“Mountain Music of Kentucky” 1960. Folkways Records. Compiled by John Cohen of The New Lost City Ramblers, it’s a compilation of folk music and musicians, featuring several artists, most prominently banjoist Roscoe Holcomb, whose style inspired prominent 60′s bluegrass and folk-revivalist singers including Bob Dylan. From Southern Spaces, “On a muggy Sunday afternoon in June of 1959, John Cohen wandered the winding mountain roads of eastern Kentucky searching for old-time musicians. Neon, Bulan, Vicco, Viper, Daisy, Defiance — tiny coal and timber towns with sonorous names popped up around each bend before giving way to the Cumberland Mountains. Cohen had come to Kentucky from New York City to find songs about “hard times” that would fill out the repertoire of his old-time music group, the New Lost City Ramblers. “In order to experience an economic depression firsthand, I visited eastern Kentucky and made photos and field recordings for six weeks in 1959,” he recalled. “The United States was quite prosperous at that point, but east Kentucky wasn’t and I had heard about that… . And I said, ‘Maybe I can find some music about the depression, experience the depression, and understand it more and maybe photograph it, maybe record music.’“ The music is plaintive, haunting, sparse. Songs like “Amazing Grace” (with a call-and-response probably recorded in a country church), “Foreign Lander” (Martha Hall), “The Spring of ‘65″ (James B. Cornett) and “Wayfaring Stranger” (Roscoe Holcomb) are hill-country blues and old-time music that ooze sadness. Even upbeat pickers like “Blackeyed Susie” (Roscoe Holcomb) are tinged with melancholy, mostly due to the “high, lonesome sound” of the mountain music singers’ voices.

This record comes from my parents’ collection (we culled it a few months ago). They were super-into the folk-revivalist movement in the 60′s and early 70′s and when I was little I remember them gathering with friends to play acoustic guitars, banjos, harmonicas and autoharps, singing songs similar to the ones on this LP. It’s not generally music I listen to, but it feels super-appropriate in this time of quarantine and world anxiety/depression.