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a low fb bascom lamar lunsford was born in march a ged
he now lives with his wife frida in a house not far from where he was raised in the community itself turkey creek bergen county north carolina and made his living first as a teacher in the remote rural school houses the back country and then later as a traveling salesman a lawyer and newspaper editor and a local politician is one of the very few men his age in the entire region with a college degree it's theirs his greatest passion has been singing and dancing playing and collecting the traditional english scottish and irish ballads of western north carolina where the richest concentration of this time of music in the country's western ones who learned to love and earlier in his mother sang the old
songs at home later when he traveled the deal selling fruit trees and honey he would stop and cabin after cabin and after taking care of business he'd stay on making that music is changing the young people have even the ability or the inclination to perform and the truly traditional way this film was the result of an experience that two filmmakers share what's remarkable man from a fifteen to june tenth nineteen sixty five best lunsford and his wife guide us through the blue ridge and great smoky mountains to visit their friends and neighbors and the sci fi year and we're seeing this play more violent acts he's
now leaving as ben lady godiva many many things
oh yeah yeah a lovely due to do a little i'm going to be on is the value and the music at the end yeah it's nice
i need it oh gee
others are saying that he didn't see it he was real and in the place of the same ground how he said whistle eight and you just can you just help similarity and he'd say ground called only so many hours and now we'll go to the whole of the un actually getting things in an almost naive families in the city's if someone and he can be that is hardly unique and
the palestinians need to peek the company need to cut in knocking out that king the illinois in the
square dance that there are now a tradition that he rejected the stamp on that in egypt many
things thirty nine years ago that ties to russian intelligence twenty eight
we need to pay the patient isn't it neat
and for a candidate we need to do to oh no us with
isaac or ireland another it was
eerie has being served as a cash balance information to play well sheriff job is a very difficult job in any normal managed to counter the ever of the camp
that's john lewis says and in nineteen forty i would share for that town as they hadn't had any enforcement of that prohibition will up to that time had been daylight people actually get mad and shuster and that they are they have some enforcement of the pollution law and they elected me more as a it was a peculiarity about my people and all the people that they're never ever ever been almost there about this publishing business that way i mean winters
plays a year ago summer and a more traditional non stop this it never did have a place in our pioneer days as as to date in the world well beautiful of those smaller channel in the gunfire string bending but like in music right now and why can't feel it and keep running it's beef
but it's been jeff buckley oh dear aig maybe
maybe this hour a year iran a kind of these days in la you got it you decide dave davies
host mr lee singing course heard of it both are sing it sing it and know you pronounce you weren't very well
loved you only those words in the way you move towards the amazon i know it is and they heard me of this all this is why again and they live the guy at a high
and that rattle is wrong native there is change or as iran and our main areas will air stays in two areas these bananas you
know and so the limits to worry about there is delivery of the thirtieth of you you have that it was he didn't want to put a lot in the year he worked at getting out of that them i hear them and we don't think obama let's start
with those who have them it is you will not live beyond delay you have i have to say of the year with and we're going to leave joe palca to the common initiative that didn't go back to read
read read he says law you're an affinity for half
the thing that for me than the old word oh man eyes on the ball fields will give them a lot of work and then
move forward oh ok it is
nico they want to
do the people need the
people need to
pay a penny aj as is it's because
the political reporters to pin any nice but it is the pears need
to pay a penny and you know what he says right right for a few days the patient
i'm terry gross and found that the existing for a natural first given often than sixteen for the sunnis on the internet that you know there is the first de souza to do the math my mother you know this thing is for things and this is where there is gas the images
