>This is a clip from a film on American bluegrass culture – its music, its dance, and the people who created it. I love being able to find gems like this.
Here is the blurb about this piece:
Way back in 1964, New York filmmaker, David Hoffman was headed down with his new 16mm hand help camera (weight 49 lbs!) to spend three weeks driving the backcountry around Madison County, North Carolina, in the center of Appalachia, with the 82 year old founder of the pioneer Asheville Mountain Music and Dance Festival, Bascom Lamar Lunsford. The resulting film, “Bluegrass Roots” lets you hear and experience the hard scrabbling, dirt road real people sounds that dominated the back country of the southern mountains 40 years ago. It presents a string of the most extraordinary singers, players and dancers the BlueGrass Mountains had to offer. Many later became famous. Some were never heard from again. Most of the songs are classics, including Lunsford’s own tune, “Mountain Dew.” This scene was filmed at Bascom’s home with a local dance group came to dance in Bascom’s living room.
When this film aired on Public Television in 1965, TV Guide gave it a full-page positive review, because Americans had never seen a documentary on the roots of Bluegrass and Country music. Today, the dirt roads and the moonshine counties are largely modernized, and Bluegrass Roots, stands as a record of a uniquely talented group of people at a time just before the coming of television, changed them.
More can be found at the film’s official web site.
pilgrimakimbo 