The High Lonesome Sound

Holcomb, Roscoe

album cover

Roscoe Holcomb's voice is an acquired taste. It is thin and reedy, scratched and scraggly, with hints of desperation around the edges. Some have described him as a prototypical "mountain man"—singing in wild "get off my land!" bursts, his voice coming across thorny, unapologetic, tetchy, and mean. Before you write him off, however, consider those who have been captivated by his work—among them Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton, and Ralph Stanley.

The folklorist John Cohen, who helped bring attention to Holcomb (1911–1981) during the folk revival of the early '60s, characterized his singing style as "the high lonesome sound." That description, which later was attached to Bill Monroe and other bluegrass singers, comes close to catching Holcomb's eerie tone, his faintly otherworldly presence.

This album gathers recordings made in 1961, 1964, and 1974, and shows Holcomb as a singer with zero performance affectation—when he tells a tale like that of "Trouble in Mind," he conveys a completely open, unvarnished humanity. Hear him sing anything and you can tell he's a man who has come to his wisdom one hardship at a time.

Holcomb lived in Daisy, Kentucky, in the Appalachian Mountains, and worked in coal mines and on construction jobs for most of his life. A guitarist who played excellent banjo, Holcomb didn't have a professional career, and during long spans of his life he made music only for himself. His specialties included the blues, hymns (his falsetto style comes from the Old Regular Baptist tradition), and allegorical ballads. His singing isn't smooth; usually he phrases in irregular fits and starts. But if you listen a while, you might well find his music entrancing—the haunted and haunting sound of an America that's a long time gone.

Genre: Folk
Released: 1998, Smithsonian Folkways
Key Tracks: "Moonshiner," "Trouble in Mind," "Willow Tree."
Next Stop: Dock Boggs: Folkways Years, 1963–1968
After That: Ralph Stanley: Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.
Book Page: 361

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About 1,000 Recordings

Celebrate the joy, the revelation, the mystery, the fun, the sheer shivers-up-the-spine pleasure of great music.

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