GONE COUNTRY
Ken Burns' documentary series delves into `Country Music' history
For a century, countless musicians, pundits and fans have tried to define precisely what country music is and what it isn't.
But after eight years, dozens of interviews and eight episodes, celebrated documentarian Ken Burns and his team have learned that the genre isn't quite so easy to delineate.
“There are a lot of people who whether they like country music or say they don't like it, they think it's this one thing. But it's not. It's so many things,” said producer Julie Dunfey in a phone interview. “What we found … is country music was never one thing. It's got many tangled roots, and it's sprouted many branches. … So, it's a big, big story.”
Burns' eight-part, 16 1/2hour documentary series “Country Music” premieres Sept. 15 on PBS. Ahead of the public television debut, the Oklahoma Educational Television Authority will host two free previews this weekend of the eagerly awaited series.
“Ken Burns' work is the gold standard in documentary filmmaking,” said Polly Anderson, executive director of OETA, in a statement. “And, since country music is the sound of Oklahoma, our state will be featured heavily in this new docuseries.”
Both OETA screening events — Friday night in Edmond and Saturday night in Tulsa— will feature a sneak preview of clips and question-and-answer session with writer/producer Dayton Duncan and Dunfey.
“I'm looking at the list of Oklahomans we interviewed: It's Garth (Brooks), Reba (McEntire), Roy Clark, Wanda Jackson, Vince Gill, Jean Shepard,” she said.
“And stories, it's Gene Autry, Roger Miller, Bob Wills. Merle Haggard has Okie ancestry that he very much felt living in the Central Valley of California. Woody Guthrie, we cover his kind of ties and influences from country music. Leon Russell opens Episode 6 singing `Will the Circle Be Unbroken.' … That's a lot.”
Big arc
Although they have covered sprawling topics like the Civil War and the Dust Bowl in past projects, Dunfey said “Country Music” turned out to be bigger than Burns and his team anticipated.
“( Duncan) originally wrote seven episodes, and there was one episode we just couldn't cut it down — and we're really good at getting things to an hour and 56 minutes. But there was one that there was too much, so we wound up with eight episodes. And actually that same time period that we were having trouble with, Episode 7, is two hours and 20 minutes. We had to get special dispensation from PBS because we just couldn't get it down,” she said with a chuckle.
The series focuses on how country music evolved in the 20th century, from the earliest recordings in the 1920s through the emergence of an Oklahoma superstar in the 1990s.
“We like to consider ourselves historians, and we feel like we need about a generation's arm's length to say, `Oh, that was a turning point' or `This artist represented something new.' ... So, we do end it with the rise of Garth Brooks,” Dunfey said.
“It's funny, Ken often says we're never making our films about the current moment, but we put our heads down for several years and when we come up at the end of the film, we often find some echoes. … This script was written and we were editing by 2015 or so, and there are scenes in there that you'll think, `Oh, well, they must have written that after the #MeToo movement.' Well, we didn't.”
Anticipated release
In addition to the national preview screenings, PBS will debut a two-hour special, “Country Music: Live at the Ryman, A Concert Celebrating the Film By Ken Burns,” Sunday, leading up to the eight-part series' Sept. 15 premiere.
“I don't have any other conversation when I go out now except `Country Music.' So, I'm actually really happy that people can see it so we can have more of a conversation,” Dunfey said with a laugh.
“The stories are just amazing, whether they're the stories of the people who made the music or the stories behind the songs. Ultimately, it is all about storytelling. It's not an encyclopedia. I'm sure we will get letters about, `You didn't include this artist and you didn't do my favorite song.' For every story or artist we picked to represent the point we're trying to make, there's probably 10 or 15 we couldn't include. … It's an American art form, and it's really exciting to finally be sharing it with other people.”