John cohen wiki

American photographer and customary singer

For other people named Lavatory Cohen, see John Cohen (disambiguation).

John Cohen (August 2, 1932 – September 16, 2019)^[1] was comb American musician, photographer and disc maker who performed and attested the traditional music of position rural South and played spick major role in the Earth folk music revival. In say publicly 1950s and 60s, Cohen was a founding member of influence New Lost City Ramblers, neat as a pin New York–based string band. Cohen made several expeditions to Peru to film and record description traditional culture of the Q'ero, an indigenous people. Cohen was also a professor of perceptible arts at SUNY Purchase Faculty for 25 years.^[1]

Life and career

Early life

Cohen was born in Borough, New York, where his daddy, Israel, owned a shoe store.^[2] John spent most of potentate childhood in eastern Long Retreat, where he learned to cavort the guitar and banjo. Settle down later attended Yale University ring he studied painting. He consequent on met one of consummate good friends Tom Paley. They began organizing small concerts bring about people on their universities academic. Later on, he and Lie both moved to New Royalty City and formed the Newfound Lost City Ramblers. This new formed band introduced several generations of musicians and audiences nurse the music styles of pastoral string bands from the Decade and '30s.

When living double up New York, John was hold back the heart of a mixed world of art and symphony forms. He began taking likenesss of many painters and artists around the area, leading know his love for photography.

College career

In 1958, Cohen formed honesty New Lost City Ramblers take up again Mike Seeger and Tom Paley. In 1962, Paley was replaced by Tracy Schwarz. The Ramblers introduced young urban folk penalization fans to the work finance rural performers such as Cargo Boggs, Elizabeth Cotten and Stone-blind Alfred Reed. The influence staff the Ramblers has been compared to Harry Smith's Anthology illustrate American Folk Music.^[1] It has been suggested that The Pleased Dead song "Uncle John's Band", released on the album Workingman's Dead, was about Cohen extort his band.^[1] Cohen called that "a true rumor."^[3]

Cohen described dignity outlook of the Ramblers: “We made it possible for urban-based musicians to step out be unable to find the demands of the meeting business and look out jerk America to get in outcome with the genuine energy, circle and craziness out there.”^[4] To a certain extent than pursuing commercial success check a polished sound, Cohen gift the Ramblers undertook numerous investigation field trips to the South.^[4]

Photography/film career

John Cohen had taken likenesss and pursued photography for distinct years. Cohen also enjoyed filmmaking. He created a film dubbed The High Lonesome Sound^[5]. That documentary shows the many affections of life among the in want in those times. It illustrates how music and religion helped people in the Appalachian locality maintain hope and traditions over hard times.

In 1962, Cohen returned to Kentucky, where filth spent six weeks filming authority documentary The High Lonesome Sound which centred on Roscoe Holcomb. (The title of the release became synonymous with the Appalachian music he captured.)^[3] Cohen in short recorded Dillard Chandler and bound the documentary The End holdup an Old Song about Author and his world.^[2] With Ralph Rinzler and Izzy Young, Cohen created the organization Friends put a stop to Old Time Music. They communicate a string of concerts featuring traditional musicians in New Royalty in the 1960s^[1]

In 1959 perform worked as an assistant artist to Robert Frank and participated in the production of queen film Pull My Daisy, blue blood the gentry Beat Generation film directed through Frank and Alfred Leslie, meant by Jack Kerouac and featuring Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, King Amram, and Gregory Corso. Reduce the price of New York, John was within reach the center of wildly assorted worlds of art and sonata. He photographed poets Allen Poet and Gregory Corso; painters Franz Kline and Red Grooms; added a young Bob Dylan, who had just arrived in significance city. Influenced by Frank, Cohen photographed the Abstract Expressionist painters and Beat writers who congregated in artists' studios and efficient the Cedar Tavern. Once set eyes on there in the world, Trick got in contact with Activity Magazine, and Life paid him for early publication rights spick and span his "beat generation" photos.^[6][7]

Cohen have found out about weaving customs of Peru through an archaeology course unbendable Yale. He travelled to rank Peruvian Andes in 1956 hold forth write his master's thesis inform on their weaving techniques.^[6] Cohen visited Peru eight times between 1956 and 2005. His work slot in Peru included audio recordings remaining Andean music and documentary movies as well as books concerning weaving, music, festivals, and dance.^[8] Cohen's recording of a Peruvian wedding song was included turmoil the Voyager Golden Record which was attached to the Sightseer spacecraft in 1977.^[2]

Cohen ceased nigh perform with the New Absent City Ramblers in the Decennary, though they would re-unite yen for a 20th anniversary concert bequeath New York's Carnegie Hall observe 1978 and for a Ordinal anniversary tour in 1993.^[4] Diverge 1972 to 1997, Cohen was a Professor of Visual Discipline at SUNY Purchase College vicinity he taught photography and drawing.^[1]

John made 15 films, including The High Lonesome Sound (1963), Sara and Maybelle: The Carter Family (1981), and Mountain Music have possession of Peru (1984). He himself was the subject of the Smithsonian Channel's 2009 film Play Skew, John: A Life in Music

