Why Bascom Fought For His Appalachian Mountain Music

hello my name is david hoffman documentary filmmaker and you're about to see my 1998 film presented in totality for the first time i made this film for a pbs television series called the american experience you may have seen some of the episodes of it but they try to present a portrait of america that's different and certainly they came to me and they said david your first film back in 1965 with this incredible man bascom lamar lunsford is a classic we'd like you to go back down and update the film but about what i knew what it should be about because back when i made my first film music makers of the blue ridge i showed bascom's life as she showed it to me i was 22 years old i think you're gonna enjoy this the interesting thing about anywhere we'd stop anywhere in this country almost anywhere well that'd be a song i know that i got [Music] someone said baskin lunsford had crossed hell on a rotten rail for a good folk song he'd prick up his ears and be off gathering the best the mountains had to offer we were on the road six weeks watching and filming and being a part of the lives of these incredibly talented and beautiful people and there was bascom taking us along telling us stories giving us perspective but i never said why why did bascom do this what drove bascom to be who he was a great collector of folk's stories and songs and dances a performer who actually recorded i don't know 500 songs from memory for the library of congress and the creator of the first fork festival 1929 asheville the mountain music and dance festival bascom created it he was a unique individual a great leader of the folk culture of his appalachian mountains and what motivated him well i knew what had motivated him from little bits and pieces that he had said he hated the prejudice against his people he hated the way authors had described it not just hollywood but hollywood the way the world had belittled his people and made fun of hillbillies i always thought it was great to be a hillbilly i would like to have been one but it was a negative term for more than a hundred years this region had been viciously slandered in the 1830s king louis philippe of france described the appalachian people as the scum of america in 1912 when bascom was 20 the new york times editorialized that as victims of heredity and alcohol they must change or perish and in 1935 distinguished historian arnold toynbee pronounced the mountain people barbarians [Music] bascom and his people watched as newspapers comic strips films and eventually television continued to reinforce the stereotypes i reckon we have the finest food in all the world pork chops and eggs for breakfast pork chops and groupers for lunch and for supper more pork chops you're about to see the complete film which ran on pbs in the prime time and was extraordinarily popular across the south [Music] high gravy [Music] he's behind the bush boy and when half wakely moves if he will he'll roll in a minute if it doesn't shoot his brains out [Music] i played the guitar to begin with and baskin said the songs i was singing and the way i did them would sound better with a five-string banjo and i said well i don't have a banjo i've never tried to play a banjo and he said well i'll give you one here's the root of the whole thing [Music] when you go to mars hill college i mean you run into baskin-luntsburg if you go to asheville to the festival you run into baskin-lansford you know i mean he changed everything he was a true american eccentric rooted in the hills of appalachia a performer a songwriter a collector with a passion for mountain music [Music] lunsford spent his entire life dragging folk music out of the valleys and coves and up onto the stages and into the recording studios of america by the mid-1950s mountain music was leaving its mark on country music bluegrass rock and roll but lunsford's struggle to make this music popular was in direct conflict with his battle to preserve the old traditional mountain ways he wanted everybody to stay just the same old way you know he didn't like his sophisticated stuff he wanted it to still be old-fashioned [Music] we always thought he'd dress like some dude they say he's just a dude i've heard my friends say i come that dude singer come my little darling you're sitting by my side you promised that you'd marry me and be my wedding bride at sundown the sun down the sun and nearly down going to see my darling before the sun goes down oh you ought to see my cindy live the way down south she's so sweet the honey bee swarm around her mouth get along home isn't that the sweetest woman you ever heard about the honeybees warming around her mouth that's the kind of thing that lundsford's um eccentricity is imposed on us all i'll tell you i've got tuned the dogest gap you know named out of the doggett mountain up here i'm going to play over here at big sandy and i'm going to get first prize if we just get it down just right now we're going to walk away with first prize the young fiddler is bascom lamar lunsford tuning up with a few friends back in 1927. the song is one of his own he grew up doing this making music which was as natural as talking in many a mountain home but he made a career of collecting other people's music traditional songs and dances that had been handed down from one generation to the next lunchford had a sense that in modern america this rich yet fragile culture was in danger of dying