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

[itsahoot]

I don’t see that as good-natured fun.

You are just to citified then.

[itsahoot]

johnny house and a porcelain chamberpot/slop bucket at night if you didn't want to walk fifty yards outside in the dead of night in the rain.

My God you had a porcelain chamberpot? You were one of the rich ones huh?

[itsahoot]

Jesus, can’t people be satisfied that someone did a history of country music?

If it is just more lies about history, no. There is some pretty good Country Music history on YouTube if you want an honest assessment.

[TADSLOS]

Agreed, and lousy virtue signaling lefty entertainers at that.

[Vermont Lt]

I guess it’s a matter of critical thinking. You CAN watch stuff from any source and NOT be sucked in to deceit.

The first reaction of people on FR is to find what’s wrong instead of what’s interesting or right.

[itsahoot]

I guess it’s a matter of critical thinking. You CAN watch stuff from any source and NOT be sucked in to deceit.

We tend to accept anything that confirms our pre-conceived opinion. Just the nature of reality. Take a lot of real proof to change my opinion and that is as it should be.

[Paal Gulli]

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

Deford Bailey was decades before either one of them.

[Paal Gulli]

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

Garth Brooks killed it with his Rock-a-Billy. But that wasn't the first time "Country" music was killed off and reborn as something completely different. And it won't be the last.

[1Old Pro]

I look forward to watching the series. I’m sure there are good parts and not so good parts. Any documentary on country music is going to have to distill 100 years into 10 hours, not easy.

I visited Nashville for the first time recently and took in all the tourist places and it definitely made me more interested in the history and the players.

This will add to my knowledge - Country Music is definitely a great part of our music history and culture.

And, I’m grateful Taylor Swift ditched “country” because she was authentic and as such not welcome.

[1Old Pro]

oops, taylor swift = NOT authentic

[YogicCowboy]

I maintain that when Disco, New Wave, and Punk killed off Country-Rock (e.g., The Eagles) and Folk-Rock (e.g., Nicolette Larson), Country inevitably became more pop and filled the enormous void. I consider Garth Brooks the consequence rather than the catalyst.

The pop, slick, side of Country has indeed been around for a long time; it just was not as mainstream and profitable. The Anita Kerr Singers, working with various studio musicians such as Floyd Cramer (piano), created the Nashville Sound, which provided the backing vocals to a broad spectrum of musical hits in Country and Pop.

Kerr, born in Memphis, Tennessee, was a marvelous soprano, and a very gifted arranger. Her influence across many genres of popular music is enormously undervalued. Their presence in music from back then is almost ubiquitous.

In one of life’s vagaries, she and her singers, and Cramer, recorded a song as a lark at the end of a day’s session for Buddy Killen (who worked with many artists in Nashville, including Elvis Presley). He had written a song, and they quickly laid it down for fun as a favor.

It ended up a Top-Ten hit in January 1960, by a group called The Little Dippers. The label wanted a tour. The problem was there was no such band: They were all studio musicians. So they created a substitute quartet to do the actual touring.

[morphing libertarian]

Finishing part 4 now. Outstanding. PBS.org online.

[YogicCowboy]

I did like her contribution to The Hunger Games soundtrack, in collaboration with The Civil Wars, produced by T-Bone Burnett.

[morphing libertarian]

Iff you can watch the Carter story and the death of Jimmy Rogers and call it boring and virtue signaling you have no heart or soul. This is a fine tribute to country music and a historical record for the ages.

Have another beer and turn on your playstation.

[Tijeras_Slim]

Watched the first episode last night. Well aware of Burns biases, but can still learn things I didn’t know. Enjoyed it so far.

[morphing libertarian]

I look at Burns work this way. He hands me a bag of diamonds with some lumps of coals. The lumps are not always obvious unless you’re a researcher, but the diamonds are brilliant.

His use of testimony or letters in the civil war bring it to a personal level.

Collectively his works are adding to the historical record of the history of the US and it’s culture.

We have a lot of comment here about race and baseball, but his baseball series is the definitive work on the sport.

[rollo tomasi]

What Ken Burns 16-Hour ‘Country Music’ Epic Always Leaves Out: Context and Fundamental Truths.

Good propagandists (Based on his popularity) and histrionic whore, however, horrible historian who could not explain viable circumstantial situational decision-making processes if it bit him on his soy-boy "beard"/goatee.

[Hot Tabasco]

Don’t ferget yer dawg.....

[1Old Pro]

Watched the first episode last night. Well aware of Burns biases, but can still learn things I didn’t know. Enjoyed it so far.

Exactly, kinda like the tour guide at the Ryman telling old stories, I'm sure he added some bias but 95% was educational.

[x]

>> “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.

No. It's an asinine comment from somebody who apparently didn't even watch the show.