Ken Burns: Country Music. 8 episodes. 16 Hours. Starts Sep. 15.

[DigglerontheHoof 21,200]

Da fuq?  On Spectrum, PBS just completely went dark. 

[Trey3216 15,346]

I mean, I can’t impart how incredible this is

[atomheartbevo 89,675]

Holy shit, Louis Armstrong with Jimmie Rogers?   I never really paid much attention to the really early stuff. 

[atomheartbevo 89,675]

Ricky Skaggs and Vince Gill aren’t doing enough coke like their rockstar contemporaries, otherwise they’d be skinnier.  

[atomheartbevo 89,675]

Glad they got Merle on film before he passed away.  

[Trey3216 15,346]

8 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

Ricky Skaggs and Vince Gill aren’t doing enough coke like their rockstar contemporaries, otherwise they’d be skinnier.  

Yeah, their rockstar contemporaries couldn’t jiggle their guitar playing balls 

[bluto 4,929]

Glad they got Merle on film before he passed away.  

Read an article that mentioned they hadn’t really setup their interview hit list but knew Merle wasn’t long so they hurried to get him on film. Think they ended up with a few hours with him. From their they just went too down based on age/health on their hit list.

[Trey3216 15,346]

Incredible 

[The University 851]

that was a great start 

[WBT 20,573]

That was great.  I'd heard of Jimmie Rodgers as one of the pioneers but I didn't know he went so hard:

Quote

If you don't want me mama
You sure don't have to stall
You sure don't have to stall
'Cause I can get more women
Than a passenger train can haul

 

I'm gonna buy me a pistol
Just as long as I'm tall
Just as long as I'm tall
I'm gonna shoot poor Thelma
Just to see her jump and fall

 

[johnny utah 68]

After episode one I am all in.  That was great.

[johnny utah 68]

 

After episode one I am all in.  That was great.

[atomheartbevo 89,675]

27 minutes ago, bluto said:

Read an article that mentioned they hadn’t really setup their interview hit list but knew Merle wasn’t long so they hurried to get him on film. Think they ended up with a few hours with him. From their they just went too down based on age/health on their hit list.

 

Ralph Stanley died in 2016 as well - that's two that died before this aired.

[atomheartbevo 89,675]

12 minutes ago, WBT said:

That was great.  I'd heard of Jimmie Rodgers as one of the pioneers but I didn't know he went so hard:

Lungers tend to have a dark streak in them.

[atomheartbevo 89,675]

Ketch Secor has got to be related to Paul Rudd.

[atomheartbevo 89,675]

25 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

Ralph Stanley died in 2016 as well - that's two that died before this aired.

• Mel Tillis
• Ralph Stanley
• Merle Haggard
• Margaret Ann Craig Robinson 

Edited September 16, 2019 by atomheartbevo

[atomheartbevo 89,675]

Ketch Secor drained their life force to keep himself looking young.

[kevwun 15,790]

RPM beat me to it, but I don't think there's a subject Ken Burns couldn't make an awesome documentary about.  This one looks like it might be one of his best.

[atomheartbevo 89,675]

Every time I hear mention of Clinch Mountain, I think Sacketts....but I digress.

I really don't know why, but I can't think of another first episode of any of his series that I have enjoyed more than this one.

[Celery Man 20,958]

Maybelle Carter is severely underrated in terms of most influential American musicians.  Also goddamn - got that record money in, bought a large body Gibson and a motorcycle.  And that lesson on "the thing about the index finger is you just keep it going no matter what".  Love her.  I have the Carter songbook around (and of course learned Wildwood Flower).  Need to dig back into it.

 

Jimmie Rodgers built a home in Kerrville.  I looked it up during the show and it has a 1 star rating on google with a review of "this is our family home and not a museum that is open to the public".  Spotted a Buda sticker on the car in one of those pictures.

I didn't know that story about the origins of the Grand Ole Opry - that was cool.

Great first episode.  I'm sure we'll hear more about the Carters (as we get to Cash) but.... I hope we do.

[bamachine 1,231]

2 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

Holy shit, Louis Armstrong with Jimmie Rogers?   I never really paid much attention to the really early stuff. 

Yeah, knew a good bit about both but never knew they worked with each other.

[atomheartbevo 89,675]

Tom T. Hall and Stonewall Jackson are going to be dead before this thing has finished airing, I just know it.  Jeanne Pruett as well.

