Country Music

Ken Burns 16-hour film airs on AETN

Ken Burns’ new eight-part, 16-hour series Country Music will air at 7 p.m. starting today through Wednesday, and Sept. 22-25 on AETN. The film is directed and produced by Burns and his longtime collaborators Dayton Duncan and his wife, Julie Dunfey. Duncan wrote the series and the illustrated companion book that chronicles the highs and lows of country music’s early days. The series covers music from southern Appalachia’s songs of struggle, heartbreak and faith to the Western swing of Texas, California’s honky-tonks and Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry.

Country Music explores questions such as, “What is country music?” and “Where did it come from?” It also focuses on biographies of trailblazers who created and shaped it. Those include Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Loretta Lynn, Patsy Cline, Hank Williams, Willie Nelson, Charlie Pride, Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, Garth Brooks and Bill Monroe.

The film digs deep to uncover the roots of the music, including ballads, minstrel music, hymns and the blues, and the early years in the 1920s when it was called “hillbilly music” and was recorded for the first time to play across the airwaves. It explores the fad of singing cowboys including Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, and the rise of juke joints after World War II when the style changed by bringing in electric and pedal steel guitars.

The narrative ends in the mid-’90s around the time of the rise of Garth Brooks, who emerged from a small venue in Nashville to achieve success that helped bring country music to a new level of popularity.

Arkansas’ own Johnny Cash was a songwriter, guitarist, actor and author, one of the best-selling music artists of all time, having sold more than 90 million rcords worldwide. Cash is among the artists profiled in Ken Burn’s Country Music on AETN.