User:Ellenppaste/sandbox/Bluegrass Country Soul

Bluegrass Country Soul new article content ... Bluegrass Country Soul is an American documentary film, produced and directed by Albert Ihde in 1972. The Washington Post’s review called it the first bluegrass movie. In 2019, Bluegrass Country Soul was added to the permanent collection of the Bluegrass Music Hall of Fame & Museum in Owensboro, KY.

Synopsis
Filmed at Carlton Haney’s “7th Annual Labor Day Weekend Bluegrass Music Festival” in Camp Springs, North Carolina in 1971, Bluegrass Country Soul captured main stage performances, and impromptu jam sessions throughout the camp grounds night and day. Carlton Haney, shown walking through Blue Grass Park, his 160-acre camp grounds, talks about creating the first multi-day bluegrass music festival in 1965, and how popular this American style of music has become internationally. The film concludes with a tribute to Earl Scruggs, who leads a stage full of banjo players in his song “Foggy Mountain Breakdown.”

Origin
Albert Ihde was originally contracted by a DC film sub-distributor to write and direct a comedy feature about a country music singer. While scouting locations along the Shenandoah River, Albert Ihde and Robert Leonard, his Associate Producer, met John Miller, Jr. Carlton Haney’s partner, who offered them passes to Carlton Haney’s 4th of July Bluegrass Music Festival in Berryville, VA. Although funding for the comedy feature fell through prior to the Berryville Festival, Albert Ihde, Robert Leonard and their families, and playwright and actor Michael Cristofer, attended the festival, where they met Carlton Haney and Fred Bartenstein, his associate.

After the festival, Michael Cristofer helped Albert Ihde to add a scene at a bluegrass music festival to his screenplay. A few weeks later, Albert Ihde instead secured financing for a low-budget documentary showing what it’s like to attend a bluegrass music festival. With less than two weeks until shooting began, Albert Ihde assembled the Washington Film Group, and put together a 15-member production team out of Washington, DC and New York City, with cinema verité filmmaker Robert Kaylor, Derby (1971), Carny (1981), Nobody’s Perfect (1990) as Director of Photography. Fred Bartenstein acted as bluegrass music advisor for the movie. Performers at the festival signed releases for the project with Carlton Haney’s collaboration and assistance.

Post-Production
Albert Ihde, Joel Jacobson, and Doug McCash assembled the film in Washington, DC, incorporating additional footage of Carlton Haney shot at the Rodel Sound Studio.

Original Theatrical Release
After searching for national distribution in Los Angeles and New York City, the partnership premiered the self-distributed 35 mm prints in the Washington, DC metro area. Distribution eventually expanded as far as Cambridge, Massachusetts in the north, Atlanta, Georgia in the south, and Ohio in the west.

Pirate VHS
An unauthorized, low quality VHS videocassette circulated at some bluegrass music festivals during the 1980s.

DVD release
In 2006, Time Life Music contracted with Albert Ihde to market Bluegrass Country Soul nationally on DVD. Albert Ihde worked with Robert Henninger and his company, Henninger Media Services, to digitize the film and add a commentary track by Fred Bartenstein, now a noted bluegrass historian, who had emceed the 1971 festival.