Ken Burns' COUNTRY MUSIC Documentary

Merle Haggard is an American treasure and you are making him sound terrible!

new board description

Was anyone ever named Eck aside from those that come up in this context?

I love this doc for giving me a quasi vacation to another time and place every time I sit down to watch some of it. It’s like a little daily trip to Countryville ❤️😀

yes! perfect description

wau this one was new to me
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jsy6gqni1go

minor quibbles aside LL otm

https://www.stereogum.com/2058155/ken-burns-country-music-review/franchises/sounding-board/

Also,
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-country/louvin-brothers-movie-satan-is-real-ethan-hawke-836410/

Seem to recall that Roy Acuff actually auditioned twice for the Opry. Having failed the audition the first time he amped up the waterworks when he finally got asked back again for the second go-round.

Okay, just looked it up, he apparently auditioned multiple times over the years. In particular he came on as a guest crooning "The Great Speckled Bird" which flopped miserably but Alton Delmore saw something in him so he was invited back a little while later and he sang it again, this time in the more emotional style which made such a big impression.

So does this go all the way up to the present day? (Peter Coyote: “Taylor Alison Swift was born on a Christmas Tree farm in Reading, Pennsylvania in 1989...”)

From what I read it tapers off a lot by the time it reaches recent decades

The last episode will be packed and rushed just like all his other chronological docs, I bet.

Or like the end of David Lynch's Dune.

It'll just be freeze frames and captions, like the end of "Animal House."

B-b-but at the very end there will be an Easter egg in which there are some Frost Giants in Stetsons planning revenge on Asgard/Nashville.

Okay, am only half-way through last week's offering- I am a Slow Watcher- and, although, I kind of resent the fact that information it took me years to accumulate is now easily available in this digest format and agree with the basic criticisms linked to about it skimping on some deeper analysis, basically finding this a pretty solid offering. Agree with others such as LL and VG about the visuals being extremely useful and about watching this being a little pocket holler universe to escape into.

Whoa, Fred Foster another one of those they interviewed just in time. Had to search and found: Rolling Obituary Thread: 2019

Last episode is supposed to go up to 1996. Why that year, I don't know. Do wonder if that means near the end they'll cover Uncle Tupelo and the 'No Depression' movement.

Of course, they could be lying, and they go ahead a little to spend 30 minutes tracing the lineage of "Wagon Wheel".

Stereogum review I linked to seems indicate that stuff will not be covered. So No No Nanette Depression.

<Sad Jay Farrar Face>

Weird James Redd factoid I feel compelled to add to thread: the first time I heard “Blue Yodel No. 1 (T for Texas) ” was at a Half Japanese show at Maxwell's.

But perhaps one of you first heard it that same way. If not,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0Olph6TlO4

Who is the Cecil Taylor of country & western?

Doug Sahm?

But perhaps one of you first heard it that same way.

Haha, I def heard that via half japanese before I’d ever listened to Jimmie rodgers

Burns is def into having protagonists

Billy Sherrill is to Waylon/Willie as George McClellan was to the Union Army

xpost Willie gets pretty free. Townes was a pretty big impactful country radical, kinda.

Lyle Lovett would be the Count Basie, I guess.

A nice, speedy (in more ways than one) five minutes on Roger Miller.

In the fifth episode?

Because he's mentioned in the fourth, along with Mel Tillis.

Sorry, I am almost caught up on last week's episodes.

Really liking the commentary from Ray Walker of the Jordanaires.

Yeah, in the fifth. They go over his career there in a 5 or so minute segment including a great anecdote from Raplh Emery about his pill use.

Speaking of pills, the whole Pete Seeger show w/June and a jacked-up Johnny is on YT:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ep7Sh9XZ98A

Jack White's Pomphawk is...very Pomphawk-y.

