Ken Burns - Country Music Documentary

"Ken Burns" documentaries are not solely made by Ken Burns anymore than Walt Disney drew his cartoons or William Shakespeare was sole author of his plays.

Yes, that recent doc on Charlie Pride was wonderful to run across! Love the recent spate of Nasa astronaut and race to the moon programs as well from PBS and others... beats the fins off all the excess numbers of shark programs Discover and Nat Geo keep shoving at us!

 

Lynn Novick, The Viet Nam War

 

Speaking of, that Nova episode Apollo’s Daring Mission is well worth watching - one of the best documentaries (albeit in a recurring show) I’ve ever seen on NASA/space flight. I can’t recommend this one enough.

 

That's about the Apollo 8 mission, isn't it?

 

Yep.

 

My biggest problem with Burns is his influence, especially the talking head celebrity clips. Sadly, most documentaries start with about a dozen of these. You have to fast forward through them to get to the actual content. The recent Race to the Moon series was a welcome change; fantastic period footage and narration from people who were actually there, rather than babbling by Whoopi Goldberg or Bruce Springsteen about how cool it was that we went to the moon.

 

I didn't think Burns responsible for the talking head celebrity clips becoming a thing... I'm open to being wrong however. It is something I really can only take so much of and suspect there may be a fair bit of it in this forthcoming County Music set. I'm not saying a fifteen year old singer or musician I've barely heard can't enthuse or pontificate on the merits and importance of Dolly Patron or Jimmie Rodgers, but the odds of my wanting to hear them do so is something else. I'm not so sure about trotting Keith Richards out to tell us all how great Merle or George were either.

 

Hope the documentary will explain what category or genre of country Faron Young, Roger Miller, Tom T. Hall, Bill Anderson and others fall into that don't sing with a traditional country twang or style.

I was always asking whether that was crooner country... or easy listening country. I'm a Tom T Hall fan which I've seen his style described more as a storyteller. Maybe troubadour is an appropriate description but I don't know what that is either.

 

I dislike it even when they use purported experts - current musicians and college professors. I would much rather see clips and pictures narrated by professional narrators. The worst is when they string a dozen of these at the beginning of the show to tell us over and over how important the subject matter is.

 

Nice article on this documentary:

The Premiere of Ken Burns' "Country Music" - New Hampshire Magazine

 

A very good place to end it if you're an authentic country music fan.

 

I'm not a C&W fan per se, but I'm really looking forward to this. I thought Jazz, the parts I saw anyway, was better than critics gave it. I'd like to watch that one all the way through sometime.

 

Mine, too! Don't sell yourself short! ;o)

 

There are still some great Country artists these days, but apparently they're illegal.

 

There are some "okay to very good" country artists nowadays. Much like in jazz, there are quite a few excellent players, but the spirit of the music that made
the 'golden age' so special is pretty much a 20th Century thing and ain't never really comin' back.

 

I was checking out the Knucklehead's Saloon calendar and September 9th they're having a preview of the Ken Burns documentary series. If you are in Kansas City come on by, and if you're in another city you might check with your local PBS station to see if they're doing a similar event with a local music venue.

KCPT Ken Burns' Country Music Film Preview - Tickets - Knuckleheads - Kansas City, MO - September 9th, 2019

 

I'm not an expert, but I'd say that there are some songwriters working today that I would rank up with any of the greats - Steve Earle, Sturgill Simpson, Jason Isbell...

 

I do like Sturgill. Not a really big fan of Steve Earle. I liked his early stuff, but IMO he's not a writer that "matured" well like, say, Townes or Dylan. Feel the same way about old Butch Hancock too.

 

I've learned about Sturgill and Jason here, and consider them both top-tier songwriters, even though I haven't given either of them the attention they deserve.

 

Or honorary hillbillies as in my case.

 

Here is a conversation/presentation with one of the historians interviewed for "Country Music":

University Place The Story of Country Music on Wisconsin Public Television

 

We watched the special last night. Pretty well done but Larry Gatlin singing Sunday morning coming down?? That and the doofus with the straw hat. Vince Gill, Marty Stuart, ASW all great. Good band with Stuart Duncan and Paul Franklin among others. Series starts this Sunday.

 

Yeah, I hope they don't just focus on Nashville, rural Kentucky, Bakersfield, Texas, et al to the exclusion of the Beverly Hills school of Country Music:

 

Has this series already started?

 

September 15