What Ken Burns’ 16-Hour ‘Country Music’ Epic Leaves Out

THE WESTERNER ^ | 9/15/2019 | Frank DuBois

[cowpoke]

Country music has been having an identity crisis since it crawled out of the cradle. Call it diffuse or call it elastic, but it has always run on two tracks: one was rough and one was slick, one rooted in tradition, the other more modern. Think about that serendipitous August in 1927 in Bristol, Tennessee, when, two days apart, both Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family auditioned for the Victor Talking Machine Company (which would ultimately become RCA Records). Ralph Peer, the record company’s producer and talent scout, immediately signed both acts. That was a big week for country music. But Rodgers’ and the Carters’ music, while similar, drew upon dissimilar traditions. Rodgers sounded slicker, more commercial, like Tin Pan Alley injected with the blues and a yodel. The Carters were more about spirituals and traditional mountain music. But both appealed to the working class white audience that record companies were just beginning to cultivate. So who was going to fuss about stylistic differences when the records were selling? Together, over the course of a century, these two strands stitched a durable crazy quilt broad enough to accommodate Bill Monroe and Lynn Anderson, the Bakersfield sound and countrypolitan, fiddles and syrupy violins. Sometimes the two strains were at odds, and sometimes the tension between the two created works of genius. Another word for this, of course, is schizophrenic. If you want to see this study in multiple musical personalities displayed in fascinating detail, tune in to Ken Burns’ eight-part documentary on country music that debuts tonight (Sept. 15) on your local PBS affiliate. It’s not as much trashy, surreal fun as any given performance of the Grand Ole Opry or even Hee Haw, because Burns just doesn’t do trashy, but if you need a starter course in country, this is it...MORE

Keep in mind the source of this review is the left-wing Daily Beast, so you will find the usual  obligatory criticisms,  such as this on race:

...Because sometimes you get the feeling while watching Country Music that they were afraid of offending anyone. Nowhere is this more awkwardly obvious than on those occasions where the doc bumps into the subject of race. The elephant in this room is that country is white people’s music, and the African-American artists brought in to testify to the contrary, even when they say sensible things, sound woefully like tokens. Because no matter how many country songs Ray Charles sang and no matter how many No. 1 hits Charley Pride had, country is just white to the bone. The performers were white. And so were their audiences. Likewise, the often ugly conservative and sometimes downright racist impulses articulated by more than a few performers in the ’60s and ’70s are glossed over almost completely. We don’t hear a peep about Marty Robbins recording “Ain’t I Right,” a song mocking civil rights freedom marchers, or Guy Drake, whose “Welfare Cadillac” shot to No. 5 on the country charts in 1970.  

So just consider this as a reminder the series begins tonight on PBS.

I will admit I had never heard the Marty Robbins tune Ain't I Right. It turns out to be an anti-communist tune. Give it a listen:

https://youtu.be/0XxYwWg7F8I

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Same goes for Welfare Cadillac by Guy Drake, which mocks the welfare system. Hard to say it is racist, since whites are the largest group of recipients:

• 43 percent of Medicaid recipients were white, 18 percent were African American and 30 percent were Hispanic in 2016. [Source: KFF]
• In 2016 36.2 percent of SNAP program beneficiaries were white, 25.6 percent were African American, 17.2 percent were Hispanic, 3.3 percent were Asian. [Source: USDA]
• Of TANF recipients in 2016, 27.9 percent of were white, 19.1 percent were African American 36.9 percent were Hispanic. [Source: Department of Health and Human Services]

Here is the Drake tune:

https://youtu.be/hq-hx73or30

[dsrtsage]

He forgot to play the music backwards so you could get your house back, your car back, your wife back, and get sober

[SamAdams76]

I have not seen the KB documentary on Country music yet but I look forward to seeing it as I am 1) a big fan of country music and 2) a big fan of Ken Burns' documentaries.

Even though KB is definitely a liberal, I do like his documentaries as they are very well done. The Civil War documentary is a particular favorite of mine.

A lot of people deride the "modern sound" of country music but I generally like it just fine. Still a lot of great country songs being written and performed.

Probably the best country artist of the 2010s decade so far is Luke Combs. To me, Combs evokes the "blue collar" spirit of country music.

