Roscoe Holcomb

Roscoe Halcomb - John Hardy

Roscoe Halcomb
Across the Rocky Mountain

Roscoe "Rossie' Holcomb b 1911 Daisy, Perry Co KY; d 1981 Daisy, Perry Co KY; s/o Marion Holcomb and Martha Osborne. Roscoe "Rossie" Holcomb m. (1) Mary Shepherd; m. (2) Ethel Williams;

Throughout the 1960s, Holcomb became the face of authentic, noncommercial, white folk music — someone who channeled Appalachian tradition and an avant-garde energy into his art. He became a muse for Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison, and other young middle- and upper-class Americans who looked South for their musical roots and artistic inspiration. Holcomb never sought wide recognition. More than anything, he simply wanted to make a living for himself and his family. Work, not music, primarily defined him. Holcomb enjoyed the opportunities to perform and to make friends outside of Appalachia, but the legend that grew around him, during and after his life, obscured the hardships and pain that he endured.

John Pankake and Paul Nelson, who attended Halcomb's first public concert at the University of Chicago in 1961, stated "Roscoe is a man's man," they wrote in 1961 for the Little Sandy Review, "who returns your handshake firmly and looks you straight in the eye when he speaks to you." He is slender and soft-spoken — yet tough enough to have endured a hard life in the Kentucky coal mines. . . . His feeling for people and his complete immersion in life give his conversation a sensitive, almost visionary quality. There is really only one topic of conversation with him and that is the meaning of human experience. His every word is a reflection of his thoughtfulness and deep insight. . . . He speaks of the people of his region with the poeticism of a good writer, and he knows and understands their poverty, their violence and their loneliness. . . . We watched him walk away wondering if we had talked to a great man — or to a man who only seemed so because he had miraculously come to us from a time and place before the race of Americans had fallen."

The High Lonesome Sound
Roscoe Holcomb

(Source) The legendary Roscoe Holcomb performs 21 powerful songs shaped by the hard times and conflict between old and new that marked his life in the Kentucky mountains. A hard-hitting singer and banjo-player, he also performs unaccompanied ballads, banjo and harmonica solos, and with a guitar. These recordings from 1961, 1964, and 1974 were previously released on three different Folkways LP records and had a powerful influence on the folk music revival. Accompanied by extensive new notes and photographs by John Cohen. 71 minutes. "Roscoe Holcomb is a true genius." — San Francisco Chronicle

John Cohen who wrote extensively about Roscoe Holcomb and his music visited the region eight years before a man named Hobart Ison on September 20 1967 shot and killed a Canadian filmmaker named Hugh O'Connor as he filmed a coal miner sitting on the porch of the home he rented from Ison in Jeremiah, Kentucky, just down the road from Daisy, Kentucky. Hobart Ison was the son of Grant Ison and Susan Frazier.