I forget just how I stumbled upon David Hoffman's 1962 film Bluegrass Roots, which was the first authoritative documentary on the subject. Top left is a segment of the doc, which features plenty of clogging (really! this style was called clogging!) and old timey playin'. The documentary gives a lot of weight to the elderly "Appalachian Minstrel", Bascom Lamar Lunsford, whom you'll see dancing with his wife about four and half minutes in. Lunsford had already been filmed about 30 years earlier, however, in a scene featured in The Times Ain't Like They Used To Be, a too-good-to-be-true folk video compilation with performances from 1928 to 1935. The DVD is in print but if, as with these depression era performers, hard times have got you in a squeeze, all the contents are on youtube. Top right is that clip of Lunsford's band with a cool introduction in which Lunsford hilariously obsesses about gettin' first prize in some music contest.

- bill 12-03-2008 6:17 pm




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