The High and Lonesome Sound: The Legacy of Roscoe Holcomb

John Cohen, born in 1932 in New York, is a photographer, filmmaker, and founding member of the New Lost City
Ramblers. A masters graduate from Yale University, Cohen was active in the artistic circles of late 1950s and early
1960s New York, and worked with Robert Frank on his film Pull My Daisy (1959). Steidl has published Cohen's Past
Present Peru (2010).

The music of Roscoe Holcomb transcended daily life. Although it was grounded in Appalachia, in East Kentucky, in
his little town of Dais, his music travelled like it was on a path towards a distant star. John Cohen
In 1959 John Cohen travelled to East Kentucky looking for what he calls old music . Cohen asked for names at local
gas stations but soon ran out of leads, and drove off the highway onto the next dirt road. Here he stumbled across
Roscoe Holcomb playing the banjo and singing on his front porch in a way says Cohen, that made the hairs on my
neck stand up on end . And so by pure chance began the life-long friendship that is the background for The High and
Lonesome Sound.
Cohen visited Holcomb frequently over the next three decades, and made many photographs, films and records of his
music. In time Holcomb, a poor coal miner by trade, became a regular feature on the American concert and festival
circuits. The strange beauty and discomfort of his music a mixture of blues, ballads and Baptist hymns, and unique
through his high strained voice was exposed to a larger audience. Nevertheless Holcomb died alone in a nursing
home in 1981.
The High and Lonesome Sound combines Cohen's vintage photos, film and musical recordings as well as an
anecdotal text into a multimedia tribute to this underappreciated legend of American music whose every performance
was in Cohen s words not just a rendition of music, but a test of something to be overcome .
John Cohen, born in 1932 in New York, is a photographer, filmmaker, and founding member of the New Lost City
Ramblers. A masters graduate from Yale University, Cohen was active in the artistic circles of late 1950s and early
1960s New York, and worked with Robert Frank on his film Pull My Daisy (1959). Steidl has published Cohen s Past
Present Peru (2010).