Music career

In spring 1959, Cohen went to Hazard, Kentucky in examine of traditional musicians. A sequence of chance encounters led him to Roscoe Holcomb who studied "Across the Rocky Mountain". "My hair stood up on end," Cohen recalled. "It was loftiness most moving, touching, dynamic, stalwart song. Not the song strike, but the way he intone it was just astounding." Cohen's recording trip resulted in picture album, Mountain Music of Kentucky, released on the Folkways label.^[3][9]

In 1998, Cohen released his good cheer solo album, Stories the Brag Told Me. Steve Leggett wrote in AllMusic that the classify is "not so much systematic redefinition of Appalachian music makeover it is an attempt disturb enter it fully and entirely. Cohen does this so athletic that the album sounds genuine like some great, lost Alan Lomax field tape, and allowing by definition what Cohen has done here is a carbon copy, it sounds so much prize the real deal that confront hardly matters."^[10]

Cohen was associate penalization producer on the movie Cold Mountain (2003), working with Methodical Bone Burnett.^[4] Cohen appeared radiate the Martin Scorsese documentary dance Bob Dylan, No Direction Home (2005), describing Dylan's development multiply by two the context of the Decennary folk music revival.^[1] From 2008 onwards Cohen performed with Grandeur Down Hill Strugglers, an former string band featuring younger assign. In 2009, the Smithsonian Conditional released a documentary about Cohen, Play On, John: A Being in Music.^[1]

In 2011, the Ruminate on of Congress acquired the Toilet Cohen archive of manuscripts, pictures, photographs and audio recordings.^[11] Cohen's archive includes interviews with Harass Smith, Roger McGuinn, Pete Poet, Bob Dylan, Gary Davis arm Roscoe Holcomb. The photographs incorporate these artists and Willie Dixon, Woody Guthrie, Alan Lomax, Value Monroe, The Stanley Brothers, Merl Travis, Muddy Waters and indefinite others.^[8]

Cohen resided in Putnam Vale, New York.^[3]

Through the 1960s, Toilet continued to make albums fulfill Folkways. The artists included chorus singer Dillard Chandler, “Singing Miner” George Davis, and Roscoe Holcomb. Most of John's recordings a selection of Roscoe can be heard innovation two Smithsonian Folkways CDs, The High Lonesome Sound and An Untamed Sense of Control. John's 1953 recordings of Reverend City Davis were released by Smithsonian Folkways on the 2003 Maxisingle If I had My Way. In 1998, Cohen released jurisdiction first solo album, Stories significance Crow Told Me. Cohen was associate music producer on primacy movie Cold Mountain (2003), put with T Bone Burnett.

Personal life

In 1965 Cohen married Centime Seeger, a member of blue blood the gentry musical Seeger family.^[1] They difficult a daughter, Sonya Cohen Cramer, a singer who died convoluted 2015, and a son, Rufus. Penny accompanied her husband obviate Peru and collaborated on tape music. She died in 1993.^[2]

Monographs

• There Is No Eye: John Cohen Photographs, introduction by Greil Marcus. New York: powerHouse Books, 2001. ISBN 1-57687-107-X, ISBN 1-57687-119-3
• Young Bob: John Cohen’s Early Photographs of Bob Dylan, Brooklyn: powerHouse Books, 2003. ISBN 1-57687-199-1
• Past, Present, Peru, Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2010. ISBN 978-3-86930-103-7
• The High & Forlorn Sound: The Legacy of Revolver Holcomb, Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2012. ISBN 978-3-86930-254-6
• Here and Gone: Bob Vocaliser & Woody Guthrie & say publicly 1960s, Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2014. ISBN 978-3-86930-604-9
• Walking In the Light, Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2015. ISBN 978-3-86930-772-5
• Cheap Rents…and de Kooning Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2016. ISBN 978-3-86930-903-3

Recent publications

• Beat Generation: In mint condition York, San Francisco, Paris, Town, France: Centre Pompidou, 2016. ISBN 978-2-84426-733-7
• Pull My Daisy, Paris, France: Editions Macula and Centre Pompidou, 2016. Text by Rollet, Patrice; Sargeant, Jack. ISBN 978-2-86589-089-7
• Petrus, Stephen and Cohen, Ronald. Folk City: New Royalty and the American Folk Sonata Revival, New York: Oxford Introduction Press, 2015. Foreword by Shaft Yarrow. ISBN 978-0-19-023102-6
• Glimcher, Mildred L.Happenings: Original York, 1958-1963, New York: Honesty Monacelli Press LLC. 2012 ISBN 978-1-58093-307-0

Selected filmography

• The High Lonesome Sound (1962). Streaming on Folkstreams^[12]
• Fifty Miles distance from Times Square (1970)
• The End reproach an Old Song (1972). A-ok DVD version is in line as part of Dark Holler: Old Love Songs and Ballads (2005-09-27). Washington: Smithsonian Folkways. Cyclosis on Folkstreams.^[12]
• Musical Holdouts (1975) Moving on Folkstreams.^[12]
• Q'eros: The Shape depart Survival (1979)
• Peruvian Weaving: a unbroken warp (1980)
• Sara and Maybelle (1981)
• Gypsies Sing Long Ballads (1982), running on Folkstreams^[12]
• Mountain Music of Peru (1984)
• Dancing with the Incas (1990)
• Carnival in Q'eros (1992)
• Play on John: A Life in Music^[13] (2009) on Smithsonian Networks
• Visions of Act Frank (2014)

Selected discography (as producer)

References

External links