Ken Burns’ Country Music on PBS

Between those two are Butler and New Castle (that I know of). There is also one down south of Pgh on I 70, but I can't recall which town. And Greensburg has one.

 

But the reason I came here was to say that I just finally watched the last episode and I feel like it really should have been two. Too many important artists barely mentioned, too many critical details barely covered. Hopefully most viewers made the connection between commercial country going to hell and the media consolidation, but I fear it may have gone over many people's heads, and this IMHO is the most important lesson of this century regarding popular music.

 

It was nice to see Sturgill and Stapleton get two second head shots, but IMHO those two and Jason Isbell are the modern equivalent of Waylon, Willie and Kris. The new "outlaws".

I would have loved to see "Americana" get a lot more coverage. It's the real new country music. Bro country is the descendant of music row corporate BS. It is product, not art.

I will say that the episode really helped me to understand why at one point I found Ricky Scaggs and Marty Stuart abysmal then later realized they are actually pretty great. They all but said themselves that they spent a while as product then went back to being musicians.

 

I dropped into one of the eps and I was glad to hear a bit about Merle Haggard as he is one of those figures I'm intrigued with but have never purchased any thing by him, or even a good tribute comp.

However, I was disappointed to hear Peter Coyote again. I like the gentleman fine, but I've heard his narration so often it would have been nice to hear a fresh voice. Maybe Greg Brown?

 

Lots of people saying that but it honestly had no impact on me at all.

 

They gave a lot of coverage to Cash's American Recordings, but I wish they would have shown Rubin's NYT ad and spoke more about how it was Indie Radio that gave those tracks their boost and not country radio.

 

Glad to hear it. Once I started simply listening, it didn't really matter, but at first it caught my ear and I was surprised PC was chosen - again. Just a little too familiar for me.

 

This is where I have to admit this was the first Burns documentary I have seen (you'll note how long it took me to get through it). I have a notoriously short attention span and probably don't watch a movie a year. I feel that I need to seek out his Jazz one though. I won't be as familiar with that material as I was with this offering. My wife laughed as I named people when they came on the screen before they were identified in the film.

 

Around 30 in Pa.,possibly the most. Like I said,Harrisburg is the epicenter of Ollie's. Also mentioned that,in the past,they signed short term leases(5 years),so one in Reading,Pa. didn't pan out,but they have since returned to the area with one of their "compact" stores-a little of lots but none of the massive amounts as in the '00s. The store I worked at was previously a lumber yard and they housed lots of summer furniture there when resin chairs were popular. When file cabinets tanked,we had dozens of pallets-some banged up,some rusted(they were stored outside) and they sold and sold and sold. Gas grilles,excess carpet from a stadium restaurant( Green Bay Packers?)-cello bagged Hershey candies that fell off the packaging conveyors. T-shirt samples-I bought lots of these for two bucks and used them in my other warehouse jobs.

 

At 88 pages, I'm not going to read everything in this thread . I'll just say that extracting the cds from that 5 page foldout is very irritating!

 

when I was a kid, my grandfather and his friends were saying the exact same thing about the Nashville sound.

 

...What was this NYT ad?

 

Was that when they used Johnny's famous middle finger picture, thanking country radio for nothing? I think....

 

The damn thing is 40" long. I need to find a clear table to lay it on to pull a cd out

 

Yes, that was also the result of a consolidation of power within an art form. It's just that one was brought about by economic forces rather than governmental ones. The outlaw movement was a direct result of that consolidation, just as the new outlaw movement is now.

 

That's the way it usually goes with the Ken Burns opuses. Gotta love 'em overall, but latter years got short-shrifted in the jazz and the baseball documentaries, as well. Not enough 60s jazz, nor 70s baseball....

 

Good Stuff, Cheap

 

Listened to 2 of the disks last night, 1 and 5. As a program of vintage country, the first was terrific for me. Disk 5 had all that shiny sound that I'm not so keen on.

 

I wasn't alive when the "Nashville Sound" was becoming vogue, but I would have been right there with your grandfather saying the same. I am no fan of records with the soft sound and strings, etc.

That's why I'm glad there was an alternative with Buck Owens and The Buckaroos and Merle Haggard with the "Bakersfield Sound" keeping some twang in Country.

 

I use to be that way when I was young but as I've grown older I've learned to appreciate "The Nashville Sound" or "Countrypolitian". Like all music there is good and bad to be found there. There was a lot of overproduction but sometimes strings and polish are just what the recording calls for. Remember Patsy Cline was certainly a product of that sound as was much of George Jones' work. Ronnie Milsap also comes to mind. I'm just sayin'.

 

Had to use tweezers to get one of the cds out.

Left a scratch on the disk, but it didn't affect the playing.

 

I hate when things are packaged like that.

I'm not too fond of the way my Hank Williams box set is packaged with the discs hard to slip out. I never had to take a step as drastic as you did to remove them, and hope I never have to.

 

I get what you're saying.

Don't get me wrong, I like Patsy's recordings, but to my own ears, her biggest hits (the ones with "The Nashville Sound"/"Countrypolitan") are not much more than pop or easy listening music. I think half the reason Owen Bradley went that way with her was to get as much crossover appeal as possible, making her a middle of the road act who could appeal to "all" audiences. Her earlier records that were more traditional Country didn't sell all that well, so I can see why they went the way they did with her though-It paid off in spades, and she's an inductee into the Country Music Hall of Fame, so what do I know?

Ronnie Milsap, I believe actually started out wanting to be an R&B singer/pianist. He's got some okay tunes too, but again, *to me*, they really aren't hard Country and fall into the middle of the road category.

To me, half of what makes a song Country or not is how it's played/sang, not necessarily the lyrical content. Slower, twangier songs have more appeal to me as Country songs than string laden middle of the road music. That's not saying I hate all "Countrypolitan" stuff, I don't, but I prefer the older, honky-tonk style. Of course now, I'd prefer the "older style" of "Countrypolitan" compared to the rock and/or hip-hop hybrid that passes for Country nowadays.

 

I realize I'm months late, but I just got done watching Country Music. (Started a couple months ago... but I've been busy.)

I thought it was superb! I have no complaints or major issues. I liked Peter Coyote's voice; I have no issues with the selections and omission from the films. I thought it was extremely well written and organized. (I could have done without Garth Brooks in the final episode, but I suppose they had no choice there.)

I do think it was a bit better ordered and written than Jazz (which was nevertheless superb also).

A job well done.

 

Did anyone else think Peter Coyote's voice-over sounded like the narrator in Woody Allen's Take the Money and Run?