“Roscoe Holcomb”

Oil on a 9”x12” cradled wood panel.

Coal miner and all-around hardlife laborer, Roscoe Holcomb (actually Halcomb, but that is another story), was described as having that “high lonesome sound.”  Bob Dylan, apparently many regard Dylan as a singer of note, described Holcomb's singing as possessing "an untamed sense of control."  Holcomb once stated, “there wasn’t hardly no way for a man to get work, so I asked God to give me something that I could do—that I could make a little money. . . . Twelve months from the time I started playing with this old fiddler I’d learned I guess about 400 tunes and could sing practically every one of them . . . I never did feel that I was a musician—never could make anything of it.”  Maybe he didn’t make much of it moneywise, but he had a huge influence on the 60’s folk revival.  Not bad for a “backporch musician” from Daisy, KY. 

$750