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Lunsford, Bascom Lamar


Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1998 20:54:16 +0000
From: Ed Ricardo 
Organization: EDLIS Havana 
To: who@edlis.org
Subject: Lunsford, Bascom Lamar

Lunsford, Bascom Lamar

Bob Dylan refers to him in Tell Me Momma

Ol' Black Bascom don't break no mirrors.
and recorded his Mountain Dew (CO98939) twice on 18 February 1969 at Columbia Recording Studios, Nashville, Tennessee. Scott Wiseman was co-writer of that song. http://www.si.edu/folkways/sounds/40082.ra is a URL you could link to... http://www.si.edu/folkways/40082.htm His Dry Bones is track 10 of Disc 4 of Anthology Of American Folk Music Edited By Harry Smith. But much more memorable and revived in the 1960s was his I Wish I Was A Mole In The Ground, track 7 of Disc 5. Both well known to Bob Dylan.
Date: Sat, 14 Nov 1998 09:04:20 -0500 From: Mike (michael.j.girsch.1@nd.edu) To: karlerik@monet.no Subject: Bascom Lamar Lunsford Karl Erik, It might be important to add that Lunsford was not black or African-American. He was a country lawyer, traditional music collector (a la Mike Seeger), performer, and author (a la Child, Sharp, or even more, Harold Odum). He can be seen in the video "Times Ain't Nothin' Like They Used to Be" playing the fiddle and dancing about the yard. Dylan's reference aludes to the literal Bascom only, it seems, in a typically Dylanesque rearrange-their-faces sort of way. It might also have been inspired by the fact that Lunsford, like so many other collectors of traditional music, found members of the African-American community in the South a particularly fertile source of old tunes. Info can be found in Marcus, of course, also Robert Cantwell's essay, "Smith's Memory Theatre."

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