this is when i have this this climate coltrane played a band for a few years and got killed at that place where i said that the level of the house and leave it at that they want to do that because that's jessica lamb stew used to close to figure out samuel ramey song st louis and he's saying won't vote to vote so far as to vote online resume soon so you know i was a brash
cars we have five days the homeowners the home was in nineteen sixty eight the play has been rising at the same time it's
big nina peaks because biko like you you know eighteen
tournament an old tv in italy ok been a huge tournament oh baby that's my own see pierre's work hands on sang songs as they continued in mind they're still firing maybe because at
disney springs please be things better nice as
beans this week the polls be right it's
been the peak it's been a piece but it's both things be it's been nice
it used to be sales at the same time take two to three years now he's interested mendoza well
were you can inform the cabinet level of as traditional centers of those sections these as bell
there's more well when you know that the hero we could confirm him the dalian and the human body will go and the enormity of thing and nato only lot of little off in on his start working mcilwain is a major rebound over the point well and
they're used in many many many many many many many
many many things bernie needs is nice nice nice
right right the museum many many many many
many nice nice nice and it's been all over the country and i said has been one of the big mountain boy get homesick moment it's a real threat to the world and there's a song in the movie amount to an honest than say
worker at the fact that they didn't go through that blue being followed it again now they have family and friends coming in and each one of the required your insides for him on the escalation is usually cited
states will be a little less than thirty gay man would show there are rare interview but i am not one of them years later when the voice of the beat and the memory of material it's just that you get a little a faithful a lot if you notice a lot of a pollster shaky an electric utility we load the hero really still we love it for the sake of the girl used to spend up there but he can shoot and those at the old
data and counted and planted the stars again common occurrence overnight common occurrence in this review are you invariably through eighth you'll be a recount of the cases that i never did and shoot your piece and she said that the level of treatment she has all gay america richard intensity and i will i went off to another she says and justice ministers hear now about the ammonia and avoid offered are true and my services who haven't listened both as a standup and i bet you do
oh yeah me many agencies and public television as boy
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Series
Festival
Episode Number
42
Episode
Music Makers of Blue Ridge
Producing Organization
National Educational Television and Radio Center
Contributing Organization
Thirteen WNET (New York, New York)
Library of Congress (Washington, District of Columbia)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/75-26m0cm32
NOLA Code
NFBR
If you have more information about this item than what is given here, or if you have concerns about this record, we want to know! Contact us, indicating the AAPB ID (cpb-aacip/75-26m0cm32).
Description
Episode Description
An hour of lively Appalachian Mountain music danced and sung in porch rocking chairs, open-windowed living rooms, and the sunny yards of farmers, shopkeepers, and hunters living along the byroads of Madison county, western North Carolina. As yet unreached by most of the state's seven million tourists or by mass communications, these mountains folk are able to perform the traditional melodies and verses persevered from the 17th and 18th century settlers. It was Bascom Lamar Lunsford North Carolina's grand old man of folk music and founder-director of the famous Ashville Dance and Folk festival who along with his wife, guided the filmmakers to the isolated homes of his friends and neighbors of the Blue Ridge. This film is the result of the experience that the filmmakers shared with this old man in the late spring of 1965 when together they traveled an average of 300 miles a day, visiting homesteads of some who had never seen television equipment, convincing them to forget their shyness and suspicions and to allow recording of a declining musical tradition. The type of music included in this program is the ballad. These were originally sung unaccompanied and hark back to the Britain of several hundred years before. The stories told are many, but the subjects few love, war, bloody crimes, and exploits of the great outlaws. There are also dance tunes. There are heavily ornamented, complex melodies played on the bag-pipe and fiddle which accompanied the energetic jigs of Ireland and Scotland. Bascom Lamar Lunsford at 84 years old is the youngest "Natural Wonder" of North Carolina, his native state. He knows the verses of hundreds of folk songs learned from the mouths of mountain folk living in the Appalachian