out [Music] the time was 1965. the place south turkey creek north carolina at age 83 lunsford was still going out with his second wife freda to do what he'd done for 60 odd years combing the western north carolina hills [Music] staying with people till he picked up all the songs dances tunes and tales they knew yeah pretty good my wife's been a little frail but she's getting better rapidly now doing fine well we'll have to be moving on at some homes he might stay the evening and others he might stay two weeks now you're in for seeing some good country because i'm going to show you a lot of this territory where our friends live and where they know the old balance and know about our mountain dances i think you're going to enjoy this the interesting thing about anywhere we'd stop anywhere in this country almost anywhere well that'd be a song i know that i got it [Music] someone said baskin lunsford had crossed hell on a rotten rail for a good folk song he'd prick up his ears and be off gathering the best the mountains had to offer and he was relentless turn to the right in here and go this old somewhere and go this old road that i believe that's the road we want to go now [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] bascom collected material at informal get-togethers like this people never knew when he'd show up for most outsiders saw folks just sitting around the yard bascom saw talent talent people in the region took for granted [Music] [Music] [Music] oh why did you call him lost john well engaged on that i don't know how come to give him the name john oh man older no woman gave me that moment cherry county right right right yeah uh we used to cut timber for me and my daddy and and uh roy hole used to play you remember him oh yeah yeah and it worked for me at the same time i was and ain't none of them didn't know i could play at all i'd say you know i just started working they kept bringing their instruments it was about every day at 12 o'clock and playing something nobody asked you huh no oh one day i said to roy i said i believe i want to see you feeling me if you don't mind i'll go ahead you know oh yeah i cut loose on something no man what it says there's your squared eggs man it's lost john and it's been going ever [Laughter] [Music] since we went to los johns i could have stopped at a half a dozen places and heard somebody play the fiddle and pick the banjo wherever bascom went he was looking for traditional appalachian music still unaffected by radio and television it seemed like most of the genuine culture was off the beaten path way off and it included bear calls railroad calls turkey calls that meant locating sam honeycutt [Music] oh a little turkey call i don't know how you get some good that [Music] [Music] i'm too hot for that that's like a wild chicken that's pretty good that's one of the most archaic kinds of of music making that there could be you don't have instruments you don't have words you have sound some imitating natural sounds others which are just vocal music i'm amazed that that he that he went out of his way to get that kind of of uh of music saw what he saw i was saying was uh when i was a rake and a rambling boy i know these things there let me see here yeah seeing that huh now that's the old time swing to it mountains my [Music] was a legendary bear hunter bascom saw him as a cultural treasure standing for a way of life that was fast disappearing he really had good ears and he heard it all and so we have that fantastic piece it's yodeling but not connected with swiss yodeling at all yodeling is very old maybe the oldest kind of human communication because it carries far [Music] your words very well i do want to get all those words in african blackjack david cameron riding by sang so sweet and gayley [Music] made the green wood around him ring to charm the heart of a lady to charm the heart of a lady how old are you my pretty little miss how old are you my honey [Music] ballads like blackjack davey have english irish scots and welsh roots handed down by word of mouth they had changed over the years gene and harold winters had one version and it seemed bascom always had another is that the way you sang it mr lansford sort of not exactly but it's that that's it plus you call it gypsy baby the last standard one of a song i know of us sometimes i know is last night i stay up on this old cold cold ground beside blackjack davey i'll sleep tonight in a warm feather bed between my husband and baby well you need my husband and baby well now i of course have heard that both ways i've heard it that way too the thing that uh helps you with the folks is if you can sing them a piece of their own of their own of fabric if you can open up a page so that you're familiar and they think that you belong and that's is what really sets the friendship in motion they feel ah that guy really has it he belongs here with us and that's what uh so his memory made it possible for him to always keep the conversation going if you get what i mean the musical conversation he could sing a little bit of some other song that might open up another corner of the singer's memory i've been amused at myself sometimes going to church maybe a place where i hadn't been in church before walk in saying about halfway up the aisle turn in let's see we'll now all sing number 480 people reach over in the rack get the song book and the man next to me and pass the song book to me they all laugh to rely on the book