America has been rushing headlong into the future, destroying the land and heritage with equal alacrity." Goodwin perceived the film with a familiar romantic sensibility, imagining Appalachia as a static culture outside of time and at a healthy remove from the rest of modern America. Recognizing that much of Appalachia had experienced modernization along with environmental devastation would have ruined the illusion of cultural difference and replaced romanticism with familiarity.83
Six years after the Rolling Stone review, Keith Cunningham assessed The High Lonesome Sound and its cultural impact throughout the preceding decade for the Journal of American Folklore. "Such a great variety of folklore related films is being produced now," he wrote, "that it is difficult even to remember, much less explain, the excitement generated by the film. It became a combination eucharist and shibboleth, and Rolling Stone loved it. It is still widely praised and fondly remembered by many folklorists who can agree on little else." What made the film so appealing, Cunningham thought, was Cohen's keen sense of "verisimilitude" that echoed the "Flaherty tradition," though Cohen more consciously worked without a script and "photographed everything he saw." The High Lonesome Sound was a watershed documentary for folklorists because it overturned the model for folk music films. Cunningham compared it to To Hear Your Banjo Play (1947), produced by Irving Lerner and Willard Van Dyke with dialogue by Alan Lomax. That film featured wonderful footage of Woody Guthrie and Texas Gladden but, in Cunningham's words, "it was marred by its tight structure." By contrast, Cohen's film transcended simple depictions of folk musicians playing their instruments. Most viewers, Cunningham believed, remembered the striking visual images of a close-up of spider web at Roscoe Halcomb's house, dogs playing in the morning mist, a room with old newspapers covering the walls, a young girl holding a kitten in her living room, and the extreme close-ups of Halcomb himself. Cohen's untrained style also gave the film an "intense amateurish quality which only adds to its impact."84
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Still from opening credits of To Hear Your Banjo Play (1947)
While Cunningham thought The High Lonesome Sound's realism and its "comprehensiveness" makes it "a good and useful film," he believed what makes it a "great film is its great theme." The film endured and remained vital because it shared a kinship with "Sandburg's poetry, Steinbeck's fiction, Agee's reporting, Evans' photography, Benton's murals, and Dorson's loving description of J. D. Suggs. Through its images, the music it records, and its narration ('Music is the celebration of life') the film speaks subliminally, as do all the works mentioned above, of the awe-inspiring dignity, beauty, and art of the common man in the face of adversity and hardship." Hardship, here, becomes a mere obstacle — something to fight nobly against, much as Cohen and his peers imagined life during the Great Depression. Replacing the caricatures of the "hillbilly" that festered in popular culture during 1950s and 1960s and the old associations of Appalachian folk singers as pure Anglo-Saxon relics was a new romantic focus on the interior life and existential struggles of a singular male hero whose passionate but sad music sprung not solely from isolation but from a search for the meaning of life.85
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
