Ken Burns' COUNTRY MUSIC Documentary

well i for one am glad he died

nevermind my digression. i plan to watch this ASAP.

Has there ever been a Jimmie Rodgers biopic?

The 1982 film Honkytonk Man, directed by and starring Clint Eastwood, was loosely based on Rodgers' life.

i loved the Jimmie Rodgers & Carter family stories
i only knew the barest outline

XP I guess that was it. Here's the real deal in that short film excerpted in the first ep.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyHulWOZBpk

many xps - my dad got every new Wynton album that came out (and Wayman Tisdale).

I’m watching ep 1 now and it took 21 min but I’ve started crying. I can’t wait to show this early ep to my students!! I don’t really care about the evolution of country all that much but the roots make me so weepy.

GENE AUTRY'S SCI-FI MOVIE

Fuck the NRA (ulysses) at 1:27 16 Sep 19

Wynton is a really good live musician and bandleader and composer! His fans are very much of the "jazz as american classical" audience though and that puts a lot of folks off.

it's definitely not rewriting jazz history and marginalizing many important artists to advance his own agenda and lucrative career!

A marvelous episode. I learned a lot about Bob Wills.

The Ryman really is as magical a space as it's portrayed.

First great discovery for me so far is The Maddox Brothers & Rose. Somehow they'd escaped me until now, but now they're my new favorite thing.

this episode is my lowkey favorite era of country, a period i affectionately know and grew up with as “Looney Tunes country” - it’s all the songs bugs & daffy sang! <3

plus my Nan quite liked Gene Autry

xp to m@tt: sure and he catches a ton of justified shit for it too! But he's also helped underwrite a full generation of musicians and has paved the way for tons of funding for an otherwise severely neglected segment of the arts and all too often that baby gets thrown out with the bathwater.

man I love Roy Acuff

Everybody probably already knows this, but the station near Del Rio that the Carter Family came to work at with the goat gland guy was later where Wolfman Jack made his name, and later provided the inspiration for "Heard It On The X" by ZZ Top.

They left out the finest moment of the Light Crust Doughboys long career
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKKJfBgZOCo

Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhaaaaaaaa (Bob Wills holler)

Ralph Emery: STILL ALIVE.

HOWWWWWWWWW-DEEEEE.

Already been a couple of interviews with folks who died a few years ago, like Ralph Stanley and Merle (of course). Like the Scorsese Dylan neo-doc, it kind of tips its hand about how long these things have been in the works.

The word first got out they were working on this in 2015, and I assume they'd already been putting it together for a while before that.

love how much Merle has been in it already

I'm an episode ahead of the broadcast schedule, but GODDAMN Patsy Cline was made of magic and I just got a little teary.

meanwhile, on normal schedule: they could do a whole series just of Bill Monroe stories

they could do a whole episode just on Audrey Williams and another episode on Billie Jean Williams/Horton

anyway i loved this ep

whole series just of Bill Monroe stories

“Lookin like death eatin a cracker” is a phrase I will now keep with me always

"Hoss, you ain't jivin'."

got about an hour and a half into the first ep. tbh Burns is a hard sell for me cuz I *really* hated that Jazz one, and his general style is sort of stiff imo.

This is pretty good though, very exhaustive and detailed which is always great to see. And I admit I get a little teary when Dolly and Merle and various other folks show up (no idea who that young fiddler guy is or why they give him so much screentime).

Was watching this with my wife and I asked "when are they gonna get to the goat testicles?" and she was like "wtf are you talking about", and lol 5 minutes later: goat testicles

lol

Have we talked about how Season 2 of Cocaine and Rhinestones is apparently entirely George Jones? (C&R was, before this, the most thorough and entertaining deep dive into country I've heard.)

xpost Yeah, who is that fiddler? Most/many people I recognize, but not him.

btw fyi this is my favorite Maddox Bros and Rose song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgGZCTHKLUw

xps

oh, he's the Old Crow Medicine Show guy.

i got a little bored with Episode 1 but i think that was just the subject matter. obviously i am more of a Bill Monroe / Ralph Stanley / Maddox Brothers / Hank guy, cuz i loved last night's episode.

i could listen to stories of old-time bluegrass scene pissing matches all night.

Yeah, who is that fiddler? Most/many people I recognize, but not him.

if I didn't know better I'd say he was a Bruce McCulloch character

I don't do podcasts so haven't heard the Cocaine and Rhinestones stuff but my substitute has been Mike Judge's "Tales from the Tourbus" (season 1 is all country) which appears to cover a lot of the same territory/stories

xp

and George Jones got two episodes. They are fucking hilarious of course. Esp when he starts doing his Donald Duck shit.

people can dunk on Ken Burns all they want but the visual element of his docs is extremely valuable, esp for educational purposes. the clips and photos and imagery really help a viewer to transport to another time and place. the C&R podcast is great but it's audio-only, which can be alienating for people who a) aren't particularly auditory b) don't speak English. it's great if that is what you're looking for/if you already know the background & basics of country music, but for a beginner, KB docs are quite good! (caveat: the jazz one has a number of well-documented problems and i haven't watched the entire country one yet obvs)

I like that the doc is subtitled AND has a Spanish language version on the app

and yeah who tf is that verbose fiddler!?

I posted already, it's the guy from Old Crow Medicine Show.

xpost Listen to the epic on The Judds, it's fascinating.

Have we talked about how Season 2 of Cocaine and Rhinestones is apparently entirely George Jones? (C&R was, before this, the most thorough and entertaining deep dive into country I've heard.)

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, September 18, 2019 11:25 AM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I need to listen to that. I've only heard the "Okie From Muskogee" episode, but damn, that was just one revelation after another. Hell, that one episode was better-researched than most 33 1/3rd books.

sorry
another question: why does "the guy from old crow medicine show" get such a primo spot?

Because popular? Due to that Wagon Wheel song? Also: young, photogenic?

the clips and photos and imagery really help a viewer to transport to another time and place

yeah can't deny this, the visual archival aspect is fantastic

ugh that fuckin Wagon Wheel song

I mean in one sense it's funny/somehow appropriate that their big hit is a reworking of a Dylan outtake but that's more a testament to Dylan than them imo

Wagon Wheel is why my guitar teacher refuses to sit in with our farmer's market bluegrass band.

Wonder how much that song made Dylan?

obviously the real irony is that Dylan was probably just reworking some other half-remembered folk song himself, but he was smart enough to aggressively copyright every goddamn thing he did

A la AP Carter!

Shakey, Cocaine & Rhinestones is extremely your shit. You should make an exception.

I just don't have time to listen like that, I don't have a commute and if I'm home I'm listening to music + doing other shit at the same time

Damnit Ken, where was the discussion of this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEPfxI0BO98

Minnie Pearl Doc Coming Soon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpBbHN1_FNg

Episode #9: TRY THAT IN A SMALL TOWN