John Cohen (musician)

John Cohen (August 2, 1932 – September 16, 2019) was an American folk musician and musicologist, founding member of the New Lost City Ramblers as well as a musicologist, photographer and filmmaker. Some of his best known images document the Abstract Expressionist scene centered on New York's Cedar Bar; gallery happenings by early performance artists; young Bob Dylan's arrival in New York; Beat Generation writers during the filming of Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie's film Pull My Daisy; and the "old time" musicians of Appalachia. (The title of Cohen's 1962 film, High Lonesome Sound, has become synonymous with that music.) He was one of the most important "discoverers" of traditional musicians and singers, finding and recording Dillard Chandler, Roscoe Holcomb, and many banjo players, most notably on the album High Atmosphere.

Beyond the United States, Cohen traveled extensively to Peru, driven by a fascination for the weaving and lifestyle of the native Andean population. His field recording of a Peruvian wedding song is included on the Voyager Golden Record, attached to the Voyager spacecraft.

Cohen married Penny Seeger (1943–1993), the youngest member of the musical Seeger family, which includes half-brother Pete Seeger. They had two children, Sonya and Rufus, and grandchildren Dio and Gabel.

From 1972 to 1997, Cohen was a Professor of Visual Arts at SUNY Purchase College where he taught photography and drawing.

The Grateful Dead song "Uncle John's Band," on Workingman's Dead, according to what Cohen calls "a true rumor," is supposed to have been written about Cohen and his band.

The Library of Congress acquired John Cohen's archive, which includes his films, photographs, music recordings and other historic ephemera in 2011. The artist's work can also be found in the permanent collections of the following museums: Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Morgan Library and Museum, New York, NY; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University, Durham, NC; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC; Neuberger Museum, Westchester, NY;New York Public Library, New York, NY; Victoria & Albert Museum, London, UK; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT.
 
Cohen resided in the lower Hudson Valley of New York. He frequently performed with the Down Hill Strugglers.

Monographs 
There Is No Eye: John Cohen Photographs, introduction by Greil Marcus. New York: powerHouse Books, 2001. , 
Young Bob: John Cohen’s Early Photographs of Bob Dylan, Brooklyn: powerHouse Books, 2003. 
Past, Present, Peru, Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2010. 
The High & Lonesome Sound: The Legacy of Roscoe Holcomb, Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2012. 
Here and Gone: Bob Dylan & Woody Guthrie & the 1960s, Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2014. 
Walking In the Light, Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2015. 
Cheap Rents…and de Kooning Göttingen, Germany: Steidl, 2016.

Recent publications 
Beat Generation: New York, San Francisco, Paris, Paris, France: Centre Pompidou, 2016. 
Pull My Daisy, Paris, France: Editions Macula and Centre Pompidou, 2016. Text by Rollet, Patrice; Sargeant, Jack. 
 Petrus, Stephen and Cohen, Ronald. Folk City: New York and the American Folk Music Revival, New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. Foreword by Peter Yarrow. 
Glimcher, Mildred L.Happenings: New York, 1958-1963, New York: The Monacelli Press LLC. 2012

Selected filmography 
The High Lonesome Sound (1962)
Fifty Miles from Times Square (1970)
The End of an Old Song (1972). A DVD version is in print as part of Dark Holler: Old Love Songs and Ballads (2005-09-27). Washington: Smithsonian Folkways.
Q'eros: The Shape of Survival (1979)
Peruvian Weaving: a continuous warp (1980)
Sara and Maybelle (1981)
Gypsies Sing Long Ballads (1982)
Mountain Music of Peru (1984)
Dancing with the Incas (1990)
Carnival in Q'eros (1992)
Play on John: A Life in Music (2009) on Smithsonian Networks
Visions of Mary Frank (2014)

Selected discography (as producer) 
High Atmosphere: Ballads and Banjo Tunes from Virginia and North Carolina (1975)
There Is No Eye: Music for Photographs, Smithsonian Folkways SFW CD 40091 (2001), companion to the book
Back Roads to Cold Mountain (2004)

References

External links
 
Website of L. Parker Stephenson Photographs, New York, which represents Cohen's photographic work
 
 
Webcast of a Library of Congress presentation, "'The High Lonesome Sound Revisited': Documenting Traditional Culture in America" (2009)
American Standard Time presents John Cohen, a 2011 interview
"The Revivalist: How John Cohen Found Folk Music and (Accidentally) Inspired a Klezmer Renaissance"
"The Picture That Captures Why Jack Kerouac Will Last Forever" Geoff Dyer for UK's Spectator

The Down Hill Strugglers
 Oldtone Roots Music Festival Tribute Video by Fred Robbins
 New Lost City Ramblers at Davidson College Photos, May 1968 by Fred Robbins

Category:1932 births
Category:American folk singers
Category:American photographers
Category:Appalachian folk songs
Category:Jewish American artists
Category:Jewish American musicians
Category:Musicians from Queens, New York
Category:2019 deaths