Ken Burns’s ‘Country Music’ will appeal to more than diehards
Country Music, the latest opus from documentary-maker Ken Burns, is barely under way when Dolly Parton appears on screen singing the praises of the genre that made her a household name.
“You can dance to it. You can cry to it. You can make love to it. You can play it at a funeral,” she says. “It just really has something in it for everybody.”
And with that, the doors swing wide open, inviting one and – yes, all – to hunker down for an enthralling eight-night, 16-hour deep dive into the history and colorful characters of what Burns calls “the art that tries to tell the stories of those who feel like their stories aren’t being told.”
Spanning six-plus decades, the series explores country music from its early days
when so-called “hillbilly music” performed in small settings began to reach a wider audience. It goes on to trace its evolution through the Western swing of Texas, California’s honky tonks and Nashville’s “Grand Ole Opry.”
Along the way, it celebrates the trailblazing stars who shaped the genre. The Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers and Hank Williams all get their due. And so do Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Loretta Lynn, Charley Pride, Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris, Garth Brooks and many more.
Burns, who famously dissected jazz over a 10-part series in 2001, describes himself as “a child of rock & roll and R&B.” In fact, country music wasn’t even on his filmmaking radar until 2010, when a friend he was staying with in Texas suggested it as a potential project.
“And it just hit me like a ton of bricks,” he recalled.
He’s confident it will have a similar impact on viewers – even those who believe they have no interest in country music, and/or dismiss it as a lesser branch of pop culture.
“I think [some people] cloak country music in one aspect it – of hound dogs and pickup trucks and good ol’ boys and six packs of beer,” he said. “That’s because it’s really hard to acknowledge that it deals with some incredibly deep things and two four-letter words that are very difficult to talk about – love and loss.”
That, and it’s a lot more universal than some might think. Throughout the series, Burns and his writing and producing partners Dayton Duncan and Julie Dunfey go out of their way to challenge the notion that country music is the exclusive province of white folks in cowboy hats, or that it can be easily pigeonholed.
Segments of the early episodes delve into the often overlooked contributions of African Americans and how country music crosses borders and intersects with other forms of music, including jazz, R&B, the blues, folk and rock.
“ONE OF the things that we learned and I hope comes through in the film is that country music was never just one type of music,” said Duncan, who wrote the film’s script. “It’s been lots of types of music from the get-go, and it branched into even more multiple types of music.”
As for crossover appeal, long before Lil Nas X ushered listeners down the “Old Town Road,” Ray Charles had a huge hit with a “country” song – “I Can’t Stop Loving You.” The Beatles recorded a Buck Owens tune. Bob Dylan and Cash were mutual admirers. And then there was jazz great Charlie Parker, who when asked by bandmates one night why he was wearing out a jukebox full of country songs, simply replied, “Listen to the stories.”
For Burns, the project was “as real, important, and emotionally compelling as any film we’ve made.” Indeed, it is packed full of remarkable human stories – stories that delve into both triumph and tragedy. Of the latter, there are the kind of tales that would make for an entire double album of country heartbreak – covering financial hardships, marital strife, substance abuse and the plane crash that claimed Cline at age 30.
There are also the stories behind the songs. How many knew, for example, that Parton’s enduring ballad “I Will Always Love You,” was written as a farewell kissoff to an overbearing Porter Wagoner? He featured Parton on his popular TV show for several years and had continually resisted her efforts to branch out on her own.
As usual, a substantial number of interviews – 101 in this case – are used to guide the narrative. But unlike past Burns projects that relied heavily on historians, only one appears in Country Music.
“What we discovered in doing our interviews is that so many of the artists, musicians and producers were historians of their work,” Dunfey said. “They know where they came from. They knew the songs, they knew the traditions .... That was really a revelation to us. And it’s, in some ways, a more intimate way to approach [things]. There is a different connection there. It’s coming from their art.”
Burns and his team spent eight years weaving the various threads of Country Music together. Over that span, 20 of their interview subjects, including Merle Haggard, died. They were lucky enough to sit down with him during a two-night stand at the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas in 2014 and are glad they did. Haggard is one of the few artists who appears in every episode of the film, dispensing some of the most insightful quotes along the way.
“We tried to do justice to as many as we could, but him in particular,” Burns said of the singer some refer to as the “poet of the common man.” “I feel like he’s God or Zeus in this film. Every time he speaks, it’s like a thunder bolt coming down.”