Definitely worth the time commitment. I'm a little worried that it may slow down at the end, I suspect stories about George Strait and Garth Brooks will be substantially less interesting than those about Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, and Johnny Cash.

Well I'm happy to find out.

Even when covering people I've read about for years, they bring in so much new material and personal perspective. I haven't been the biggest fan of all of Burns' more recent docs, but I've thoroughly enjoyed all of this one so far and plan to rewatch when it's all done.

The legacy of those old picnic concerts where the artists mingle with the fans lives on in Southern Gospel music. My dad has sung quartet music for a quarter century and gotten to know a lot of the big touring acts. Except in very rare cases, they are completely down to Earth and more than willing to do what the country artists did back then.

Social Media Influencer said:

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I wonder when Burns started doing interviews for this. Haggard died in 2016. The Jimmy Key guy that talks about Hank Sr. died in 2014 - https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/country-music/e-jimmy-key-biography

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My wife works for KLRU in Austin. We got invited to a special event at ACL-Live where they had a panel - Ray Benson, Bill Malone (they interview him a lot, wrote a book about Country music) and one of Burns' head writers. They showed an hour's worth of clips. Anyway, the head writer guy said - and I may not be getting this exactly correct - that all the interviews are at least 10 years old ( I think he said ten). I can't remember his explanation - but they intentionally wanted significant time to pass between the interviews and the release of the documentary. Because I was thinking the same thing especially about Haggard.

Amazing to me how so many of these country music icons came from extreme poverty. Coal miners' kids, share croppers' kids, all just trying to survive and country music was their way out.

Aggies76 said:

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Amazing to me how so many of these country music icons came from extreme poverty. Coal miners' kids, share croppers' kids, all just trying to survive and country music was their way out.

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Dolly Parton and Buck Owens. Wow.

I loved hearing about the recording studio set up in Bristol TN to reach some more interesting musical styles. Just 26 miles away A.P. Carter took his wife and her sister into town and kicked off one wave of country music- music from the appalachian mountains built around faith and family. Then 3 days later Jimmie Rogers strolled into the same studio and recorded a couple of songs which touched off the honky tonk crooner era (Gene Autry, Bob Wills, Hank WIlliams, etc.)

Aggies76 said:

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Amazing to me how so many of these country music icons came from extreme poverty. Coal miners' kids, share croppers' kids, all just trying to survive and country music was their way out.

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This was a fascinating part of the early episodes of his Baseball series too. A lot of those guys would've been in the coal mines if not for baseball

My God, it just keeps getting better. #5. Incredible.

I was in high school and at A&M during this period. I remember the Johnny Cash show very well. I don't remember the Nitty Gritty album at all.

Charlie Pride and Marty Stuart have been absolutely outstanding

Marty Stuart is my hero

All of the interviewees have. I am so impressed at how several have choked up when talking about a song or an artist...Dwight Yoakum tonight, for instance. That happens to me too, and I'm glad to see people sharing that emotion.

Aggies76 said:

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Amazing to me how so many of these country music icons came from extreme poverty. Coal miners' kids, share croppers' kids, all just trying to survive and country music was their way out.

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Takes a lot of balls to leave everything behind and try and make it somewhere like Nashville. But I suspect the prospect of a life of abject poverty in a coal mine might be just the motivation you need.

Read an article that said Marty sent Ken a fan letter years ago after Ken answered a question on a late night talk show asking what his next subject would be and he mentioned maybe country music.

Marty told him everything he owned (has bought up tons of memorabilia) and everyone he knows (everyone) would be available to them should Ken choose that subject. One of Ken's producers contacted him and invited him up to his home and that was that.

Marty Stuart is the quintessential Renaissance Man of country music and basically this Era's 'host' who opens the door for people to come peak in.

I'm on ep 6 right now and this has been just as rewarding as Ken Burns: Baseball. So well done.

There's a case to be made that Kristofferson is the best songwriter our state has produced

I'm definitely getting a "Baseball" vibe. Marty Stuart's fond recollections remind me of Buck O'Neil's storytelling.

