American Old Time, Folk, Bluegrass, and Country Music
For a List of Musicians photographed, click here
In the 1950s traditional folk music and its more contemporary forms mapped an alternative vision of America in opposition to the consumer culture generated by the recording industry, radio, movies and television. A participant in this milieu, Cohen and fellow musicians Mike Seeger and Tom Paley founded The New Lost City Ramblers, an old-time folk music string band, in 1958. The Ramblers went on to perform until 2010, influencing generations of folk musicians.
Driven by his interest in musical root traditions, Cohen headed south to Appalachia to meet, photograph and record musicians Roscoe Holcomb, Dillard Chandler, Fred Cockerham and others. These recordings, distributed (and still available) through Smithsonian Folkways Records, circulated their music to a larger audience. In 1962, Cohen made High Lonesome Sound, a film whose title is now widely used to describe this genre of music. Along with musicologists Alan Lomax and Harry Smith and fellow musicians Pete Seeger and other members of his band, Cohen immersed himself in musical spheres found off the grid.
Closer to home in New York City, Cohen photographed folk singers Woody Guthrie, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Reverend Gary Davis, and a young Bob Dylan. Dylan’s collaboration with John - who he knew via the Ramblers before his arrival to New York - began in 1962 with now iconic images made in Cohen’s loft and the rooftop of his building. Mention of this session is made in the liner notes of Dylan’s later album Highway 61 Revisited. These photographs and later ones from 1970 in color are in two of Cohen’s books: Young Bob and Here and Gone.
As an authority, Cohen often shared his first-hand experiences and documentation with other musicians, writers, and filmmakers. Among the latter were the Coen brothers (O Brother Where Art Thou and Inside Llewyn Davis), T. Bone Burnett (Cold Mountain), and Ken Burns (Country Music). His research for Burns’ 8-part documentary inspired Cohen’s final lifetime book Speed Bumps on a Dirt Road: When Old Time Music Met Bluegrass (powerhouse, 2019).
