A documentary film by Anne Lewis about the National Heritage Award banjo player, Morgan Sexton is featured on Folkstreams along with transcript and filmmaker notes.
Eastern Kentucky’s Morgan Sexton cut his first banjo out of the bottom of a lard bucket, and some seventy years later won the National Endowment for the Arts’ National Heritage Award for his “amazingly pure and unaffected singing and playing style.” In this program, the eighty-year-old Sexton shares his life and music. He recounts how a series of family tragedies forced him to go to work while still a boy and tells of his days gathering crops, logging timber, cutting railroad ties, and of his later work in the coal mines.
Morgan and his nephew Lee Sexton talk about learning music from their elders and each other, and the old days when, after a hard day’s work, they would “roll up the rug” to play music and dance with the neighbors. Intercut with these stories are Morgan’s renditions of his favorite songs, including “Little Birdie,” “Wagner’s Lad,” “Bonnie Blue Eyes,” “London City Where I Did Dwell,” and “Beautiful Doll.”
You can see the stream the full 28 minutes on Folkstreams.
For licensing, film rights and permissions, contact Anne Lewis, the distributor Appalshop, Inc., or Folkstreams.
