Ken Burns' COUNTRY MUSIC Documentary

Haven't seen any of this, but i've not read any of the gnashing of teeth that accompanied Jazz. Is that just the nature of the respective genre audiences?

Speaking of this NGDB, I must admit I finally had to google who the (slightly) countrified Paul Kantner looking talking head was.

listening to something for content purposes while i try to fall asleep is one of the worst ideas out there for falling asleep! if i am trying to fall asleep, i am 100% not trying to pay attention to something i am trying to learn about.

i was living in nc and in my mid 20s when i started trying to teach myself about country music. the carter family was one of the first places i started and last night i got to recommend them to a student! i am enjoying this country music experience so far, and also enjoying seeing others discuss what they learned/enjoyed about it.

Is that just the nature of the respective genre audiences?
some people will always look for and find something to critique/they are usually vocal /shrug

also i forgot that i had a weird crush on vince gill at one point!

I don't think so, but to me the biggest objection with the Jazz one was its deliberate omission of huge swathes of the genre. I'm not sure if that happens in Country yet or even what would be the likeliest candidate for excision, it's a pretty cohesive genre and there aren't a ton of "controversial" offshoots (recent Lil Nas X brouhaha is something of an anomaly)

xps

xpost It's a good question. One off the cuff theory is that both country and jazz stress the importance of tradition as much as breaking with tradition, but the jazz doc perhaps leaned too heavy on tradition and too far away from the tradition of breaking with tradition, which downgraded (or denigrated?) the import of some of the more radical figures in jazz. Maybe?

It also helps that country is just easier to talk about. There are lyrics, there are simpler melodies, it's a little easier to illustrate a->b->c etc.

Vince Gill might be one of my favorite musicians whose music I never listen to.

like, the problem with Jazz was it's dismissal of vibrant, key figures with huge discographies that had a large impact on its overall direction. idk who would be analogous figures in Country. I mean, Jimmy Martin was bitter to his dying day about not being let into the Grand Ol' Opry but his importance to bluegrass is not controversial.

xp

Haven't seen any of this, but i've not read any of the gnashing of teeth that accompanied Jazz. Is that just the nature of the respective genre audiences?

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I think it's at least in part due to Burns having learned a few lessons from Jazz. iirc, he went into Jazz with little-to-no knowledge of the music (by his own admission), and sought out Stanley Crouch and Wynton Marsalis for guidance. He either didn't know or didn't care that they had a very narrow and conservative (in every sense) definition of the music, and the series reflected that (though Crouch and Marsalis are undoubtedly deeply knowledgeable about what they're knowledgeable about; it's when they expound upon what they're not knowledgeable about that problems arise).

Presumably, he cast a wider consultative net for this series, and maybe did more thorough research and fact-checking (both things being a lot easier in 2015-2018 than they were in 1997-1999).

the jazz doc perhaps leaned too heavy on tradition and too far away from the tradition of breaking with tradition, which downgraded (or denigrated?) the import of some of the more radical figures in jazz. Maybe?

not maybe, for sure. iirc wynton requires jazz to swing, so ken burns did too and reduced the free side of jazz to an afterthought (the final episode is terrible), which is clearly out of line with contemporary opinion & taste & too reliant on orthodox notions of jazz.

or what tarfumes said :)

idk who would be analogous figures in Country.

Who is the Cecil Taylor of country & western?

similarly, the Baseball series was steady when Burns had massive figures like Ruth and Robinson to focus on. He rushed through three decades in the last episode.

I've never seen the jazz doc, I only know the criticism.

Is there a good thread to talk about Jazz? I'm watching it as I make my mixes and was kind of annoyed about how it started with ROOTS -> YOUNG LIFE OF LOUIS ARMSTRONG (erm odjb, bit embarrassing, let's move on) -> HOW ABOUT MORE LOUIS ARMSTRONG? You get the impression that somehow nobody made any jazz records between 1917 and 1925.

that's Crouch and Marsalis for ya

listening to something for content purposes while i try to fall asleep is one of the worst ideas out there for falling asleep! if i am trying to fall asleep, i am 100% not trying to pay attention to something i am trying to learn about.

Totally understand this point, but idk I can't just zone out and try to fall asleep. Trying to concentrate on something when I'm beginning to feel sleepy pushes me into hypnogagia sooner.

Is there a good thread to talk about Jazz?

This one maybe?

Ken Burns Says "Jazz" 3 Billion Times (actually 2.97 bn) in Under 3.5 Minutes (Single of the year?)

Burns is def into having protagonists

Podcasts I listen to at sleep time are ones which have the right balance of interesting topic and lack of a need to pay attention. Right now the British History Podcast works. Takes me a week to get through each 30-minute episode.

xxp cheers monty

Depending on his team of consultants, I wonder how much time will be devoted to SoCal country rock a la Parsons/Eagles/etc. I'm not sure I want much of it tbh when time would be better spent covering Billy Sherrill's production work with Columbia/Epic in the early 70s and later 70s crossover stuff like Eddie Rabbitt, et al. If those things never get documented it would be a shame.

The Byrds are explicitly mentioned in the synopsis for the late-60s ep (#6).

