Diabetes: A Family Matter

The Appalachian Diet

Cracklin Cornbread

Mother Country explains what cracklins are and gives Country a lesson on cooking cracklin cornbread. This might be one of the unhealthiest dishes on earth.

Stubblefield Apple Butter

Stubblefield Apple Butter. A family tradition.

Appalachian Dancing

Best Bluegrass Clog Dancing (3 clips)

Video Clip 2
Video Clip 3

Way back in 1964, New York filmmaker, David Hoffman was headed down with his new 16mm hand help camera (weight 49 lbs!) to spend three weeks driving the backcountry around Madison County, North Carolina, in the center of Appalachia, with the 82 year old founder of the pioneer Asheville Mountain Music and Dance Festival, Bascom Lamar Lunsford. The resulting film, "Bluegrass Roots" lets you hear and experience the hard scrabbling, dirt road real people sounds that dominated the back country of the southern mountains 40 years ago. It presents a string of the most extraordinary singers, players and dancers the BlueGrass Mountains had to offer. Many later became famous. Some were never heard from again. Most of the songs are classics, including Lunsford's own tune, "Mountain Dew." This scene was filmed at Bascom's home with a local dance group came to dance in Bascom's living room. When this film aired on Public Television in 1965, TV Guide gave it a full-page positive review, because Americans had never seen a documentary on the roots of Bluegrass and Country music. Today, the dirt roads and the moonshine counties are largely modernized, and Bluegrass Roots, stands as a record of a uniquely talented group of people at a time just before the coming of television, changed them.

Rough Diamond Appalachian Clog Dancing Team

Excerpts from Rough Diamond's performance at the Hawkchurch village fete 2008. They are an Appalachian clog dancing team, part of Axminster Drama Group.

Cane Creek Cloggers

The Cane Creek Cloggers performing a dance called Jubille. The Cane Creek Cloggers (Website: http://canecreekcloggers.org) are a performing dance troupe from Orange County, North Carolina, that specializes in Appalachian clog dancing. The Cane Creek Cloggers perform at festivals, conventions, street fairs, and schools throughout North Carolina and the East.

Flat Footing

Appalachian clog / flat footing

June Carter: Flat Footing

June Carter Cash does a "Flat Foot" dance at the Wembley Festival, London 1981.

Flatfoot Dancing: Augusta (2008)

Flatfoot dancing on Halliehurst porch at D&E College in Elkin, West Virginia. Was a part of Old-time and Dancing Weeks in August 2008.

Appalachian Music

Ballad Songstress

Donna Ray Norton, 26, is from Madison County, N.C., a region known for its rich tradition of unaccompanied ballad singing.

Bluegrass

Larry Mathis, Bud Brewster working on half-century of pure pickin', harmonies in Pick 'n' Grin Bluegrass Band.

Bob Dylan & Earl Scruggs

From a 1968 TV show "Earl Scruggs and Friends"

Cherokee Flutist

John Grant Jr.: Singer, dancer storyteller is Cherokee ambassador.

Dulcimer & Ballad Singer in the Bluegrass Mountains

This scene present the Winters, a husband and wife team singing Blackjack Davey.

Earl Scruggs & Friends: Foggy Mountain Breakdown

Earl Scruggs And Friends Play Foggy Mountain Breakdown.

Earl Scruggs & Lester Flatt: Cripple Creek

Flatt And Scruggs Play Cripple Creek.

Fidler Mike Bryant

Old time fiddler Mike Bryant plays for love, not money.

Guitarist

Luke Brandon, 83, a guitarist's guitarist, ranges from sophisticated jazz chords to fingerpicking.

Joan Baez & Earl Scruggs

This classic 90 minute music documentary records Earl Scruggs and Bill Monroe and Earl and his son Randy and Doc Watson in informal scenes playing & singing together.

Museum of Appalachia Porch Picking (2008)

Porch Pickers performing 'John Hardy' at the Museum of Appalachia located in Norris, Tennessee. Left to right: Judy Carson – autoharp, Wade Darnell – banjo, Tony Thomas - guitar.

Songs of Appalachia: Wade Darnell plays Banjo

Traditional bluegrass is the root of everything else' for 16-year-old banjo player from Oak Ridge.

