My God Aren't These 1960s Bluegrass Clog Dancers Magnificent To See

In 1965 I was making my first documentary for television. I once titled it Music Makers of the Blue Ridge but these days I title it Bluegrass Roots. I was 23 years old and I was headed to the mountains of North Carolina, to Asheville, to meet and film 82 year old Bascom Lamar Lunsford. I had written him a letter asking if I could accompany him as he sought talent for his great music and clog dance festival - the Asheville Mountain Music Festival which had been going on since 1929! I spent weeks shooting this film with Bascom and his wife Freda, filming with a 16 mm sound camera and a friend carrying a Nagra audio recorder. Bascom told me that he was going to invite a clog dance group to his house in South Turkey Creek about 12 miles out of Asheville for a dance demonstration. He said he would roll up the living room rug so we could hear their feet as they clogged on the wooden floor. And so this scene happened and I absolutely loved filming it. Although my camera rig was 49 pounds with a