hills. According to Cecil Sharpe, a folklorist, who visited these back regions in 1910, the tunes Bascom sings about London lords, Irish lasses, and Scottish clans have not been heard on home soil for hundreds of years. Both of Bascom's parents loved and sang the traditional mountain music. Like his father, Bascom taught in rural schoolhouses of the backwoods in a time when teachers ' salaries were cash, bacon, molasses and other staples. As a young man, Bascom traveled and sold mail order fruit trees. When he came to a cabin, he 'd trade a free tree for lodging and supper and a night of song and fiddlin '. It was at this time that he began to write down and notate different styles of folk music gathered from Harper's Ferry, West Virginia to Iron Mountain, Alabama all along the crest of the Blue Ridge. Over the years, he was admitted to the North Carolina bar, tried politics, newspaper editing and scouting draft dodgers for the FBI. In 1925, Bascom began to recognize the genuine worth of folk scholarship after a visit from university professor and folklorist Dr. RW Gordon. Soon after, Bascom organized what was to become the largest folk music festival in the country, the Asheville Mountain Dance and Folk Festival. He has recorded over 700 songs for Columbia University and the Library of Congress an equaled feat of memory. In 1949, the Library of Congress sent him to Florence, Italy, to represent the United States at an international folk music festival. Bascom has written a number of songs including "Dogget's Gap" and "Stand with Me," just two songs featured in this hour program. Jonathan Gordon describes working with Bascom in this way, "Bascom would bring us around to places he thought were interesting, set the people at ease, and we would try without getting into the act too much, to record whatever happened. In the car we used a microphone strung from the roof so that I could record Bascom's remarks as we drove through the countryside. Ultimately, as it turned out, these recordings made in the car comprised the greatest bulk of the Bascomabilia we were able to capture: for we drove over 2,000 miles, far more than we expected. And so, we got to know each other very well. This hour-long piece was recorded in black and white on videotape. (Description adapted from documents in the NET Microfiche)
Description
From the NET collection, produced in 1966. Folklorist and musician, Bascom Lamar Lunsford, acts as tour guide in this road trip through Western North Carolina, which documents performances of traditional folk music and dancing of Appalachia. Numerous artists are featured in this unique look at an American art form that was already beginning to vanish when this documentary was produced in the 1960's.
Broadcast Date
1966-07-08
Asset type
Episode
Genres
Documentary
Topics
Music
Rights
Published Work: This work was offered for sale and/or rent in 1972.
Media type
Moving Image
Duration
00:58:34
Credits
Associate Director: Gordon, Jonathan
Camera Operator: Lefort, Lou
Director: Hoffman, David
Editor: Hoffman, David
Guest: Lunsford, Bascom Lamar
Producing Organization: National Educational Television and Radio Center
Sound: Gordon, Jonathan
AAPB Contributor Holdings
Thirteen - New York Public Media (WNET)
Identifier: wnet_aacip_13024 (WNET Archive)
Format: Betacam: SP
Generation: Master
Library of Congress
Identifier: 1589704-1 (MAVIS Item ID)
Format: 1 inch videotape: SMPTE Type C
Generation: Master
Color: B&W
Library of Congress
Identifier: 1589704-2 (MAVIS Item ID)
Format: U-matic
Generation: Copy: Access
Color: B&W
Library of Congress
Identifier: 1589704-3 (MAVIS Item ID)
Generation: Master
Library of Congress
Identifier: 1589704-4 (MAVIS Item ID)
Generation: Copy: Access
Library of Congress
Identifier: 1589704-5 (MAVIS Item ID)
Generation: Copy: Access
Library of Congress
Identifier: 1589704-6 (MAVIS Item ID)
Format: 2 inch videotape
Generation: Master
Color: B&W
Library of Congress
Identifier: 1589704-7 (MAVIS Item ID)
Format: 1 inch videotape: SMPTE Type C
Generation: Master
Color: B&W
Library of Congress
Identifier: 1589704-8 (MAVIS Item ID)
Format: U-matic
Generation: Copy: Access
Color: B&W
Indiana University Libraries Moving Image Archive
Identifier: [request film based on title] (Indiana University)
Format: 16mm film
If you have a copy of this asset and would like us to add it to our catalog, please contact us.
Citations
Chicago: “Festival; 42; Music Makers of Blue Ridge,” 1966-07-08, Thirteen WNET, Library of Congress, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed May 5, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-75-26m0cm32.
MLA: “Festival; 42; Music Makers of Blue Ridge.” 1966-07-08. Thirteen WNET, Library of Congress, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. May 5, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-75-26m0cm32>.
APA: Festival; 42; Music Makers of Blue Ridge. Boston, MA: Thirteen WNET, Library of Congress, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-75-26m0cm32