nearly all of them i could just sing without the book in a lot of these old songs you know like i am bound for the promised land i am bound for the promised land oh who will come and go with me i am bound for the promised land [Music] bascom lamar lunsford was a man from a simpler time born back in 1882 when there were almost no roads no telephones no electricity in these hills every mountain gap held a small community each isolated from the next by the rugged terrain bascom was always a little different from his neighbors his father was a teacher and he went away to college after graduating bascom traveled the region on horseback taking a variety of jobs anything that allowed him to spend time with people who made music [Music] bascom said he'd spent the night in more homes from harpers ferry west virginia to iron mountain alabama than anybody but god and that's probably a fact because what he was after could only be found in people's homes not in library books or on records [Music] boy you know where bill michael reese lives uh the second road not the first one that goes down towards the other house but the second one it's up above that person down here yeah and then you keep going there's a rock house up and you stop that rock house mess of their house now thank you boys that's fine that's fine that helps us out a whole lot [Music] love love have i ever been here honey you've never been here with me i don't think so never been here with me now that's a little badge and it's a good one he's played that one he back when yeah that's belong to the hayward rambler he and his brother and the melvin and vaughn medford nine years ago [Music] bill mcelrith one of bascom's personal favorites picking the banjo in a traditional two-fingered style [Music] [Applause] [Music] while other folklorists use notepads and later tape recorders bascom relied on his instincts and his extraordinary ability to remember what he'd heard [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] over time bascom's love and respect for his culture led directly to his personal campaign against hillbilly stereotypes [Music] we people of the mountains have been in a way slandered considerably and most systematically [Music] generations of isolation and poverty had made the mountain people easy targets in fact madison county was one of the poorest places in america i just thought maybe he might need a little rest anyway you know yeah this gentleman bascom often dressed in a white star shirt and a black bow tie as a symbol of defiance [Music] five seconds yeah they cut it down they'll cut it down yeah we don't uh want to bother because i know that a little bit but there were times when the hard reality of mountain life didn't square with the more romantic images bascom wanted the world to see and he was fiercely protective bascom was sharing a mountain man and he wasn't sharing a mountain man because he was thinking of what your camera were seeing delays your help i have to hit myself yeah i'll talk to you a little bit let these gentlemen see what we are up against yes sir he wanted to see the agriculture but he didn't want you to see the stereotype and you saw he'd elbow in and elbow back out sure and yet he took you there see that's the heart and yet his mind said no no no basket heart says no no see but i mean there he was and he knew when to step in and back out for more than a hundred years this region had been viciously slandered in the 1830s king louis philippe of france described the appalachian people as the scum of america in 1912 when bascom was 20 the new york times editorialized that as victims of heredity and alcohol they must change or perish and in 1935 distinguished historian arnold toynbee pronounced the mountain people barbarians [Applause] he's sure [Music] his people watched as newspapers comic strips films and eventually television continued to reinforce the stereotypes i reckon we have the finest food in all the world pork chops and eggs for breakfast pork chops and groupers for lunch and for supper more pork chops to get up and act like all through the appalachian was the perfect rube i think for people's purposes for whatever reason the local color writers who wrote about the mountaineer tended to contrast them unfavorably with the mainstream americans that they held to be the gentile folks bascom bitterly resented this he said they've slandered my people you know and his whole point i think was to try to show the strengths and and the you know the value of southern mountain culture [Music] bascom had wonderful material to draw from english folklorist cecil sharpe called madison county the richest pocket of culture in america isolation forced people to rely on each other not only for survival but also for entertainment nearly everyone could sing dance or play an instrument when somebody moved a new person moved in the house would go serenade them with old dish pans and everything yeah just go around the house one would start singing some of the others would join in and they'd clap with their hands and and celebrated they just lived like singing my mother used to sing a lot and her her father would they all go to bed she used to tell me about it how they would all go to bed and he would say he would lie there and sing one song after another till 12 o'clock yeah they'd have corn shucking and after that over they'd have a big supper and then square days and i was eight years old first time i went through square