The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #122573   Message #2698142
Posted By: Desert Dancer
11-Aug-09 - 08:14 PM
Thread Name: Bascom Lamar Lunsford Youtube
Subject: RE: Bascom Larmar Lunsford Youtube
The full film (1 hours) is available on DVD for $30 at
Bluegrass Roots: On The Road With Bluegrass Musicians
, on the site of the filmmaker, David Hoffman.

The full set of YouTube clips (titles courtesy of the poster):

Best Bluegrass Clog Dancing Video Ever Made
Autoharp & Ballad Singing in the Bluegrass Mountains
1964 Clog Dancing On The Porch With Bascom Lunsford
Bluegrass Musicians Let Loose in Classic Documentary
Bascom Lamar & Freida Lunsford Sing On Their Porch

The description on YouTube:

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."

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.

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~ Becky in Tucson