John Cohen
Biography
John Cohen (1932–2019) was a major figure in the development and appreciation of traditional music, and one of the most prolific contributors to the Smithsonian Folkways collection of recorded sounds. He was a musician, photographer, filmmaker, and record producer, but those words do not adequately describe John, whose work transcended labels and defied categorization.
Known For & Full Filmography2 Titles
Movie - 2020, 2h 15m • Main Cast Role
A film by Yasha Aginsky This hour-long documentary celebrates fifty years of the New Lost City Ramblers (Mike Seeger, John Cohen, Tracy Schwarz and Tom Paley.) Among the first urban musicians to seriously pursue the old-time music traditions of the American South, the New Lost City Ramblers became stars of the 1960s folk revival, appearing at Newport Folk Festival and touring widely in the U.S. and Europe. They inspired generations of younger musicians to explore America’s traditional music, from elder statesman Bob Dylan to banjo virtuoso Bela Fleck to the contemporary African-American string band the Carolina Chocolate Drops, all of whom participated in the film. ALWAYS BEEN A RAMBLER reveals the Ramblers as musicologists as well as expert musicians, showing them side-by-side with traditional musicians including Dock Boggs, Maybelle Carter, and Doc Watson.
Movie - 2003, 2h 15m • as Self
Remembering the High Lonesome is the story of the making of a classic documentary film. It is also a profile of filmmaker, photographer, artist, and musician John Cohen. Through interviews, as well as Cohen's own photographs and scenes from his classic film The High Lonesome Sound: Kentucky Mountain Music, filmmaker Tom Davenport focuses on Cohen's journey to rural Kentucky in the 1950s to document the lives of the people there and his "discovery" of the musician Roscoe Holcomb. Remembering the High Lonesome also examines the birth of a new artistic ethic and counterculture through John Cohen's involvement with the Beat Generation, abstract expressionist painters, and the Folk Music Revival, and explores the role of an outsider documenting the life and arts of an Appalachian community.