dance [Music] the crowd get around some of them would put five gallons of liquor right in the middle of the pile so they couldn't get it till it got through and that's when this the squared action started it felt good we'd seen and watch them clogged that was the main thing shuffling sand hollering ladies dosey doe you order low but it was really good and we enjoyed it [Music] some mountain people took to heart what outsiders said bascom wanted them to recognize their own special talents and to turn this recognition into a source of identity and strength yeah he wants you to fight him anything at all i came flying you know anybody couldn't play the fiddle and have to hold the ball like that [Music] just [Music] [Applause] this might sound rusty to some but to bascom it was worth the effort he was drawing out another fellow mountaineer well gentlemen uh what time we have i'll try to explain to you what this is i thought i'd like to make a memorial to my father and mother well that's that book and i felt like it might wind up in somebody's little attic sometime or another i'll just give it to the library and first few pages are used for people who'd come to my house on south turkey creek in buncombe county north carolina to see me in visit the home and so on there's some old family records there was the first luncheon that came to america and he's a friend to charles the first and he uh turned up in here in 1649 charles the first head went off in i believe in 16 and 48 so he thought it'd be better for him to turn up in america so uh letters that's the first state school certificate given to my father there's my mother here picturing my mother this thing is full of things of historic interest as we go on down as when how's the campaign manager with dow county running the mcdowell sentinel i was campaign manager for senator josiah bailey and ran the paper that time therefore i get a three-column double headline in my own paper here i was that that's taken away back when i was oh now there's when i was something like that he was something all right but his friends and neighbors never knew quite what among his 20 odd jobs he sold fruit trees peddled honey was a lawyer who hardly ever practiced did a stint as an fbi man and in a region where almost everyone was a hard scrabble farmer bascom was drifting around collecting songs and dances people liked them but they never really had them figured strange unusual odd very poor driver never looked after his cars well very absent-minded a dreamer but an awful lot of fun to be around if you needed a lawyer but couldn't afford it you had somebody who could always head you in the right direction the local part-time lawyer married nelly triplett a good-natured woman who saw to the house and bills and they had seven children people were always speculating how on earth he kept them fed and why he so often strayed from home well i think that's one reason that he was criticized by the neighbors and his mother-in-law that she and my mother's father neither one were very excited when she married him you know he was gonna get married when his ship came in when the ship didn't come in they finally decided to get married and the ship never did come in i never didn't see it lunsford did not do it for money if he did he was the worst failure on the face of the earth because he died probably a pauper as far as money is concerned but money is not the definition of wealth in the southern mountains and that was what he was trying to advance lunsford saw himself as a wealthy man by the true definition of those terms and money did not define that it's not that opportunity never knocked on his door one of bascom's biggest chances of financial success came along when he wrote a song that evolved into an american classic mountain dew [Music] oh they call it that good old mountain dew and them who refuse it are few if you shut down your jug i'll fill up your bug with that good old mountain dew oh they call it that old mountain dew this happened while he was in the law business okay the judge got this guy up for making whiskey i got this story straight from the horse's mouth baskin decided that he said to the fella said do you bring us a jug of that liquor in here and let's see what it's like this was before his trial so the guy brought it in and it basked him tasted of it and baskin decided that he'd tried on the judge and so he he he tried it on the judge and the judge said man could make that good a whiskey he just you know he just so he turned the man and and and so that was where mountain dew was born yes he called it that old mountain dew and those that refused our view so i closed up his mug when i filled up his job the upshot of this story was that after a week out collecting songs far from the north carolina hills bascom traded all rights to mountain dew for money to buy a train ticket home eventually he did play a role in the burgeoning recording industry not as a composer or performer but as a preservationist he was invited to columbia university in new york and in two weeks recorded more than 350 songs from memory [Music] later he cut three lps and finally recorded his entire repertoire for the archives of the library of congress it was one of the most extensive oral histories ever recorded by a single individual but what he became best known for was this dancing once again he took what others saw as just another social activity and identified it as an indigenous art form [Applause] now we'll go to the home of bill macarey in buncombe county he can do that just like a young man [Music] this was buck dancing a lively highly skillful dance steps were borrowed from the scots-irish jig the black's flatfoot dance and cherokee tribal dances it was about the most original form of expression people had at the time one could do whatever came naturally [Music] now that type of dancing [Music] uh of course not done as uh possibly skillfully as he's done that but the dancing knocking out the tune to the feet going all the way through the square dance makes our mountain a traditional dancing very attractive other folklorists might have frowned on it but bascom was enough of a entrepreneur enough of an american to say hey this looks good and the folks will like it and the folks did like it it was a major breakthrough for baskin he took advantage of all this enthusiasm and began to run regular public competitions it had never been done this way before people came out of the woodwork musicians and dancers alike to perform and to compete bascom's contest sprung up throughout north carolina more than a few of them were held here at his house where he built a special dance floor i wasn't too many people invited out there to dance moved back to furniture and pull up the carpet and just have a big time [Music] with dances like this one bascom rekindled the spirit and skill of mountain dancing [Music] but there were some preachers teachers and parents who considered all this sinful fearing the contests would foster drinking fighting but the dances never stopped fellas continued to square off and compete at buck dancing as much for the benefit of the ladies as anything else [Music] bascom paid his critics no mind hovering among the dancers watching like a hawk for new talent taking note of who pleased the crowd [Music] thank you [Music] so [Music] so we were just more or less watching each other when he changed steps i would or he would go into a step and i'd go in something completely different sounds like this [Applause] ain't to do a few steps there then i'm going to join with him get a little sound going with it here [Laughter] [Applause] it was here 12 miles from his home but in 1928 bascom lunsford sparked a cultural revolution the city of asheville represented everything bascom disliked a resort town dedicated to the commercial it prided itself on european culture opera the latest fashions they did not want to see themselves as rural as mountain they wanted to see themselves as cosmopolitan they were in search of everything this nation was in search of in modernization industrialization technology all the other things which lunsford was most uncomfortable with the event of that summer was the rhododendron festival a vanity fair of attractions designed to lure outsiders and convince them to buy real estate as fate would have it this shameless display of all that bascom hated commercialization stereotyping became the theater for his greatest triumph the rhododendron festival was a strange thing now you you talk about a pufferine trying to get everything in here is a negro baby parade here are beauty pageants here are people coming from canada cuba to participate in mountains of north carolina asheville parade sure here our military all this was part see anything that would ring the bell anything would bring them up and lots and lots of people got excited about it to whip up even more attention festival organizers turned to a promoter who lived up in the hills collecting folk culture lunsford was asked to put on a little sideshow of locals in hopes that tourists might find them worth a gawker to bascom jumped at the opportunity [Music] this is a great eagle it was played at uh the very first of mr lunsford's festivals and i've played it for him to open the show several times since then lunsford stage show hit asheville like a bolt of lightning 5 000 people showed up tourists mixed with mountaineers [Music] everybody cut loose the side show turned out to be the main event [Music] i was on pack square and there were a lot of people in plenty of chairs there and i said what are you doing what are you doing we're having a folk festival luxford said and would you come down down and sing i said what kind of songs do you want they were just like the songs that the people seeing are seeing or have something we met we made our little former boy we met with you it's only [Music] oh lord they applaud you and holler and try to do it themselves [Music] i think maybe the word to describe that tommy that we're seeking wouldn't it be organized confusion really [Applause] really as you say i never i was on his show more times than i have fingers and toes and i never knew him as a lick as a result of his success the mountain dance and folk festival as it would later be called became an annual event as an ever wider group of entertainers got involved bringing with them new ideas and styles of performing bascum tightened his grip on the festival he became an impresario and increasingly bossy well it seems that one year i went down the festival and all of a sudden he said roger he said roger yeah i said yes and he takes me by the pants and by the neck and he walks me out of the uh of the auditorium on the side he sort of just takes me right out by and i never knew why i got from some other person that i was wearing jeans and a plaid shirt at the festival and uh he didn't care for that at all some of the fellows