Just realized that ep 4 (which airs tonight, but I already watched it) covered Elvis and Cash at Sun did not mention Charlie Rich even ONCE.

I'm not sure I want much of it tbh when time would be better spent covering Billy Sherrill's production work with Columbia/Epic in the early 70s and later 70s crossover stuff like Eddie Rabbitt, et al.

That's what I don't understand about these series; not enough time to cover all the important stuff? Make a longer series!

XP Rich might come up later, particularly if they get into Sherrill. He was a journeyman for years, which could get summed up in a segment in a later ep right before discussing "Behind Closed Doors" etc.

I really hope they get into Sherrill. Very interesting and weird man.

I have no doubt C&R will get into him in S2 if it really does revolve around George Jones, so if we don't get it here we'll get it there.

My Dad wasnt a big drinker but when I was little sometimes at Christmas him & his best friend would get drunk & put Johnny Cash’s “A Boy Named Sue” on the record player at full volume & sing to it at the top of their voices. He loved all the big names from the 50’s and 60’s but didnt own a ton of records though. But I absorbed the songs he got the biggest kick out of. Then as a teen I somehow decided to reject country music completely for coolness reasons, idk :( Finally in my first year of Uni I heard the Beasts of Bourbon do a cover of Hank Williams’ Ramblin Man, and their orginal, a random b-side “The day Marty Robbins Died” and the door unlocked again. I guess hearing bands I loved profess their love for country music suddenly made it ok to openly enjoy and explore country from then on.

I’ve been gently trying to convert Mr Veg into a fan - he was VERY reluctant at first & came around slowly but interestingly it was the Drive By Truckers that made him become more receptive and now he’s way more onboard. He’s watched all the Ken Burns episodes so far and has been enjoying it, which has been really great. It’s been fun being able to watch it together - if it was 10 or 15 years ago I dont think he would have.

Drive By Truckers rule, is why

:D

otfm

Marty Stuart and his Barry Manilow hair and banjo is my favorite commentator.

he was born with that haircut, he gon die with that haircut

Gonna get a Honky Tonk haircut...Hey now hey now now

marty’s hair is fkn majestic

that aint a hairdo
that’s a mane

yep

we watched the live concert special from earlier this year - Marty busting out Orange Blossom Special on mandolin was fantastic, and Dwight Yoakum doing Mamas Hungry Eyes killed me.
Dunno about Larry Gatlin’s Sunday Mornin Coming Down though. i love the ~idea~ of it, but in execution is just sounded weird.

I love how Tom T. Hall sounds like an old time movie wiseguy.

Wow, did not know that ROGER MILLER discovered the Patsy Cline crash site.

Back to Charlie Rich for a sec, I sincerely hope this gets covered

https://classiccountrymusic.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/john-rich-735x413.jpg

Loved that willie had originally written the song “crazy” as “stupid” - it’s fun to sing it that way in retrospect.

yeah that cracked me up

...singer-songwriter Rosanne Cash (daughter of Johnny) and mandolin virtuoso Marty Stuart (former child prodigy) could moonlight as music historians. But they’re all, by definition, industry insiders. There are barely any scholars or critics offering more distanced analysis, the way they might in a Burns war doc. The 85-year-old music historian Bill C. Malone is a welcome presence, and it helps to have the black banjo player Rhiannon Giddens, who has worked to reclaim that instrument’s African American roots, but they ought to have more varied company

from Carl Wilson's article on the show in Slate

He also says:

Burns pays appropriate homage to the pivotal role of Ray Charles’ 1962 cover album of Nashville hits, Modern Sounds in Country & Western Music, while omitting that it was mostly barred from country radio.

i believe (i'm hedging here because it was in the 1980's and i was very young... could conceivably have been another daughter?) roseanne cash lived down the street from me when i grew up and she gave out full-sized candy bars for halloween. nice lady.

She would've been married to Rodney Crowell then.

ooh pitchfork takedown

He's right, but we're not the doc's intended audience: it's the usual PBS libs who love Johnny Cash because he's not cornpone. And even then the series has (thus far) avoided it. To avoid the Great Man Theory, maybe Burns should've concentrated on sounds, trends, myths, and iconography: bluegrass, Grand Ole Opry, yodeling, late '60s TV shows. It IS true that the documentary turns country into a sepia-tinged genre deserving respect instead of saying, "Uh, no, it's often tacky and racist, yet also absorbed gospel and the blues and sequins and awesome." Maybe Burns worries that his viewers can't handle complexity.

yeah the most astute criticism (and I'm only two episodes in) seems to be the "there are no villains, only heroes" line. Cuz it would be possible to walk away from this and think everyone in the country industry was an open-minded, progressive icon and that is uh definitely not true.

the racism seems to happen outside the frames and boundaries of the story - the overall racism of the country is acknowledged, but it's treated as happenstance that the first performer at the Grand Ol Opry was black also turned out to be the last one for like 50 years.

It's a tightrope, obv, because lingering on the racism will confirm the worst suspicions of skeptics who loathe the genre anyway, which re-asks the question whom the doc is for.

I will say this, the doc has kinda made me want to hunt down and listen to every single Merle Haggard album (why because I am crazy)