Episode 7 (Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way?) is pretty incredible!!!

And the next episode looks like it is going to hit on the outlaw era with Waylon & Willie. Really looking forward to that bit. That whole movement is right down my musical wheelhouse.

I finished binge-watching the series last night. I thought it was fantastic. I noted that his "history" of country music essentially stopped in the mid 1990s, which is, coincidentally, the same time I stopped listening to country.

In my old age I am returning to the roots music. Since I live up in the mountains of West Virginia, I am surrounded by Appalachian hill music and I have developed a deep love for it. Every Saturday night we have bluegrass bands under the stars on a big open hillside a half mile from our cabin.

The old Carter Family, Bill Monroe, Flatt & Scruggs are staples.

This band, the Hillbilly Gypsies, is probably my favorite. There's an awful lot of great country music being made... you just don't hear it on the airwaves.

I found it interesting when they discussed the transition to the "Nashville sound" and it's correlation to how country music has evolved to today's sound, which I can't listen to. I remember Buck Owens and Roy Clark from HeeHaw but never understood the depth of their talent. Buck Owens molding his sound around the AM radio was genius.

When I watched Hee Haw as a kid, I wasn't able to appreciate that I was seeing one of the baddest cats on the planet play every week. Roy Clark was the man.

Aggies76 said:

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Amazing to me how so many of these country music icons came from extreme poverty. Coal miners' kids, share croppers' kids, all just trying to survive and country music was their way out.

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Wonder what the case is with today's Country stars ? Same or naw?

Aust Ag said:

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Aggies76 said:

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Amazing to me how so many of these country music icons came from extreme poverty. Coal miners' kids, share croppers' kids, all just trying to survive and country music was their way out.

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Wonder what the case is with today's Country stars ? Same or naw?

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I'm guessing "naw" for the most part.

No way I could binge watch this. I keep rewinding and pausing to look up different people and songs on the computer.

This is one I'll go back and re-watch at some point. Did that with The Civil War. Vietnam is on my list to re-watch as well.

Ken Burns is the best. If he did an 8-part doc on the history of the toaster I'd watch it.

Aust Ag said:

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Aggies76 said:

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Amazing to me how so many of these country music icons came from extreme poverty. Coal miners' kids, share croppers' kids, all just trying to survive and country music was their way out.

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Wonder what the case is with today's Country stars ? Same or naw?

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Nope. Not even close.

That's one of the frustrations I have with it now. My first publisher in Nashville was a songwriter named Frank Dycus. He grew up in a town called Hard Money, KY - dirt floors, no plumbing....only had a 6th grade education. But he wrote "Unwound" & "Marina Del Ray" for Strait, "I Don't Need Your Rockin' Chair" for George Jones, "I'm Gonna Get A Life" for Mark Chesnutt, and a lot of others.

The vast majority of the young artists/writers that I meet these days grew up in cities, or at least good sized towns. Very few "rural" kids, and most are well educated with either college degrees or some college attended. It's an entirely different deal, and I think that's why the songs are so different now. Take a look at a piece of a lyric from a song written by Peanut Montgomery that George Jones recorded...

"The dirt was clay and was the color of the blood in me
A twelve acre farm on a ridge in southern Tennessee
We left that sweat all over that land behind a mule we watched grow old
Row after row
Trying to grow corn and cotton on ground so poor that grass won't grow"

None of these kids write lyrics like that. They can't. Because they didn't grow up like that, and have no point of reference. They've also grown up in a world where imagination is largely unnecessary. When I was a kid in west TX, we got 3 TV stations occasionally, usually 2. No internet, of course. Even had a party line for our telephone. We would look at pictures in magazines and wonder what the Grand Canyon, or the Smoky Mountains, looked like in real life. Nowadays, you just have to go online and pull up a HD video and see it all for yourself.

When your mind has been trained to imagine things, writing songs about stuff you haven't experienced personally is a lot easier. You can watch a couple fighting in a restaurant, and wonder "what would I do and say if I were him", then go write a song about it. But if your mind has never been conditioned to do that, it's much harder to do - or at least do well.