came on the show with cowboy hats bascom stacked him up over on the corner of the stage what was it he didn't like about those hats he didn't want the cowboys on that show he wanted the true mountain mirror shall we say there is not an offensive word no i guess not because i'm one huh lunsford always had his own private definition of true mountain music he would be criticized for single-mindedness he had no interest in songs that grew out of political issues labor struggles or civil rights he was interested in one strand of music which he promoted with a passion he got all the good musicians in in this section of the country on the stage there in no time at all and he didn't pay him very much he did pay him something like three dollars five dollars but that was something to get him out there and in no time at all the auditorium was filled up with people bascom's festival was the beginning of widespread acceptance of the music he championed for so long festivals sprouted up all over the country and as bascom had long recognized it was the dancing that drew the biggest crowds [Music] by the time this film was shot in 1965 mountain dancing had entered a new era precision clocking which had grown out of baskin's competitions [Applause] it was square dancing mixed with clogging and buck dancing and it was done in teams firstly [Music] oh purists argued this was a bastardization of the old original forms they objected to taps on shoes amplified music costumes over the years there had been compromises and in the end the irony was that some accused bascom of tarnishing the very culture he fought to preserve but there was no doubt he had pushed appalachian music and dance into the cultural mainstream [Music] ah yeah [Applause] [Music] [Music] double up girls let's go [Music] we don't know bascom woke the sleeping giant of appalachian mountain culture he helped start folk festivals all over and became known as a leading american folklorist he toured the world performing and lecturing entertain the president and mrs roosevelt and the queen of england and never once in over 60 years did he stop mining his southern appalachian mountains for good tunes and good characters [Applause] [Music] give us another one going to play the scolding wife gold and wide all right if he thought you could have anything to offer at all i mean she could carry a tune and get some sort of exposure anyway that's why i said that he touched a lot of people's hearts because even he went out and got him this red said he hunted him up some of them went to him and he's left his mark on this country because because of what he's done with his leadership to bring all his people together and uh once a year people come from everywhere to uh to meet him just to get to see him now not to meet him and shake hands with him because you know it's too many people everybody figured they'd see bascom lunsford go right on forever and it appeared from the energy he put out but he thought so too [Music] he bought a little volvo car okay the front end was out of it and i i didn't want him to drive it i told him i would come and get him bring him down here if he'd leave the thing at home and he drove it anyway and he had such trouble with that car i believe that when he got down here to laurel river he had a stroke he went over to hanish they couldn't understand nothing he was saying but i've been around him so much you know that i could understand what he was saying he told me to take him to dr kerr lester i knew that he needed more attention than the dr kerr could give him or would give him and i told him to take him to the mission hospital which they did and i remember i waited two or three days before i went to see him because i knew what i'd done to him and i knew what he'd do to me whenever he got where he could so i waited two or three days and then i went to see basketball time he was sitting up in the bed talking and and so when i walked in the first thing he said was you didn't do what i told you to do i told you to take me to dr kerr you never done it you brought me up here in this hospital where i can't do nothing [Music] and i stand right up and say my grip is packed for travel and i'm scratching gravel to that blue ridge far away i know the day that i return there'll be a shindig in the barn the folks from rouse around will come there'll be some fiddlers in the storm i got the blue ridge mountain blues and i stand right up and say my grip is packed for travel and i'm scratching devil all that blue bridge is far away we never mountains don't we darling we love our mountains but i never forget me going back i went over to asheville to see him i lived in hensonville then and went over there to see him and went went back there when he seen me and i said hello there he said come here let's ladies don't see no he grabbed me swung me around he was he was one good man

Channel: David Hoffman

Views: 175,984

Rating: 4.9533043 out of 5

Keywords: Bascom Lunsford, Asheville history, Mountain music, country music history, Ken Burns music documentary, David Hoffman filmmaker, David Hoffman Appalachian music, banjo picking, clog dancing, North Carolina history, North Carolina music, bluegrass music history, bluegrass roots, Blue Ridge Mountains, Blue Ridge Mountain blues, folk dancing, old-time music, Madison County, 1960s country music, flat picking guitar

Id: gdoA0swYKyI

Length: 55min 1sec (3301 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 16 2021