Country music offers an American road map
From Luckenbach, Texas, to Rocky Top, Tennessee, the stops tell us the story
NASHVILLE— Country music is a uniquely American art form, with roots in the fiddle from European immigrants and the African banjo all the way through its explosion as a commercial art form that has reflected the country’s social, economic and cultural changes.
Ken Burns tells the story of the genre in his new PBS documentary series “Country Music,” which airs in eight parts over 16 hours.
Burns and his filmmaking partners, Dayton Duncan and Julie Dunfey, sifted through hundreds of hours of footage and audio, and there’s a wealth of accompanying material for those who want to dig deeper.
The storytelling of country music connects a wide swath of Americans. For many country writers, their lyrics were inspired by real places and real people. A scan of popular country song titles illustrates a country music road map of America.
Here are a few spots you can visit that have been etched into country music lore:
Luckenbach, Texas There are few towns more seeped in country music history than this unincorporated outpost in Texas hill country. Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings sang about yearning to go back to this place, but it wasn’t always that way. The town was abandoned in the ’60s and put up for sale. Hondo Crouch, an eccentric rancher, and his friends bought the town and reopened the dance hall. Outlaw country singer Jerry Jeff Walker recorded his album “Viva Terlingua” there, but it was the crossover hit by Jennings in 1977 that put the outlaws and this sleepy town on the map.
If you go: luckenbachtexas.com
Tallahatchie Bridge, Mississippi Bobbie Gentry’s No. 1 hit “Ode to Billie Joe” in 1967 turned her into a star with her swampy, Delta voice and conversational lyrics about a boy who jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge. Nobody knows why Billie Joe jumped and Gentry herself became a disappearing act in the 1980s, but you can ponder those mysteries as you walk across the bridge in Money, Mississippi, about 16 kilometres from where she lived in Greenwood as a child. Writer Tara Murtha, who wrote a book about Gentry’s debut album, “Ode to Billie Joe,” said Gentry confirmed the bridge in Money was the one that inspired her song, but the original bridge collapsed in the 1970s and has been replaced.
If you go: mscountrymusictrail.org
Rocky Top, Tennessee Written by master songwriters Boudleaux and Felice Bryant, this bluegrass standard was originally recorded by the Osborne Brothers. It has since become an official Tennessee state song and the fight song for the University of Tennessee football team. The real Rocky Top is not at the football stadium, but a rocky outcropping on the Appalachian Trail in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It’s a steep, strenuous nearly 23-km round-trip hike, but you’ll be treated to some of the most stunning 360degree view of the mountains.
If you go: nps.gov/appa/ index.htm
Paradise, Kentucky This now-defunct Western Kentucky town along the Green River was immortalized by John Prine in “Paradise” as an example of the impact on strip mining in Appalachia, a town literally ripped off the map. Tom T. Hall and John Denver both recorded versions of the song and Prine’s lament became a protest song for environmentalists. In the song, Peabody Coal was responsible for the town’s destruction and Peabody tried for decades to rebut the song. In truth, the town was purchased by the Tennessee Valley Authority in the 1960s, its buildings demolished and a coal-fired plant built. TVA now plans to shift to more efficient energy production. Today, there’s not much to see in Paradise but the plant’s three cooling towers, mounds of coal and a declining coal industry.
Chattahoochee River, Georgia The toe-tapping river song “Chattahoochee” was one of the biggest hits of Alan Jackson’s career. The iconic music video features Jackson water skiing in ripped-up blue jeans and his white cowboy hat. However, because it was too cold at the time to shoot on the Chattahoochee when they made the video, most of the music video was actually shot on Lake Butler in Florida.
If you go: nps.gov/chat/ index.htm ‘Wabash Cannonball’ This early American train ballad is the oldest song listed among the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 songs that shaped rock ’n’ roll. This became Roy Acuff’s signature song, but it dates back much earlier. The original was called “The Great Rock Island Route,” credited to J. A. Roff in 1882 sheet music. Later, the name was changed to “The Wabash Cannonball,” a reference to a major rail system that went from Detroit to St. Louis. It was also recorded by the Carter Family. The Wabash Railroad is no longer chugging along, but portions of its tracks have been turned into nature trails in the Midwest. In Ohio, the Wabash Cannonball Trail is a nearly 105-km scenic trail system in northern Ohio. In Iowa, the Wabash Trace Nature Trail is a 101-km trail in southwest Iowa to the Missouri border.
If you go: wabashcannonballtrail.org and wabashtrace.org