Cuzin' Isaac isn't real. He's a legend, a memory from some age-old collective consciousness — the same place that makes bluegrass music sound familiar and timeless to many people.
      Cuzin' Isaac is a character played by Donald C. Malcolm of Langdon. It's one side of a man who has almost single-handedly brought bluegrass to New England, the same man who has worked as a teacher, bus driver and salesman, and who has been town moderator and served in just about every aspect of town government in Langdon. Malcolm, 76, was born in Medford, Mass. Isaac Page was born in the 1800s.  Page became the character for his job at the Lowell (Mass.) National Historic Park, where he worked from 1978 to 1980.  Malcolm turned Isaac Page into his radio persona, Cuzin' Isaac, in 1983, two years after he started disc-jockeying at WJUL in Lowell, while he was teaching English composition there.
      Malcolm had always wanted to be a performer, and has always loved music, though he learned quickly he didn't have the patience to master an instrument.  "I guess it goes way back from high school. I always wanted to be an actor," he said. "Radio gave me the opportunity to be an actor."  It also opened the door for him to become a beloved and internationally recognized pioneer in the promotion of bluegrass, the supercharged acoustic music invented by Bill Monroe that has grown immensely since the release of the Coen brothers film "0 Brother, Where Art Thou?" in 2000.
      When Cuzin' Isaac was "born" in 1983, that music was still off the radar north of the Mason-Dixon Line. Within five years, Cuzin' Isaac would open thousands of people's ears to the high, lonesome sound.

A city boy falls in love with country music

      Malcolm went to Boston University after Medford High School. It was the early 1950s and a country-music revolution was starting in Boston, he recalls.  His brother turned him on to blues and country, and in 1953 he made a trip to Nashville, Tenn., the home of country music, to search out the genuine article.  "While I was there I started hearing rumors of this music that was just started and it was called hillbilly music," he said. "I'm always experimenting with new music."  That music would soon become bluegrass — named for Monroe's backing band, the Blue Grass Boys.
      A few years later, Malcolm would see the legendary Flatt and Scruggs — two Blue Grass Boys who left Monroe to form their own group — in concert in Nashua.  The Nashville trip "cemented my interest" in the music, he said.  But even before that, Malcolm was interested radio. As a public-relations major at Boston University, he took a class in radio announcing.  "The professor said, 'I would not recommend you do anything with radio at all,'" Malcolm laughed as he reminisced." He said, 'You are a waste of time.'"
      After graduating from college, Malcolm said he "hacked around, trying to do several different jobs," including security guard and milk man. A job as a paper salesman brought him to New Hampshire.  His coverage area included the Monadnock Region, so he took an apartment in Marlborough. Upstairs lived a young, single art teacher named Ruth, originally from Langdon. The two soon began dating and married in 1956. By then, Malcolm decided he wasn't cut out to be a salesman, so he looked into teaching. He and his wife got jobs teaching in Franklin, and relocated there, but Ruth discovered she was pregnant, and couldn't take the Franklin job.  Their daughter, Leslie, was born the following year. The Malcolms also have a son, Bradley, and five grandchildren.  Malcolm remembers hating his job in Franklin.  "The whole year was a dreadful year," he said. But while there, he became interested in driver education, and landed a job in Pulaski, N.Y., near Syracuse.
      There, he got one of his many nicknames — "Crash."  "It stuck with me all through my career," he said. "Some of (his co-workers) didn't even know my name. I was 'Crash.'"  Malcolm said he thinks the nickname came from a textbook he used for the class, not for his teaching abilities.  "We had an encounter with a mailbox," he said. "But nothing serious."  Teaching children to drive became a passion.  "I loved it," he said. "The only thing wrong was the snow."
      Ruth missed her family, so the family soon moved back to New England. Malcolm got a job as a driver-education teacher in Lexington, Mass., where he stayed until retiring in 1980. There, students called him "Uncle Don."
      After teaching English briefly in Lowell, Mass., Malcolm and his family moved to a house on Ruth's parents' land in Langdon and he began driving a bus for the Fall Mountain Regional School District. He later became a driver-education teacher at Keene High School.  "The only thing I really stuck with was drivers ed," he said. "I'd seen so many kids making mistakes and getting killed."