[ifinnegan]

Thanks.

And, yes, this write up didn’t make any sense. I noticed that before you pointed out it’s source.

Liberals are idiots who understand nothing.

I wouldn’t have known it’s on today.

I figure the first one may be worth watching because it will be about early practitioners.

[Governor Dinwiddie]

Country music developed out of the Scots-Irish musical traditions of the original settlers. That's the problem. You see black folks and mexicans are allowed to have a cultural heritage. But not white folks.
 

[dfwgator]

How much time will Ken Burns devote to Ray Charles and Charlie Pride?

[Alberta's Child]

The problem with the “modern sound” in country music is that it has become indistinguishable from pop music.

There are no great country artists anymore, but there are some decent country/pop artists who occasionally turn out an excellent song.

[stevem]

I haven't been able to get through a Ken Burns offering since The Civil War. I had to quit his Vietnam War series early when he taught us that Ho Chi Minh was a kindly, grandfatherly figure.

I made it partway through his baseball series until he taught us baseball was a metaphor for everything wrong in racist America.

Jazz...more of the same.

I've surrendered on Ken Burns. I don't see how you can make Country and Western music anti-American. I s'pect he'll find a way.

Hecks bells,Tom Hanks is a frightful loony liberal. Nevertheless, he made The Pacific War and From The Earth to the Moon eminently watchable.

I don't know this first hand. It may be Hanks is a rare liberal who doesn't hate the United States. I doubt Burns or anyone speaking for him could ever make that claim.

[Alberta's Child]

Great line in a Toby Keith song: “A little sissy in a cowboy hat ain’t country.” LOL.

[bluejean]

The racists have rap and hip-hop. So what? My Mom used to say that’s why they have vanilla, chocolate and strawberry ice cream. To each his own. So just shut up, idiot leftie morons.

[SamAdams76]

I actually consider modern country music to actually be the pop music of today. It reminds me of the Top 40 music I grew up with in the 1970s.

Today's "pop music" is mostly either angry rap or overly-produced and synthesized dance music with soulless lyrics and drum machines. I can't stand it.

Country music songs usually tell a story. Some of them insipid to be sure but a story nonetheless.

[headstamp 2]

Everything in the past is going to have the racist template placed over it as the left marches on with its revisionism.

Control the historical narrative and you control the future one.

This is how the left is tearing down institutions one by one.

[tophat9000]

Liberal just don’t get “poor” dosen’t have a color

[piasa]

It is a characteristic of communists, greedy and patronizingly racist themselves, to cover themselves by claiming every criticism of communism is based on racism and greed.

[bigbob]

Well, if he doesn’t do a good job of showing the importance of Springfield MO and Red Foley’s “Ozark Jubilee” - the first national TV program to feature country music - it’s not worth a bucket of spit.

In the early days of television, thanks to that program Springfield MO was #2 behind New York City - ahead of Chicago and LA - for national television program origination. 25 million viewers per week in black and white, where most people were lucky to get 2 or 3 channels. The brainchild of Ralph Foster who owned KWTO radio “Keep Watchin The Ozarks”, where Chet Atkins and the Carter Family were once staff musicians. This is what opened the door for Branson.

[Mr. Mojo]

<< [The story] ends somewhere in the ’90s, right about the time Johnny Cash hooked up with producer Rick Rubin to record three stark albums that showcase a man staring eternity in the eye and never blinking. It’s a dark but appropriate moment to close with. Or maybe they just couldn’t figure out a graceful way to say that contemporary country is just not very interesting. >>

Yep. Most contemporary country isn’t just non-interesting, it’s an abomination. Especially “bro country” — mindless, insipid, frat-party pap.

[gibsonguy]

“I haven’t been able to get through a Ken Burns offering since The Civil War.”

Baseball did it for me. America’s is a irredeemably racist country BS laced throughout.

[dfwgator]

Tom Petty called it, “Bad Rock with a fiddle”

[dfwgator]

Garth Brooks killed country music.

[beef]

“black folks and mexicans are allowed to have a cultural heritage. But not white folks”

This is the process of dehumanization, a necessary step before extermination.