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.”

Performances

Artist(s)	Song
Doug McCash	Sally Goodin
The Lilly Brothers, Tex Logan and Don Stover	Black Mountain Rag
Ralph Stanley & The Clinch Mountain Boys	Man of Constant Sorrow
J.D. Crowe & The Kentucky Mountain Boys	Train 45
Jimmy Martin & The Sunny Mountain Boys	Freeborn Man
The Bull Mountain Boys	White House Blues
Del McCoury & The Dixie Pals	White House Blues
The Country Gentlemen	Matterhorn
The Country Gentlemen	Fox on the Run
The New Deal String Band	Roanoke
The New Deal String Band	Love Potion Number 9
First Group in the Field at Night	Big Mon
The Osborne Brothers	Rocky Top
The Osborne Brothers	Ruby, Are You Mad?
The Bluegrass 45	Fuji Mountain Breakdown
The Bluegrass 45	Feudin' Banjos
Mac Wiseman with Blackwell & Collins	Four Walls Around Me
Fiddle Ensemble	Sally Goodin
Second Group in the Field at Night	Heaven's Light is Shining
Roy Acuff & The Smoky Mountain Boys	Wabash Cannonball
The Osborne Brothers	Listening to the Rain
The Bluegrass Alliance	One Tin Soldier
The Lilly Brothers, Tex Logan and Don Stover	Riding the New River Train
Chubby Wise	Orange Blossom Special
Earl Scruggs & The Earl Scruggs Revue	Country Comfort
Earl Scruggs & Festival Banjo Players	Foggy Mountain Breakdown
Earl Scruggs & Festival Banjo Players	Dear Old Dixie

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.

External links

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