A consuming hobby, a breakthrough role

      In 1983, after dabbling at the University of Lowell radio station, Malcolm got a job at WTIJ in Walpole.  That's where Cuzin' Isaac made his radio debut, playing the classic country and bluegrass that Malcolm had always loved.  "I began getting a bunch of calls from listeners  saying, 'You're playing great music, but we don't know where to go to hear it,'" he said.  So, Malcolm and a friend from Connecticut started a newsletter to tell people about bluegrass happenings in the Northeast. Cuzin Isaac's Bluegrass Gazette, launched in May 1983, was an instant success, Malcolm said.  Bluegrass "was a relatively new thing in New England," he said. "That's why the gazette got so popular, and that's why I got so popular, because I was the only one who knew about these festivals."  Soon, he was traveling to bluegrass festivals around the Northeast, hawking his gazette, introducing acts, even filling in as a preacher for Sunday worship at some festivals.
      Through the years, the gazette grew and Cuzin' Isaac developed a new publication — Cuzin' Isaac's Bluegrass Festival Guide. That magazine, published yearly, attempted to list all the bluegrass festivals from Ohio east to the Atlantic Ocean, and from Maine to Maryland. It was also a huge success, Malcolm said.  The gazette "served its purpose, but we needed something more inclusive, and the guide was the answer," he said. "There were no other sources (for festival information) when the guide started.  This thing just took off and within a year we had 1,200 to 1,400 subscriptions."
      In 1986, Cuzin Isaac's work put him into the first class to receive a distinguished achievement award from the International Bluegrass Music Association. Four others won awards that year. Among them: Bill Monroe.  The association "called me down" to an awards ceremony in Kentucky, he said. "I couldn't believe what they were telling me."
      Cuzin' Isaac had rubbed elbows with Monroe before, at a festival in Maine.  "I was so excited, one year Bill Monroe came to Brunswick," Malcolm said. He was invited onto Monroe's tour bus, and "right there in the front table was a (Cuzin' Isaac's) festival guide."  Turned out the festival guide opened all kinds of doors for Cuzin' Isaac. Although he lost money on the business, he was able to make it back by selling CDs at festivals, and became a VIP of the bluegrass festival circuit. Soon, he was being asked to serve as master of ceremonies at festivals throughout the Northeast.  "All the promoters were really helpful and let me do whatever I wanted," he said. "My wife says, 'Be careful you don't get a swelled head.'"  Malcolm no longer attends 10 to 14 festivals per summer the way he used to and has handed control of the festival guide to Candi Sawyer — "one of the stalwarts of bluegrass music" — who also runs a bluegrass festival in Weston, Vt. That was the only festival Cuzin' Isaac attended this year.  He said his work as a sound man for Beth-El Bible Church in Surry and a bus-driving job keep him close to home.

Other interests and looking forward.

      When not playing Cuzin' Isaac, Malcolm has been an important part of his adopted home of Langdon.  He's been chairman of the board of selectmen, a member of the planning and zoning boards; town moderator and transfer-station manager.  He thinks these commitments have helped him become accepted in the small town, which has a population of less than 600. "I'm a flatlander ... but I've been accepted" because of that involvement, he said.  But Malcolm says living in Langdon hasn't been all roses. He lost his first re-election bid as selectman and resigned as transfer-station manager in a disagreement with selectmen.  "Controversy is sometimes, hard to overcome," he said.
      Through the years, Cuzin' Isaac has appeared on radio stations stretching from Hanover to Worcester, Mass., but WKNE and WKBK in Keene have been his home base for the past decade,  That partnership has been strained since the local stations were bought by Saga Communications. He says the company hasn't been willing to risk giving him a bluegrass show, and he's been reduced to doing a half-hour gospel show on Sunday to fill the company's religious programming quota.  Despite the success of "0 Brother, Where Art Thou?" and the fact that the average bluegrass listener keeps getting younger, Malcolm said radio stations are afraid to gamble on the music.  "It's different down South. It's different out West. The whole concept of radio and what it can do is different," he said. In New England, "you just can't break in."
      Malcolm isn't paid for his shows, so money's not an issue. He just wants to play what he likes. Malcolm hopes to get a four-hour slot on WKNH, the Keene State College radio station, to do a mix of old-time country, bluegrass, old comedy, whatever tickles his fancy.  He owns thousands of records, and "it seems to me to be a shame to let (the collection) sit on a shelf in my den when I could be playing it on the radio."

Donald C. Malcolm chats with a reporter in the parking lot of Monadnock Radio Group in Keene.  Malcolm, who has almost singlehandedly brough bluegrass to New England, has worked as a teacher, bus driver, salesman, town moderator, and has served in just about every aspect of town government in Langdon.

Photos:  Steve Hooper / Sentinel Staff