REAL Mountain Bluegrass Filmed In 1965 With Bascom Lamar Lunsford

good evening I'm David McCullough our film tonight is Ballad of a mountain man and it confirms what professional scholars have long known that some of the best work in preserving the riches of American culture has been done by amateurs as a labor of love most people take for granted the way of life they grow up with they see nothing special about it but Bascom Lamar Lunsford of South Turkey Creek North Carolina was an exception he not only recognized the value of the music and danced the old-time customs and stories of the mountain people he knew but was determined to collect and save as much of it as possible out of interest and affection but also to counteract the popular notion of his people as Hillbillies a stereotype he hated and knew to be grossly unfair he stood five feet six inches tall and he walked according to one description all reared back like a man of substance he had no University sponsorship no PhD no staff no research grant only his interest in people and his phenomenal energy critics say that Lunsford neglected songs of political protest music of Appalachian blacks which is true and his old-fashioned sense of propriety also kept him from recording the body songs of the mountains and there were many but until he staged his first big annual Folk Festival at Asheville the summer of 1928 few mountain people knew how remarkable they were our popular appreciation of mountain music and dance has never been the same since [Music] balrog style [Music] Liyana comes sound with a sniffle anagram Fiona Khan Salman frog around baby Oliver gin [Music] [Applause] [Music] he's behind a bush boy and when I wake you move if he will he rolling in a minute if I didn't you'd be brains out [Music] [Applause] Oh [Music] I played to get tired again with Bascom said the songs I was singing and the way I did them would sound better with a five string banjo when I said well I don't have a man job never tried to play a banjo and he said well I'll give you one he is the root of the whole thing [Music] when you go to the Canarsie on college I mean you run into Bascom Lunsford if you go to Asheville to the festival you run into Bascom Lunsford you know I mean he changed everything Bascom Lamar Lunsford 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 struggle to make this music popular was in direct conflict with his battle to preserve the old traditional mountain ways he won't dare button stay just the same away you know he didn't like it i sophisticated stuff he wanted to still be old-fashioned we always thought he dressed like some dude they say he's just a dude I've heard my friends say I come to outdo 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 sundown the Sun and nearly down you only see my darling before the Sun Goes Down oh you all have seen my Cindy live the way you 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 honey bees swarming around her mouth that's the kind of thing that Lunsford's eccentricity is imposed on us all hey yeah you know name that of that just right now walk away with the young fiddler is Bascom Lamar Lunsford tuning up with a few friends back in 1927 the song is one of his own [Music] 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 [Music] Lunsford 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 Frieda to do what he'd done for 60 odd years combing the Western North Carolina hills staying with people till he picked up all the songs dances tunes and tales they knew at some homes he might stay the evening and others he might stay two weeks how you in seeing some good country because I'm gonna show you a lot of this territory where our friends living where they know the old ballets and I think you're gonna enjoy this the interesting thing but anyway we'd stop anywhere in this country that'd be a song at No god [Music] someone said Bascom Lunsford had cross hell on a rotten rail for a good folk song he pricked up his ears and be off gathering the best the mountains had to offer and he was relentless turn to the right in the end build this old somewhere go this old road that I believe that's the road we want to go [Music] you go play them gone all right you want to get the plan she does [Music] [Applause] [Music] bascomb collected material had informal get-togethers like this people never knew when he'd show up where most Outsiders saw folks just sitting around the yard Bascom sought talent talent people in the region took for granted [Music] to come a long ways to get you but why did you call a lost job well how come we give you a lame John when older the woman gave me that moon shake is ready yeah we used to cut timber for me and my daddy and Roy hole used to play you remember here well yeah and these once me all the same time I was and and you know them didn't know I could play at all I said you know I just started working they kept bringing their instruments it was about everyday 1205 clean so nobody asked you huh no one day I did throw it and I believe I want to see you fiddling me if you're mine oh go ahead you know well I cut loose on something know what was no man all this is irons you're squaring aids man close John and it's been a good one everything [Laughter] [Music] those jars I could have stopped at a half a dozen places and somebody to play the fiddle victim Anja [Music] 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 honey that's one of the most archaic kinds 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 music they saw what he saw saying was when I was a rake and ramblin boy I know he sings that I'm he's doing here ya think that that's the old-time swing to it [Music] and your boat my way has been my mom Sam Honeycutt was a legendary bear hunter [Music] bascomb 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 a connected with Swiss yodeling at all yodeling is very old maybe the oldest kind of human communication because it carries far [Music] [Music] [Music] ballads like blackjack Davi have English Irish Scots and Welsh roots handed down by word of mouth they had changed over the years Jean and Harold winters had one version and it seemed Bascom always had another is that the way you're saying it side blackjack Davey I'll sleep tonight in a one feather bed between my baby the thing that helps you with the folks is if you can sing them a piece of their own of their own fabric if you can open up a page so that you are 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 so his memory made it possible for him to always keep the conversation going if you got what I mean the musical conversation you could sing it a little bit of some other song that might open up another corner of singers 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 down turn in they'd see well now all sing number or 480 people reach over in the rack get the songbook and the man next to me and past the songbook to me they all have to rely on the book nearly all of them I could just sing about the book and a lot of these old songs you know like I am bound for the promised land I am bound for the brown will come and go with me I am bound for the