Ken Burns' COUNTRY MUSIC Documentary

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.

ohhh THATS what that song was?
>:(

i woke up one morning with “comin my way outta north caroline” in my head and i was SO annoyed

Even better, he fleshed out the original Dylan skeleton while he was in prep school.

AP Carter didn't go to prep school.

I just watched _The Third Man_ in full for the first time

AP Carter didn't go to prep school.

https://www.savingcountrymusic.com/biggest-oversights-in-the-ken-burns-country-music-documentary/

Thanks. I don’t know much about Don Williams, used to get him confused with Don Gibson, but I love this song he wrote and performed when he was more of a folkie with the Pozo-Seco singers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSybml7XsH4

Hm. Maybe he didn’t write it.

Nope. And only sang backup and strummed guitar probably. Still, I only learned about the Pozo-Seco Singers recently and for me they really hit the spot of old school Renfaire folk rock.

I went the other way. I bought a Pozo Seco record back in the 90s, but never investigated Don Williams solo until he died a couple years back. A bit about how Don had a big west African fanbase would've been worth including in the series, imo.

There's a tiny subgenre of future Country guys in Psych bands like that, including Jerry Jeff Walker in Circus Maximus and Steve Young in Stone Country. Townes Van Zandt supposedly played bass for the 13th Floor Elevators on occasion.

Okay I think I got it straight now: Don Gibson was the Sad Poet and Don Williams was the Gentle Giant.

I saw Townes Van Zandt open for Jimmie Dale Gilmore at The Bottom Line once and I have to say, while I am usually pretty tolerant of people’s eccentricities, he kind of freaked me out a bit.

I liked the story about how when he worked with the Cowboy Junkies, he asked had any of them shot up on a horse.

I actually lived in Austin for a few years, but hardly ever crossed paths with any of the notables, although I did see Joe Ely in a coffee shop once and almost housesat for Steve Young while he was going on a State Department tour of Mongolia or something. Then a few weeks after I moved back to NYC I walked out of my office on 52nd street and saw Jimmie Dale Gilmore pass right in front of me.

I think maybe I did laundry once with someone who lived in a place as Lucinda Williams used to live and had one of her shirts/famous people I have known

Good thing I wasn’t asked to be a talking head on that show or I would have really wasted time.

lol

I might have recited the lyrics to Gary Stewart’s “Single Again,” then gotten a little emotional and said “That’s good!”

Oh, did they mention Gary Stewart?
So glad for incl. music and comments of Jeannie Seely, but was Merle's mention of Lefty Frizzell (as his inspiration) the only one?

Did not realize that Charlie McCoy played that excellent guitar on "Desolation Row!" And that this chance encounter, leading to one-or-two take otm, led D. to A-List-Nashvillecatville.