Ken Burns - Country Music Documentary

This may be a good watch for some of us hillbillies....
Ken Burns Country Music Documentary Sets PBS Premiere

 

If it follows the template established by "Jazz" it'll end with "Red Headed Stranger".

 

I can’t wait, hope it’s good.

 

No. with this.

 

Hope it will at least touch on Cajun music.

 

I suspect it will be a great watch, and informative for what it includes, but that it will also leave out plenty of stuff, just like Jazz.

 

True, but at least with jazz you're dealing with something that started being recorded in the 20's, which reached it's commercial peak in the 30's and 40's, and, arguably, it's artistic peak in the late 50's and early 60's which then became a niche format with a very small audience.

Country, on the other hand, while having it's ups and downs, also started in the 20's and has currently passed rock in popularity, some 90+ years after the Carter Family was signed.

 

It will touch on both types of music, country and western.

 

Blue Grass and Western Swing and Cowboy music too!

 

I thought his documentary The War could have featured Orange Texas instead of Mobile Alabama and could have talked a bit about Country Music, Western Swing, and Cajun! Instead it was swing music all the way.

 

It’s certainly a huge undertaking.

 

WHAT?!?! Nooooo!!! It's GOTTA get to Billy Ray Cyrus! No true documentary of country music could be considered complete without thorough analysis of "Achy Breaky Heart" and it's place in history!

 

I'm looking forward to this. I enjoyed the Jazz doc. and don't care if it stops before the current trends. For my taste I can't stand most modern "country" music. There are a few odds and ends I like but none of them are never on any charts or played on the radio. It's ok with me if the doc. stops at 1975. My opinion only.

 

Hope I notice when a DVD or BR release occurs.

 

Is this out?

https://www.amazon.ca/Ken-Burns-Cou...94&s=dvd&sprefix=ken+burns,popular,174&sr=1-1

 

I don't know about Louis Armstrong, but when it comes to real country & western music, look no further than this:

 

Anyone know when this is supposed to air?

 

September.

Country Music | Coming Soon: Country Music | Ken Burns


5 CD box set looks pretty good, I like the "Can The Circle Be Unbroken (Bye and Bye)" & "Will The Circle Be Unbroken" bookends to the box.

Looking at the Soundtrack box contents it would seem that the doc covers 1920s to somewhere around 1996.

The Circle is Unbroken: Legacy To Release The Soundtrack to Ken Burns’ “Country Music” in Box Set, Other Editions - The Second Disc

 

I managed to see a preview episode on the Outlaw Country Cruise IV of an upcoming documentary series being produced by CMT called They Called Us Outlaws. We saw the third episode titled Bob Wills Is Still King dealing with the birth of Outlaw Country featuring Austin venues like Armadillo World Headquarters and The Broken Spoke. It's not established where this will appear yet, possibly Netflix or Amazon.

It's been in production for a long time. Here's some info from 2014:

THEY CALLED US OUTLAWS: COSMIC COWBOYS, HONKY TONK HEROES AND THE RISE OF REDNECK ROCK

Presented by the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, this eight-hour documentary event comes from the award-winning and critically acclaimed filmmaker Eric Geadelmann (“Dave” and “The Dance”), best-selling biographer Joe Nick Patoski (“Willie Nelson – An Epic Life”) and Emmy, Golden Globe and Academy Award-winning producer Mark Johnson (“Breaking Bad,” “Rain Man,” respectively.) What happened in Nashville and in Austin in the late 1960s and early 1970s was nothing less than a tectonic shift in country music. From Tennessee to Texas, musicians were breaking all the rules, pushing aside long-established traditions and doing things their own way. THEY CALLED US OUTLAWS tells this story in four feature-length documentary films. It is an in-depth never-before-seen look at the pickers, the players, and the writers who altered the course of country music forever. THEY CALLED US OUTLAWS is “Willie, Waylon & the Boys,” and a few irreverent girls, at the height of their rule-breaking days; featuring over 20 American music icons including Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, Bobby Bare, Jerry Jeff Walker, Guy Clark, Billy Joe Shaver, Joe Ely, Ray Benson & Asleep at the Wheel, Rodney Crowell, The Flatlanders, Jessi Colter, Marcia Ball and Emmylou Harris. THEY CALLED US OUTLAWS is produced by Crowfly Pictures Entertainment and Filament Productions and was written, directed and produced by Eric Geadelmann, Kelly Magelsky and Ken Levitan, and executive produced by Mark Johnson, Joe Nick Patoski, Cal Turner, Margaret Turner, Craig Eiland, Randy Paul, Ray Benson & Mickey Raphael.​

I hope Ken Burns's documentary is good, but it will have to be amazing to better the one I saw on the boat. This episode was about the conflict between the Hippies/Cosmic Cowboys and the authentic cow-punchers, and how Willie was the man who brought them together.

 

Sounds like that'll be an 8 hour deep dive into what'll be one of the Ken Burns episodes.

 

If I remember correctly it had expanded from four episodes to eight.

 

Gotta include Doug Sahm with those great outlaws!

 

I believe it did. Sorry I can't say whether or not to did with more confidence but I saw it one afternoon during a full week of music. But the name does sound very familiar.

I hope the filmmaker Eric Geadelmann has a Google Alert for his name, and that he comes here to discuss the series when it's finally released. I'll definitely create a thread on it. I'm definitely not an expert on Outlaw Country, or Country music in general, but this was a fascinating documentary.

 

Doug Sahm even has an album titled Texas Rock for Country Rollers (1974) that fits the bill. AND I saw his side man Alvin Crow at the Broken Spoke in Austin as recently as the 20 1-10s. Thanks for the review!

 

I remember footage at the Broken Spoke, which look like the sort of place that cowboys right off the trail would walk into, where putting on a bolo tie would constitute getting dressed up.