{"id":2448660,"date":"2019-09-12T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-09-12T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=312774"},"modified":"2019-09-12T16:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-09-12T22:00:00","slug":"ken-burns-on-making-his-new-country-music-documentary-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/ken-burns-on-making-his-new-country-music-documentary-series\/","title":{"rendered":"Ken Burns on making his new \u2018Country Music\u2019 documentary series"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Ken Burns photographed at Harris Concert Hall in August.<\/strong>
Lynn Goldsmith<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

In Ken Burns\u2019 editing room hangs a neon sign that reads \u201cIt\u2019s Complicated.\u201d<\/p>\n

The motto has held true across the wide swath of American history the documentarian has covered and certainly does on his latest series for PBS, \u201cCountry Music,\u201d<\/a> which begins airing Sunday night.<\/p>\n

The eight-part, 16-hour series details a surprisingly complicated history of the genre with Burns\u2019 signature depth of archival research, rarely seen photos and original interviews.<\/p>\n

Burns himself was blown away by revelations big and small, from how some of country\u2019s most iconic songs came into being to the central roles that women and African-Americans played in the story of country music.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s why this isn\u2019t just a K-tel record offer, it\u2019s not the TimeLife country music series \u2013 this is a story,\u201d Burns said backstage at Harris Concert Hall last month, before a preview of the film hosted by the Aspen Music Festival and School<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The documentary tracks the history of country from the early 20th century and the days of the Carter Family through the 1990s and the superstardom of Garth Brooks, who defines country music as \u201cthree chords and the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Along the way it traces the music\u2019s role in American culture and counterculture, the evolutions of its sound as well as its place in gender equality and race relations.<\/p>\n

Country music has been intertwined with Burns\u2019 work seemingly from the beginning of his career and his 1988 documentary on the painter Thomas Hart Benton, so it\u2019s a surprise it took him until nearly four decades into his filmmaking career to tackle it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt couldn\u2019t have happened a moment sooner and I\u2019m happy we didn\u2019t start it a moment later,\u201d Burns said.<\/p>\n

A self-proclaimed \u201cchild of R&B and rock\u2019n\u2019roll,\u201d Burns was not a country music fan before this undertaking, which spanned eight years of production. Making the film, however, converted him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was completely unprepared,\u201d Burns said. \u201cIt shattered every preconception I had.\u201d<\/p>\n

The film is arriving into a moment of cultural debate about country and its preconceptions as a regressive artform for and by straight white men. Sunday\u2019s premiere comes on the heels of \u201cOld Town Road\u201d \u2014 a country song by the black, gay rapper Lil Nas X \u2014 breaking the record as the longest reigning No. 1 charting song in history. The song\u2019s success and its unorthodox approach to the country sound underscore the film\u2019s thesis that country is \u2013 and always has been \u2013 more complex and inclusive than it might seem.<\/p>\n

\u201cThanks to Lil Nas X for walking onto the stage and preparing our audience for us,\u201d Burns said. \u201cWe don\u2019t have to prepare anybody or worry about, \u2018Oh, here\u2019s Burns again with his race thing.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Every episode of the series touches on issues of race in country music. It includes sections focused on the banjo, which descended from African instruments that were brought to the U.S. by slaves, on how early country was built from a foundation of spirituals and field songs, and on the fascinating evolution of the melody in Woody Guthrie\u2019s \u201cThis Land Is Your Land\u201d back to the Carter Family\u2019s \u201cLittle Darling, Pal of Mine\u201d to its original source material as a black church hymn.<\/p>\n

Kris Kristofferson calls country \u201cthe white man\u2019s soul music\u201d in the film, but Burns seems to make an argument against that definituon. His film highlights the contributions of African-American artists who have been written out of history, the integration of country music recording sessions as early as the 1920s and it devotes an extended segment to the mid-1960s stardom of Charley Pride.<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody ever believes it, but every time I finish a film it seems to be exactly what the culture wants at that moment,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Each episode also highlights the centrality of women to the country music form, from Maybelle Carter through the trailblazing proto-feminist songs of Loretta Lynn. Burns said he was personally most moved by the story behind Dolly Parton\u2019s \u201cI will Always Love You,\u201d which she wrote to get out from under the thumb of her manipulative and controlling creative partner Porter Wagoner.<\/p>\n

\u201cWomen will look at this film and not believe it was editorially done before the #MeToo movement,\u201d Burns said.<\/p>\n

Aspenites will take particular interest in the sixth part of the series, which digs into the early days of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. The segment focuses on the making of the band\u2019s watershed 1972 triple album, \u201cWill the Circle be Unbroken,\u201d and how it brought together an older and more conservative generation of country music fans with the hippie kids of the day.<\/p>\n

The section includes dozens of photos of the band\u2019s historic six-day Nashville recording session, showing a baby-faced Jimmy Ibbotson alongside country-western legends like Maybell Carter, Earl Scruggs and Roy Acuff, and includes interviews with Dirt Band members John McEuen and Jeff Hanna.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor us, it was like going back to 1928 and making an old record,\u201d John McEuen says in the film. \u201cWe wanted to make an old record.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCountry Music\u201d is built on seemingly comprehensive research, including 101 interviews, 1,000 hours of film and some 100,000 photographs, culled down to the 3,300 featured in the final product.<\/p>\n

Twenty of the interview subjects in the film have since died, including some of the final on-camera interviews with Merle Haggard, Ralph Stanley, and the series standout Hazel Smith \u2013 a folksy and blunt-spoken woman who served as an office manager to Willie Nelson and The Outlaws during their mid-1970s heyday.<\/p>\n

Burns\u2019 research for \u201cCountry Music\u201d overlapped with his 2017 documentary on the Vietnam War, and with forthcoming films on Ernest Hemingway and Muhammad Ali.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey talk to each other all the time,\u201d he said of his always-full slate of projects.<\/p>\n

Burns has four production teams that work on films simultaneously, so he is constantly hopping between seemingly disparate topics for films in various stages of development. For example, Burns was leaving the editing room of \u201cThe Vietnam War\u201d to shoot interviews for \u201cCountry Music,\u201d and he\u2019s now early in editing the Hemingway film and finalizing his voiceover scripts for the Ali project while he\u2019s out promoting \u201cCountry Music,\u201d all while he\u2019s early stages of films on Benjamin Franklin and the Revolutionary War.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a tapestry,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s all woven together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Every project informs the other and deepens his understanding of American culture. He\u2019s made 15 films that cover the U.S. in the 1920s, he noted, and as he put it, \u201cIt\u2019s always a different \u201920s. The flappers show up, the gangsters show up, but the other stuff underneath \u2013 whether it\u2019s \u2018Jazz\u2019 or \u2018Baseball\u2019 or \u2018Country Music\u2019 or \u2018The Roosevelts\u2019 \u2013 it\u2019s a different \u201820s. It\u2019s wonderful. I didn\u2019t think you could wring that much information out of something.\u201d<\/p>\n

atravers@aspentimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ken Burns photographed at Harris Concert Hall in August.Lynn Goldsmith In Ken Burns\u2019 editing room hangs a neon sign that reads \u201cIt\u2019s Complicated.\u201d The motto has held true across the wide swath of American history the documentarian has covered and certainly does on his latest series for PBS, \u201cCountry Music,\u201d which begins airing Sunday night. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2448660","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-26 15:17:24","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2448660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2448660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2448660\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2448660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2448660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2448660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}