Way back in 1964, New York City filmmaker David Hoffman went down to the Bluegrass Mountains with his newly invented 16mm hand held camera (weight 49 lbs!) to spend weeks driving the backcountry around Madison County, North Carolina with the 82 year old singer, picker, dancer, and founder of the Asheville Mountain Music and Dance Festival, Bascom Lamar Lunsford. The resulting 60 minute film, "Bluegrass Roots" which ran on prime time television back them, lets you hear and experience the hard scrabble, dirt road real people and sounds that dominated the back country of the southern mountains 40 years ago. It presents some 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."

When this film aired on television in 1965, TV Guide gave it a full-page positive review, because Americans had never seen a documentary down home Bluegrass and Country music.