User:20Amayer/John Cohen (musician)

Photography/ Film History
John Cohen Had been taken photos and participating in photography for many years. Cohen also enjoyed filmmaking. He created a film called The High Lonesome Sound. This documentary shows the many emotions of life among the poor in the times the Cohen lived. It illustrates how music and religion helped people in the Appalachian region maintain hope and traditions during hard times.

In 1959 He worked as an assistant photographer to Robert Frank and photographed the production of his film Pull My Daisy Once out there in the world John got in contact with Life Magazine and paid him for early publication rights of his "beat generation" photos. In New York, John was at the center of wildly diverse worlds of art and music. He photographed poets Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso; painters Franz Kline and Red Grooms; and a young Bob Dylan, who had just arrived in the city.

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

Early life
Throughout most of his life John grew up in the eastern parts of Long Island where he learned to play the guitar and banjo. He later attended Yale University where he studied painting. He later on met one of his good friends Tom Paley. They began organizing small concerts for people on their universities campus. Later on him and Tom both moved to New York City and formed the New Lost City Ramblers. This newly formed band introduces several generations of musicians and audiences to the music styles of rural string bands in the 1920's and '30s.

When living in New York John was in the heart of a diverse world of art and music forms. He began taking photos of many painters and artists around the area and this brought in his love for photography.

Music career
Through the 1960s, John continued to make albums for Folkways. The artists included ballad singer Dillard Chandler, “Singing Miner” George Davis, and Roscoe Holcomb. Most of John’s recordings of Roscoe can be heard on two Smithsonian Folkways CDs, The High Lonesome Sound and An Untamed Sense of Control. John’s 1953 recordings of Reverend Gary Davis were released by Smithsonian Folkways on the 2003 CD If I had My Way. In 1998, Cohen released his first solo album, Stories the Crow Told Me. Cohen was associate music producer on the movie Cold Mountain (2003), working with T Bone Burnett.