That 'Pretty Little Lady' mastercut is something else.

when they showed the footage of Cash & Dylan at the piano Mr Veg said right away, “wow...he is gacked out of his mind”

weirdly, i’d never noticed before! how dumb is that.

all i know is that now I need a 10 part series on Merle in the worst way. just seeing him talk about his life even briefly makes me tear up. and then Dwight actually crying

i mean

oh Jack White’s pompadour = he’s gone full Ed Grimley now, no turning back.

man, tonight's episode was for me. Bakersfield, Buck, Loretta, Merle, Dolly, Cash ... whew.

Wondering if that Dwight interview was conducted in the immediate wake of Merle's passing.

BTW, I don't know how easy it is to track down, but the Haggard American Masters episode from about 10 years ago is killer: loads of great vintage footage framed by clips of Merle and his wife driving around Bakersfield looking for important places from his past.

so far my favorite line from this show is "he was named after a mule he admired"

I assume they're saving George Jones for the 70s...? He's been referenced a few times and popped up in photos, but otherwise he's conspicuously absent.

Yeah, they get to George in the late '60s/early '70s.

Do not sleep on an ace 2018 Ace Import of a very belatedly released, very live George---here's a tweet briefly expanded for my Nashville Scene ballot:
George Jones/Jones Boys: Live in TX '65: Brave ballads of self-torture x "C Jam Blues," "White Lightnin'," "Bony Maronie," "B Bowman Bop." Panhandle Rag," "Jole Blon," JB trusty/Bladerunner crooner also cool w girl part on "We Must Have Been Out of Our Minds," heavy guests too, incl. steel guitarist Buddy Emmons and fiddlers Red Hayes and (on "Jole Blond") Rufus Thibodeaux ("Two-By-Four," George calls him). The JBs crooner is Don Adams---android-sounding, strangely(?) satisfying.

xxxxpost Wynton, Nate Chinen's excellent Playing Changes: Jazz For The New Century(2018) incl. intriguing descriptions of his earliest releases, in which he did apparently do his and his combo's damnest(s?) to put his money where his mouth was, with strenuous excursions on his versions of the post-avan cutting edge, or something like that Yadda yadda when he did, some years after taking reins of Jazz At Lincoln Center, become more the Complete Entertainer----dig United We Swing: Best of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Galas, with Willie and Dylan and Blind Boys of Alabama and Ray Charles, also some lesser lights shining at best they can themselves---and yeah his xpost first w Willie and also their tribute to Ray, with horns like Cab Calloway Orchestra at its 30s wildest, also Snorah Jones sprinkling a little blue dream dust there at the right moments.

Best of last night, visually: Long tall JC's pilled, incredible shrinking mouse face keeps atop his roller coaster lankiness. Did not know that he was dogged for supposedly having "Negro" wife!
Rosannn, affectionately: "Dylan knew the melody [to 'I Still Miss Someone'} better than Dad did."
JC, smiling: "You've changed the melody."
Dylan, enthusiastically: "Yeah I changed the mel-oh-deee."

Didn't see whole ep, but also appreciated Merle on young Loretta: "She sung her way out of prison." And sounded like he might be right that her singing on the first single, "Honky Tonk Girl," was her best ever, although she still makes really good albums.

Really liking the commentary from Ray Walker of the Jordanaires. Fave that I heard was his description of how Patsy had Willie's demo phrasing stuck in her head, which didn't fit the preordained slower, shuffle-y arrangement---but then she did it, speeding up just for a liminal flickering vibration of "Crazy"-ness during the last note of every line, like she's gonna fly off the perch, but...

Xpost'96, eh? If it ends with the circus flashpot soap opry of Garth, bringing Chris LeDoux Aerosmith Elton John Billy Joel Knights In Satan's Service, and some good self-written weirdo ballads, into demographically apt realms and reams of mainstream country family entertainment, that'll be a good place to end it.

Cash & Dylan at the piano

I don't think I'd ever seen this before, unless it shows up in mangled form in Eat the Document...?