John Cohen

In the mold of Alan Lomax, New Yorker John Cohen extended the work of a historian and folklorist by assembling the New Lost City Ramblers, a revival band launched in the late 1950s. As one of the earliest ensembles to assemble such a project, the Ramblers arrived ahead of the broader acoustic coffeehouse return-to-roots surge that defined the early 1960s. Cohen next moved into filmmaking with the 1964 documentary The High Lonesome Sound, which examined Kentucky’s coal-mining communities and brought the expert banjo picking of Roscoe Holcomb to wider attention. Following the 1974 release of another film, The End of an Old Song, Cohen started yet another short-lived revival band and later took up a post as college professor and musicologist.