promised 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 filled 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] bascomb 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 were on records boy [Music] [Music] thank you boys that's fine that's fine a Texas out a whole lot [Music] [Music] you've never been here with me never been here with me now that little badge in it's good he's pleased that one be back when he yeah that long to the neighborhood ramber he and his brother and the Melvin bill Mac arethe one of Bascomb's personal favorites picking the banjo in a traditional two fingered style [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] while other folklorists use notepads and later tape recorders bascomb relied on his instincts and his extraordinary ability to remember what he'd heard [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] over time Bascomb's love and respect for his culture led directly to his personal campaign against hillbilly stereotypes [Music] [Applause] [Music] we people of the mountains have been in a way slandered considerably and most systematically generations of isolation and poverty had made the mountain people easy targets in fact Madison County was one of the poorest places in America Bascom often dressed in a white starched shirt and a black bowtie as a symbol of defiance because I know that 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 that because he was thinking of what your camera are seeing you helped after hit Michelle yeah I'll talk to you a little bit let these gentlemen to see someone we're up against yes sir we want you to see the agriculture but it didn't want you to see the stereotype and you saw he'd elbow in and they'll bow back out sure and yet he took you there see that's the heart and yet his mind said no no no basket partition 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 Bascom and his people watched as newspapers comic strips films and eventually television continued to reinforce the stereotypes I reckons we had the finest food in all the world old chops and eggs for breakfast both chops and goobers for lunch and for supper 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 genteel 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 you know the value of southern mountain culture [Music] [Music] bascomb had wonderful material to draw from English folklore sessile sharp 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 or new personal mood enhancer ago certain a them with old dish pans and ever since go around that one would start singing some of the others would join in and slept with their hands and and celebrate they just live like seeing my mother used to sing a lot and her father would it all go to bed she used to tell me about it how they would all go to bed and he was set he would lie there and sing one song after another till 12 o'clock yeah they'd have corn chickens and after that / they'd have a big supper in square days and as eight years old first time I went through square [Music] some of them I put five count liquor right in the middle to power so they couldn't get it till it got through and that's when this big square that you started it felt good we're waiting to seem and watch him clog that was the main thing shuffling sand iron ladies dosey doe you ought to know [Music] [Applause] but it was really good no he enjoyed some mountain people took the 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 [Music] [Music] [Music] this might sound rusty to some but the bascomb it was worth the effort he was drawing out another fellow Mountaineer 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 that's that book I felt like it might wind up in somebody who will add it some time and then I just give it the library first few pages are used for people who come to my house on South Turkey Creek in Buncombe County North Carolina to see me visit the home and so on there's some old family records share of the first lunch for the kingdom air guy assistant he's a friend to Charles first and he turned up in here in 1649 Charles the first hit went off in not be within 16 then 48 so he thought it'd be better for him to turn up in America there were letters that is the first state school certificate given to my father here's my mother here a picture my mother this thing is full of things of historic interest we go on down as then how's the campaign manager Madera County running the McDowell Sentinel as campaign manager for Senator Josiah Bailey and ran the paper at that time therefore I get a three column double headline in my home paper you know I was that was taking the way 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 twenty 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 hardscrabble farmer Bascom was drifting around collecting songs and dances people liked him but they never really had him 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 Nellie 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's so often straight from home well I think that's one reason that he was criticized by the neighbors and his mother-in-law 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 where the ship didn't come in they finally decided to get married in the ship never did coming and I never didn't said 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 that opportunity never knocked on his door one of Bascomb's biggest chances at financial success came along when he wrote a song that evolved into an American classic Mountain Dew [Music] [Music] they called it that good old Mountain Dew and them who refuse it are few if you sit down you're joke I'll fill up your bug with that Google Mountain Dew this happened while he was in the law business okay the judge got this guy for making whiskey but I got this story straight from the horse's mouth Bascom decided that he said to the feller 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 Bascom tasted evident Bascom decided that he did to try it on the judge and so he tried it on the judge and the judge said man could make that bit of whiskey just you know he did so he turned to Madeline and and and so that's was a worm ount ndu was born [Music] and those that refuse it are you so I closed up his mug when I filled up his job with good old 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 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 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] [Music] [Applause] we will go to the home of Bill McCauley in Buncombe County he can do that just like a young man [Music] this was buck dancing arrival II highly skillful dance steps were whirled from the scots-irish jig the blacks flatfoot danced and Cherokee tribal dances it was about the most original form of expression people had at the time one could do what ever came naturally [Music] [Applause] [Music] now that type of dancing of course not done as possible skillfully as he's done that but the dancing knocking out the tune the feet going all the way through the square dance Victor our Mountain a traditional dancing very attractive other folklorists might have found 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 