The New Lost City Ramblers

In the midst of the folk revival that swept through the closing years of the 1950s and the dawn of the 1960s, the New Lost City Ramblers exposed listeners to the genuine string-band textures of the 1920s and 1930s, thereby acquainting an entire cohort with an indigenous American strain of old-time music they had never previously encountered. While upholding songs that carried a social message, the group infused the broader folk scene with grit and immediacy, delivering performances marked by wit and clear respect for the source traditions.

Formed in 1958, Mike Seeger, John Cohen, and Tom Paley shaped the New Lost City Ramblers in the image of earlier outfits such as the Skillet Lickers, the Fruit Jar Drinkers, and the Aristocratic Pigs, selecting a moniker that echoed earlier eras. After Tracy Schwarz stepped in for Paley in 1962, the band expanded its scope to include unaccompanied pieces drawn from the Appalachian folk canon, both sacred and secular, thereby introducing a wide swath of the American public to vernacular musical forms. Folkways captured the New Lost City Ramblers across five albums during the early 1960s; the resulting visibility generated television spots, well-attended tours, and invitations to the Newport Folk Festival. A 1964 songbook containing 125 selections proved popular with buyers.

At minimum the ensemble fulfilled three roles: it conveyed authentic folk material to a broad public, it delivered engaging live shows, and it prompted listeners to seek out the historic recordings that had inspired the Ramblers in the first place. Following the group’s peak period, Tracy Schwarz traveled with his wife and later his son, shifting gradually toward Cajun button-accordion traditions; Mike Seeger performed alongside his spouse Alice Gerrard as well as in solo settings; and John Cohen continued in a separate string band while directing prize-winning films focused on earlier musical practices. More than two decades after their previous studio session, Schwarz, Seeger, and Cohen reconvened in the 1990s under the New Lost City Ramblers name to produce the album There Ain’t No Way Out, issued in 1997. The band marked its fiftieth anniversary in 2009; that same year Mike Seeger succumbed to cancer on August 7 at his residence in Lexington, Virginia, aged seventy-five. Tom Paley passed away at eighty-nine on September 30, 2017, in Brighton, England, and John Cohen died in 2019.