Roscoe Holcomb
The High Lonesome Sound (Smithsonian Folkways)
The term “high lonesome sound” today is associated with countless traditional bluegrass groups, but the evocative phrase was coined more than three decades ago by folk musicologist and longtime New Lost City Rambler John Cohen to describe the singing of one man–Roscoe Holcomb. Holcomb, a coal miner and construction worker who died in 1981, lived his entire life in an eastern Kentucky hollow but became a legend in folk circles for his plaintive, edgily idiosyncratic renditions of Appalachian ballads, blues and gospel. This splendid compilation draws from Folkways Records albums recorded by Holcomb in 1961, 1964 and 1974 and is accompanied by extensive new liner notes by Cohen, who traveled back to Kentucky in 1995 in an attempt to learn more about the forces that shaped the singer’s hardscrabble life and home-grown music. Geographically isolated, Holcomb developed a vocal style and banjo technique that reflected scant commercial influence; his roots ran deep into Appalachian bedrock and his purity remains unmistakable.