[EMAWesome 101]

On the bright side they didn't have to get Ric Ocasek and Eddie Money into this.

Edited September 16, 2019 by EMAWesome

[RPM 26,321]

Just finished Ep1. There are no words except "Thank you, Ken Burns".

I was pretty familiar with Jimmie Rodgers, but I honestly knew very little about The Carter Family other than they were Tennessee legends. I had no idea Mabel developed a whole new style of playing guitar. Really looking forward to Ep2. My Dad was a huge Bob Wills fan and I was force fed that from the time I was born, ah-ha. Even got to meet Bob in 1973 when they dedicated his monument in Turkey, Tx.

 

[Goo Punch 4,275]

Yep, awesome as expected. Can't wait for episode two. 

[Goo Punch 4,275]

Also no disrespect but young Mabelle Carter looks like Andy Samberg. 

[Goo Punch 4,275]

Also, the photographs in this thing are amazing. I absolutely love to see pictures like these, specifically from this time period. It's from a time period that's really not all that long ago- I mean my grandparents were alive then- and yet the world and this country were so vastly different than they are today. Getting to see history like this is just so cool. 

[atomheartbevo 89,675]

33 minutes ago, Goo Punch said:

Also, the photographs in this thing are amazing. I absolutely love to see pictures like these, specifically from this time period. It's from a time period that's really not all that long ago- I mean my grandparents were alive then- and yet the world and this country were so vastly different than they are today. Getting to see history like this is just so cool. 

I wonder what @Armybrat thinks of seeing this stuff here in 2019.    

They always do a top notch job on the photos and film.   Would be an awesome job to have, but sorting through thousands and tens of thousands of photos, etc. would be challenging.  

Edited September 16, 2019 by atomheartbevo

[atomheartbevo 89,675]

16 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

• Mel Tillis
• Ralph Stanley
• Merle Haggard
• Margaret Ann Craig Robinson 

Started watching episode 2 on the app.  Added a fifth within 10 minutes.

Mac Wiseman (made it to February of this year). 

[Onboard 2.0 9,083]

47 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

Started watching episode 2 on the app.  Added a fifth within 10 minutes.

Mac Wiseman (made it to February of this year). 

Don't spoil it, I wanna see how it ends on my own......

[atomheartbevo 89,675]

51 minutes ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

Don't spoil it, I wanna see how it ends on my own......

Okay, for those curious

[spioler] Ken Burns killed 17 famous country music personalities during the filming of this series, culminating in the accidental disembowelment of Vince Gill, streamed live on the PBS website, during a follow-up show where Ken and Vince we’re visiting the last acoustic guitar factory in the US, which was serving as a backdrop to Vince discussing the history of American-made guitars. [/spoiler]

[RPM 26,321]

1 hour ago, atomheartbevo said:

culminating in the accidental disembowelment of Vince Gill

[atomheartbevo 89,675]

• Mac Wiseman (made it to February of this year).  
• Mel Tillis  
• Ralph Stanley  
• Merle Haggard  
• Margaret Ann Craig Robinson
• Jean Shepard
• Hazel Smith

The body count does not stop.

Edited September 17, 2019 by atomheartbevo

[TxTower 652]

So many tie ins to O Brother Where Art Thou songs and stories like the Carters “singing in a can”.
The Coen Bros actually beat Ken Burns to this.

[atomheartbevo 89,675]

Tonight's was better than last night's, and tomorrows will be even better.  Really good history.

Glad to see a lot of the older folks getting their due credit.

[The University 851]

ep2 was outstanding. i've already watched the bob wills segment twice and will probably go through it again. hell, i'd watch an entire episode like that dedicated to bob and his playboys.

[Buzzrock 14,921]

I’ve been listening to WSB radio my whole life and had no idea about the origins. They just lit up their most powerful antenna ever.

[atomheartbevo 89,675]

Well, this explains some things.  And his final body count is 20.

https://www.tennessean.com/story/entertainment/music/2019/08/26/ken-burns-country-music-documentary-pbs/1767605001/

Quote

The documentary took eight years of work and includes 175 hours on interviews.

Quote

For Burns, Duncan and Dunfey, the journey had become personal. Together they raised money to fund the project, worked to determine a historical time frame, solidified a cohesive storyline, conducted interviews, gathered photos and videos, spoke to 101 people — 20 of whom have now died — shed tears over the loss of Merle Haggard and searched for the genre’s genesis.