That's why now, instead of lyrics like this:

"I can hardly bear the sight of lipstick on the cigarettes there in the ashtray
Lying cold the way you left them, but at least your lips caressed them while you packed
Or the lip-print on a half-filled cup of coffee that you poured and didn't drink
But at least you thought you wanted it, that's so much more than I can say for me"


you get this:

"5-1-5-0, somebody call the po-po
I'm goin' crazy, thinkin' 'bout you baby
5-1-5-0, just this side of loco
I'm goin' crazy, think I love you baby"

A bit behind, but finally watched the first episode last night. Great start...I especially loved the way they juxtaposed some of the interviewees singing over the songs themselves. Well, that and Dolly just going straight up a capella on that old gospel song. Just fantastic

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Wonder what the case is with today's Country stars ? Same or naw?

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Nope. Not even close.

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Well, the US population today is estimated to be 86% urban.

The first country music boom came from rural people moving to the cities and creating an audience for the barndance shows. The Great-grandkids of those people are creating today. They can't write what they don't know, so you end up with songs about driving out for pasture parties and **** down the old river road.

There's a lot to ponder about the effects of technology on imagination and empathy, and scifi writers have been pondering those questions for years.

DG-Ag said:

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Aust Ag said:

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Aggies76 said:

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Amazing to me how so many of these country music icons came from extreme poverty. Coal miners' kids, share croppers' kids, all just trying to survive and country music was their way out.

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Wonder what the case is with today's Country stars ? Same or naw?

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I'm guessing "naw" for the most part.

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I'd guess you're more likely to see that sort of poverty to fame path in hip hop artists these days. Different kind of poverty, of course.

My only complaint -- and it's a minor one -- is that Burns gives too much time to people outside of country who had interactions with the genre. I guess he's trying to show that country was relevant outside of its core base, but he's overdone it in just about every episode.

Wynton Marsalis has been quoted multiple times in multiple episodes, and Burns lingers on clips featuring Louie Armstrong and Bob Dylan while shortchanging some greats, like Jim Reeves and Conway Twitty.

Also seems like Buck Owens and George Jones haven't gotten enough screen time, although maybe that changes in the final few episodes.

I get what your saying, but I suspect this is meant as a compliment. He's trying to show the impact country music has had on other musicians.

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Also seems like Buck Owens and George Jones haven't gotten enough screen time, although maybe that changes in the final few episodes.

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Have you seen Episode 6 yet?

EclipseAg said:

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My only complaint -- and it's a minor one -- is that Burns gives too much time to people outside of country who had interactions with the genre. I guess he's trying to show that country was relevant outside of its core base, but he's overdone it in just about every episode.

Wynton Marsalis has been quoted multiple times in multiple episodes, and Burns lingers on clips featuring Louie Armstrong and Bob Dylan while shortchanging some greats, like Jim Reeves and Conway Twitty.

Also seems like Buck Owens and George Jones haven't gotten enough screen time, although maybe that changes in the final few episodes.

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I've enjoyed Marsalis' insight.

Twitty was just mentioned a couple times and usually as a duo with Loretta. I was surprised they didn't feature him. He had fifty-some number ones.

I have absolutely loved it so far and will definitely rewatch as soon as it's over.
As long as we're nitpicking, I've got a few items:

• I appreciate the explanation of why Johnny Cash was so influential in country music. But, he's gotten a LOT of screen time. I'm probably biased cuz beyond his major hits, his appeal was always lost on me.
• With all of Cash's screen time, major artists of the time like Ray Price, John Denver and Glen Campbell were given short shrift.
• Doc started out talking about great bands but shifted focus to individual artists as it moved closer to current time. No Oak Ridge Boys or Statler Brothers?
• Seemed like the only reason they mentioned Porter Wagoner was to paint him as the foil that Dolly Parton had to overcome. I'm sure that story is true but Wagoner had a much bigger impact on country music than the doc suggests. Through his TV show and contributions to the Grand Old Opry, he was certainly as much of an influence as Whisperin' Bill Anderson.

Still a great doc, though. These are minor points.