Roscoe Holcomb spent his life in coal mines, on construction sites, and on farms around Daisy, Kentucky, playing banjo, guitar, harmonica, and fiddle purely for release. This episode traces how the lined-out, unaccompanied singing of Old Regular Baptist churches collided with the Blind Lemon Jefferson records arriving by mail order, producing a piercing, unmetered vocal style that was equal parts mountain hymn and Delta blues.

In 1959 New York folklorist John Cohen found him, misspelled his surname on the paperwork, and coined the phrase high lonesome sound to describe his voice, a label the bluegrass industry later borrowed for an entirely different, slicker music. We follow the Folkways albums, the Zabriskie Point soundtrack alongside Pink Floyd and the Grateful Dead, the admiration of Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton, and the tragic irony that ...