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That High Lonesome Sound

That High Lonesome Sound

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Product Info Reviews

Features:
  • Black & White


Description:

Preserving a musical culture that has all but vanished from the hills of Appalachia, this compilation of films by musician-documentarian John Cohen offers a rich portrait of rural life in the early 1960s. Old practitioners of the "high lonesome" sound of bluegrass still retained the remote flavor of the region, so Cohen's films are now rare and cherished time capsules, beginning with "The High Lonesome Sound," an impressionistic portrait of Kentucky singer- guitarist Roscoe Holcomb and the hard-scrabble life that inspired his music. The second film, "The End of an Old Song," is a similarly moving portrait of balladeer Dillard Chandler, while "Sara and Maybelle" captures the reunion of two sisters from country music's pioneering Carter Family. Even though Cohen's verité methods are crude (resulting in minimal use of synchronized sound), his techniques are well suited to his subjects, qualifying these films as musical anthropology that will enthrall any student of music or rural American history. --Jeff Shannon
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