Ken Burns' COUNTRY MUSIC Documentary

Forgot Keith Whitley died so young.

They all actin' like the Highwaymen didn't happen...

Cool. Did they interview Klaus Voormann right before he died?

Sorry, that was two bad jokes rolled into one

If don't have time to watch the whole eight hours, here is a highlight reel I recommend:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4rA1-6ah7s

They skipped over an essential period in Kristofferson's career:

https://youtu.be/PMW4Ad8fIF4?t=209

thank you for bringing that into my life, tarfumes

oh my god

O_O

.

Hello, I'm James Redd.

One more episode left for me. Assuming it’s going to be lots of little capsule career summaries and J.R. Cash dying to wrap things up.

Pretty close – there was more on the emerging stars of the period (Garth, Reba, Strait, Travis, Gill, Judds) and not much on artists who had been covered in previous episodes.

I actually thought they could’ve done a bit more on Cash’s American Recordings period given how many modern pop standards he interpreted and how, frankly, unique it is for an artist at that point in his or her life to register her another meaningful chapter in an already illustrious career. It also cemented Cash and country for a third generation of fans.

Man, that goat gland doctor got around, though I suppose he was gone by the time period covered by the last episode.

So I’ve pronounced the word “Appalachia” differently from what I have heard on this show my whole life.

Apparently the melody of “I’m Thinking Tonight of My Blue Eyes” which later was reused for “The Great Speckled Bird,” “The Wild Side of Life,” and “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels” was - surprise!- based on some earlier song, although there seem to be different ideas about what that was.

Wikipedia mentions a song called “Thrills That I Can’t Forget,” which does indeed sound similar.

I actually thought they could’ve done a bit more on Cash’s American Recordings period given how many modern pop standards he interpreted and how, frankly, unique it is for an artist at that point in his or her life to register her another meaningful chapter in an already illustrious career. It also cemented Cash and country for a third generation of fans.

I wasn't totally on board w/how they presented that part of Cash's career, which wasn't quite as tragic as portrayed. At the same he got dropped by Columbia, he was having hit records and sellout shows with the Highwaymen. He also got another--ultimately hitless--solo deal with Mercury. I didn't know he played Branson, going from that to Rubin and The Viper Room is nuts.

Not to start a horse challopera, but am I the only one who prefers Kris Kristofferson tunes in the countrypolitan ladies man mode of “For the Good Times” and “Help Me Make It Through the Night” to the more singer/songwriter stuff?

XP Also: We needed 15 minutes about this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTP9__vi3d4

I was fine with the coverage of the American Recordings - there's no need to for it to be pumped up more than it was.
However I'm also not super crazy about them as a body of work.
I love what it did for his career and his performances such as they were were laregely great. But after the first album of covers it felt more and more like Rubin was just getting the old man to do tricks. It scratched the surface of him as a performer, and I was kinda salty that it made people feel like they were Cash fans now that he was singing the songs they already knew. Then again it probably got a lot of people to go back and appreciate him so there is that. idk. maybe it's just me.

No, not just you.

Realistically, how many “Delia’s Gone”s was he going to come up with?

They were a mixed blessing to be sure. On the positive end he gained a new audience, paved the way for other comebacks (Merle, Loretta etc), and established a lineage between, you know, Tom Petty, Beck, Soundgarden etc. and the Carter Family in the American Music Canon.

OTOH, this at the cost of the broader spectrum of his work, gaining many fans who didn't and/or wouldn't look further or dig deeper. I like to say that Cash is always "The Favorite Country Singer of People Who Don't Like Country (Otherwise)", and The American Recordings is where that started.

Think it may have started well before that but yeah

David Cantwell's marvelous Haggard biography ponders the question of what might've happened to Hag's career if his (solid) '90s albums had gotten the tenth of the hipster massaging afforded to Cash (NB: he does not begrudge Cash's success0.

Speaking for myself, Haggard >>>>> Cash, always and forever.

Hard to argue with

I think Cantwell's recent Tanya Tucker piece for the New Yorker put it pretty well:

Because it’s a late-career country-music comeback, “While I’m Livin’ ” is bound to be compared to Johnny Cash’s “American Recordings.” But Rick Rubin, the producer of the Cash album, succeeded in part by shrinking Cash’s complexity to a kind of two-dimensional rebellion. Carlile and Jennings have done the opposite: Tucker has never sounded so well-rounded.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/tanya-tuckers-new-album-might-be-the-best-of-her-long-underrated-career

(xp)
Although there was that recent flapdoodle when Bob Dylan said that he preferred Buck to Merle.

Alfred otm. In some ways, Cash sounded to me like he was trying to get to where Merle had already been for about a decade.

Idk if Kristofferson warranted all the screentime he got bh

Merle is obviously, at the very least, a better songwriter than Cash. This seems indisputable.

Better guitar player too

I love Cash & Merle equally for different reasons

Personally I really love Cash’s appreciation & love of music (despite my misgivings abt the Rubin stuff)
he had that Elvis quality where it was clear that he worked hard to honor not just the song but the writer/the emotion in his delivery - Peace in the Valley or Sunday Morning Coming Down, you feel how much he enjoys those songs. And his live prison albums at Folsom & San Quentin capture the electricity he had when he could really connect with an audience. Lot of Elvis similarities imo.

(xp)
Probably should add better bandleader as well

Preferring Hag doesn't mean I don't like Cash, let me be clear.

What this series did was kick my ass about finally buying and streaming second-tier worthies like Ricky Skaggs and Keith Whitley, not to mention blasting Patty Loveless' Honky Tonk Angel for the first time in years.

Yeah Cash is great, in different ways

Agreed. VG otm

I thought the Tucker single I reviewed a few weeks ago pretty blah but I'll return.

Where Cash triumphs is in the creation of a mythopoetic self that absorbed a century of country tropes and traditions; his voice lent the amalgam gravitas (can you imagine, to take a minor example, Waylon or Willie or Hag on U2's "The Wanderer"?). To call him inflexible and one-note, as I've seen elsewhere, isn't just wrong but beside the point.

He was def not one note. So many novelty songs, for one thing

He’s one of those one of those people whose legend looms so large that it may sometimes seem that the only options are to accept it all lock stock and barrel or be forced to knock it down a peg.

Tanya Tucker’s new album seems to have the almost the same cover as Bruce Springsteen’s.

Tanya's album is my favorite of this year so far, it's very much in her lane but in a rich, joyful way. I love it so much.

oooh there's the endorsement I needed

btw Reba McEntire's album released earlier this year is marvelous too

Just listened to the first track of that TT album and it sounded pretty good so I will take VG’s word and give the whole thing a whirl.

Okay, that banjo passing ad at the beginning of every episode I could have done without.

Many Generations of "Wagon Wheel".

Which was co-written by Ketch Secor. It all makes sense now. Perhaps this was already explained upthread.