Shape Note Singing

All ages and walks of life are drawn to melody and rhythm of shape note singing at Cedar Bluff Baptist Church in Knoxville. This video shows a recent monthly meeting of the East Tennessee Convention, performing songs in shape note.

Old Time Fiddle

Old time breakdown: Dance All Night with a Bottle in Your Hand. Track from Chance McCoy's Debut CD.

Sprout Wings and Fly (1983)

"Sprout Wings and Fly" is a compassionate, life-affirming, altogether extraordinary document by Les Blank (www.lesblank.com) on old-timey Appalachian fiddler Tommy Jarrell. It's a fascinating film on the theme that art, music, dance, food and earthly pleasures help human beings live joyously in the face of certain death. It offers fine old-timey music, crazy jive, and a fascinating cast of backwoods characters."

Old Time Fiddler

Tommy Jarrell

High Lonesome

Opening Sequence
Sample Sequence
High Lonesome - The Story of Bluegrass Music, an excerpt from the feature documentary by Rachel Liebling. "High Lonesome: The Story of Bluegrass Music" is one of those enthralling documentaries that draw their heretofore-unexplored subject matter with supreme ease. You need not have the slightest interest in bluegrass music to find this film a fascinating bit of Americana, a patchwork of historical, moral and cultural influences that conspired in creating an unusually pure American folk tradition.

History of Appalachia

Appalachia: A History of Planned Poverty

"Tell It to the Banjo" is a backwoods bluegrass banjo hymn composed by Angel Jose Ruiz Perez, which provides the soundscape for this video about rural poverty in Appalachia. The chronic poverty of Appalachia is the outcome of economic domination and racism. In the 1930s, southern politicians prevented farm workers and domestic servants from qualifying for Social Security because they knew that the small Social Security check would support families and would change the labor market in the South. In the early days of coal mining, coal operators prevented workers from unionizing and demanding fair wages. In the face of bitter competition among the coal companies, operators controlled everything about workers' lives to keep their labor costs down. By preventing education and community participation the operators forced workers into submission. President Lyndon B. Johnsons War on Poverty instituted national legislation, but the dynamics of exploitation in Appalachia prevented distribution of its opportunities and benefits. To this day, impoverishment in Appalachia persists.

Stinking Creek: A Personal War on Poverty

See how two missionaries helped change life on Stinking Creek, a small Appalachian mountain community in eastern Kentucky. Over the past 50 years, a nurse midwife and a school teacher brought health care, education, birth control and loving aid to poor people there.

1940 Appalachian Mountain Life and Their Children

1940 short-film showing the life of the people living free around the Appalachian Mountain range. They were out of reach from the new-deal culture and its beliefs. They lived off the land and resources. They built strong family communities in the Appalachia region, and required a little more convincing to take a hand out, by the University of Kentucky.

Scots Irish of Appalachia

Many of the poor Scots-Irish immigrants to the US in the middle of the 19th century found work building the railroads and mining coal. The Scots-Irish continue to make up a significant portion of the labor force and gene pool in Appalachia to this day.

Kentucky Pioneers (1941)

Follows pioneer families along wilderness road to Kentucky. Shows their schools, recreation and everyday tasks, such as weaving, soap-making, cooking, carpentry and candle-making.

Johnny Cash Interview from “The Appalachians”

One of Johnny Cash's last interviews is featured in this excerpt from the award-winning documentary, "The Appalachians". Director/producers Mari-Lynn Evans and Phylis Geller are currently developing a feature-length documentary on mountaintop removal, in partnership with Sierra Club Productions.

American Hollow (this is a series of ten videos)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9wyOJ4di0g&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdRbvdFqYgo&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbNjZMOeRL0&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnnH2YbRrlE&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5f4_dIKHWo&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcPye4ffnWc&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfa_Hd_Gfq8&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nGcwlCcH28&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2BaAp-Nh7U&feature=related

Rory Kennedy's HBO documentary tells the tale of a close-knit Appalachian family that has changed little in the last 100 years.  This program was criticized by many because it seems to convey ideas of the stereotype of those in the region and neglects to tell the story of the diversity found in the Appalachian region.