Quote

Have you ever lost so many sources before a project is released? 

Ken Burns: If we have the opportunity to have a subject where some people are alive, we work our way down the actuarial table. We go to the oldest first and talk to them because these are long processes of very many years. But we’ve never lost anything like we’ve lost in this film. Even since the beginning of the year, we’ve lost a few people, and it just made us super sad because we’re so close to the finish line. We thought they would be there to stand up when it was finished, and I’m sure we’ll lose someone else before it broadcasts. 

Quote

There are 175 hours of interviews for a 16-hour film. (All of the team’s footage and research will be donated to the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.) We maybe used six hours of interviews. There’s a lot of stuff that future students of the genre will have the benefit of seeing or listening to it or reading the transcript.

 

Edited September 17, 2019 by atomheartbevo

[bluto 4,929]

Old Willie concert recording just started up on Dallas pbs

[bamachine 1,231]

Yeesh but that is to be expected somewhat. The best way to research something is by talking to those who lived it and that is going to make for some rather elder folks. I still cherish my parents stories(both now gone) about Hank Williams and his coming to buy shine from the local bootlegger. He supposedly bought his last shine about 2 miles from where I grew up. They saw him at the bootlegger, then heard about his death on the radio the next night.

[NWBuck 8,568]

25 minutes ago, bamachine said:

Yeesh but that is to be expected somewhat. The best way to research something is by talking to those who lived it and that is going to make for some rather elder folks. I still cherish my parents stories(both now gone) about Hank Williams and his coming to buy shine from the local bootlegger. He supposedly bought his last shine about 2 miles from where I grew up. They saw him at the bootlegger, then heard about his death on the radio the next night.

Wow... That's a great story. 

My grandmother was a nurse on duty in the town where he was pronounced dead in WVA... He was never in the hospital, but taken straight to the funeral home and the medical coroner came there. 

My grandmother would visit that same funeral home many years later upon her death. 

[bamachine 1,231]

I found an article that somewhat comes close to backing up my parents story(they got married in 1950 and the family ;and is a little over a mile from where Leonard Jennings, the biggest local bootlegger lived). My dad did some work for Jennings, back then. My mom's mother was also the local midwife and was supposedly there along with my mom, helping her, looking after Jennings wife who had just given birth the day before. Scroll down to the last few paragraphs, where they talk about them coming onto Lookout Mtn to get liquor.

http://www.lookoutalabama.com/2013/09/shave-haircut/

[Goo Punch 4,275]

Just now starting episode two and i cannot understand why they used this modernized version of "Hard Times" over using Emmylou Harris's recording. Makes no sense. 

[Onboard 2.0 9,083]

3 hours ago, Goo Punch said:

Just now starting episode two and i cannot understand why they used this modernized version of "Hard Times" over using Emmylou Harris's recording. Makes no sense. 

I don't know, but Emmy Lou is still a striking woman.

[Goo Punch 4,275]

 

[The University 851]

we all have "our" version that we love. hard times was written in the 19th century and has been adapted so many times by a wide variety of artists. that's part of the beauty of music.

[Onboard 2.0 9,083]

4 minutes ago, The University said:

we all have "our" version that we love. hard times was written in the 19th century and has been adapted so many times by a wide variety of artists. that's part of the beauty of music.

It's all part of his story showing how old folk songs are still being sung today a new crop of musicians I think.

[kevwun 15,790]

Crazy about the station in Mexico blasting it's signal out so strong that it covered the entire US all the way to Canada.  I can't imagine hearing the radio through a barb wire fence.  All because of goat balls.

[The University 851]

11 minutes ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

It's all part of his story showing how old folk songs are still being sung today a new crop of musicians I think.

so far, that is definitely a recurring theme. many of the harmonies were passed down from previous generations and the lyrics would change depending upon regional and current/engaging subjects. even though hard times was "written" in the 19th century, i imagine it is much older than that.

honestly, i was going into this doc thinking "nashville, bah humbug, blah, blah" but i'm loving it so far.

Edited September 17, 2019 by The University

[atomheartbevo 89,675]

57 minutes ago, The University said:

honestly, i was going into this doc thinking "nashville, bah humbug, blah, blah" but i'm loving it so far.

I've been very impressed at how much they've covered geographically.

Marty Stuart had it right - Nashville had their business act together, otherwise it could have easily been somewhere else.