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 Baskins contests sprung up throughout North Carolina more than a few of them were held here at his house where he built a special dance floor hung too many people and died out there today as mu back to furniture fill up the carpet and just have a big time [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] with dances like this one Baskin rekindled the spirit and skill of mountain dancing 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 fellows continued to square off and compete at puck dancing as much for the benefit of the ladies as anything else [Music] Bascom Peters critics no line hovering among the dancers watching like a hawk for Newtown taking note of who please the crowd [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] we were just more or less watching each other when he'd change steps I would or he would go into step and not going something completely different sound like this ain't ready do a few steps there and I'm gonna join with and get a little sound going with her here it was here 12 miles from his home but in 1928 Bascom Lunsford sparked the 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 ajita commercialization stereotyping became the theater for his greatest triumph the rhododendron festival was a strange thing I you talk about a Cofer II try and get everything 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 do all this was party anything they would ring the bell anything would bring around 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 of gawker too bascomb jumped at the opportunity this is a great Eagle it was played at the very first of mr. Lunsford's festivals and I played it for him to open the show several times and Sam Lunsford stage show at Asheville like a bolt of lightning five thousand people showed up tourists mixed with Mountaineers everybody cut loose the sideshow turned up a via the main event I was on pax square and there were a lot of people and play a chairs there and I said what are you doing what are you doing if we're having a Folk Festival Lunsford said would you come down down and sing I said what kind of songs do you want they were just like your songs that the people seeing are seeing or have some [Music] came from all made it for you they loved it then they'd smile do it Oh Lord they applaud you and holler and try to do it themselves [Music] [Applause] I think maybe the word to describe that Tommy that we're seeking wouldn't it be organized confusion and really really as you say I never I was on his show more times and I have fingers and toes and I'm they renew him missional 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 Bascom 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 and he said Roger yeah I said yes and it takes me by the pants and by the neck and he walks me out of the of the auditorium on the side he sort of just takes me right out and I never know why I got from some other person that I was wearing jeans and a plaid shirt at the festival and he didn't care for that at all some of the fellows came on the show with cowboy hats bascomb stacked him up over on the corner of stage he didn't wanted Cowboys on that show he wanted the truth Mountaineer shall we say here is own defensive word no I guess not because I'm one 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 this section of the country on the stage there ain't no time at all and he didn't pay him very much he did pay him something like $3 $5 but that was something to get him out there and in no time at all their auditorium had filled up with people Bascomb's festival was the beginning of widespread acceptance of the music he championed for so long festival sprouted up all over the country and his Bascom and long recognized it was the dancing that drew the biggest crowds by the time this film was shot in 1965 Mountain dancing had entered a new era precision clocking which had grown out of Bascomb's competitions [Applause] it was square dancing mixed with clogging and puck dancing and it was done in teams [Music] [Music] [Music] Hey [Music] purists argued this was a bastardization of the old original forms they objected to taps on shoes amplified music costumes [Music] over the years there had been compromises and in the end the irony was that some accused basket 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] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Bascom wolf the sleeping giant of Appalachian mountain culture he helps start folk festivals all over and became known as a leading American folklorist he toured the world performing and lecturing entertained 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 [Music] [Applause] give us another give us another day [Applause] he's gonna spray the scolding wife if he thought you could have anything to offer at all I'm Carrie - and get some sort of exposure anyway that's why I said that he touched a lot of people's hearts because he won that he went out and got him misread said he hunted him up someone went to him and he's left his mark on this country who goes up because of what he's done with his leadership to bring all these people together and once a year people come from everywhere to her 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 that he thought so too [Music] he bought a little over Volvo car okay the front end was out of it and I didn't want him to drive I told him I would come and get him bring him down here if he'd leave to stay at home and he drove it anyway and he had such trouble of that car I believe that when he got down here to Laurel River he had his truck he went over to Hamish they couldn't understand that he was sane but I'd been around him so nights you know that I could understand what he was saying when he told me to take him to dr. Kirk that's Lester I knew that he needed more attention in the dr. Kerr could give him there would you and I told him to take him to the mission hospital which they did and I remember I waited two or three days before 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 save ask him about that time he was sitting up in the bed talking 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] Ridge Mountains blues and I stand right up and say well grip is pack for travel and I'm scratchin gavel 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 be some Fiddler's in the storm I got the Blue Ridge Mountain blue and I stand right up and say McGriff it paid for travel and I'm scratchin devil for that blue beach ball [Music] but I never forgetting me going back and went over to ash for to see him I lived in Hendersonville in and went over I would see him and went went back there when he seen me I said hello there he did come here less ladies dosey doe he could have been where he was if he was one good man

Channel: David Hoffman

Views: 515,851

Keywords: Ken Burns country music, country music documentary, clog dancing, Creed Fisher songs, Billy strings, Blake Sheldon songs, YouTube Luke Brian, Luke Brian songs

Id: F-t7lH0Uzu0

Length: 53min 16sec (3196 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 28 2020