Coal Mining

Harlan, Kentucky Coal Miners

Harlan county miners, never leave Harlan alive (Brad Paisley)

Take a Ride into a Mine

Web Exclusive: Bob Simon is reporting this Sunday on the coal industry and some of the hazards miners face. As part of the report, "60 Minutes" went deep into a mine. Come along for the ride!

A Tribute to Men in the Sago Mine Disaster

A video tribute to the 12 Sago miners that lost their Lives in the Sago Mine Disaster. It's easy to forget sometimes, this is just our way of remembering.

Kentucky Miners

Lives of Kentucky Coal Miners as told in photos and music. Hole in the Ground.

Coal Miners

A little video tribute to the coal miners.

West Virginia Coal Miner

West Virginia Coal Miners represent a unique heritage. They have endured tough times and tougher conditions to put food on the tables of so many West Virginians. Thank a miner today.

Forty-two Years

This song was written quite some years ago by my wife's Grandfather-- Nimrod Workman. He was a well known Appalachian Folk Singer/Song Writer, and had travelled extensively in the USA. In the later part of his singing career- he was booked and Sung Live- at the Worlds Fair (booked for 2 straight weeks) in Knoxville Tenn. He Was Instrumental in helping Lobby/and Sing at Rallies for the UMWA and Coal Miners {Black Lung} Rights/Bill. Having sung for Queen Elizabeth, and also on the Johnny Carson Show, and also had a part in the Movie called (Coal Miners Daughter)-based on the Life of Loretta Lynn.

Loretta Lynn: A Coal Miner’s Daughter

Performed and written by Loretta Lynn (born Loretta Webb). Loretta, the coal miner's daughter, is famously from "Butcher Holler", a section of Van Lear, a mining community near Paintsville, Johnson County, Kentucky.

Muddy Coal Mine

The song Muddy Coal Mine by Rocky Alvey featuring still photos provided by the Saline County Historical Society.

Daddy’s Dinner Bucket

Ralph Stanley singing.

Bloody Harlan

Images of Harlan County, Ky. during the coal miners struggle for a union.

Battle of Blair Mountain and Matewan

Coal Mine Wars video from HillbillyProud.com featuring Byzantine.

Legends

Hatfields and McCoys Documentary

A documentary on the famous Hatfield and McCoy feud.

The Hatfields and McCoys

The legendary family feud of American history, the Hatfields and McCoys, is explained by CBN News reporter and Hatfield descendant, Wendy Griffith.

Marijuana

Appalachian Outdoor Marijuana Grow Operations

The story behind Appalachia's number 1 cash crop.

Moonshine

Copperhead Road

 

Barney Barnwell

 

Popcorn Sutton

Popcorn Sutton makes moonshine in the documentary The Last One from Sucker Punch Pictures.

Bluegrass 180 Proof

 

Makin’ Likker with Popcorn Sutton I

 

Makin’ Likker with Popcorn Sutton II

 

Widow Moonshiner takes life to Avoid Jail

 

Man Arrested after Moonshine Still Discovered

Deputies say a local man has been operating a moonshine still.

Popcorn Sutton Memorial Service I

 

Popcorn Sutton Memorial Service II

Taken at Popcorn Sutton's memorial service. This video includes Ali Randolph from Exit 13 singing her song at the public service that she wrote about Popcorn.

Popcorn Sutton Memorial Service III

Taken at Popcorn Suttons memorial service. This video includes parts from the public memorial service. Clips of the horse drawn wagon hearse.

Popcorn’s Last Run

I wrote this song about Mr. Popcorn Sutton, well known mountain moonshiner from NC and TN. I had the honor to meet and get to know Popcorn. I personally thought he got a raw deal. Moonshining was the only living that he knew; he only made the very best. I feel now that a part of our heritage and culture has been taken away.

Mountain Talk

Appalachian English

Excerpt on Appalachian English from the documentary film Mountain Talk.

Exploring Appalachian English

This short film explores the regional characteristics of the Appalachian dialect of English. It was created for a Masters level course in the Applied Linguistics/TESL program at Iowa State University.

The Cherokee Language

Cherokee language segment from the documentary Voices of North Carolina.

Stereotypes of an Appalachian Dialect

This was produced for a class at Emory and Henry College.

Southern Stereotype Project

Project about stereotypes and the dialect of the Appalachian people. Song by Johnny Cash - Southern Accents.