everybodyfeelliketheyarea partofthestorythemselves.”
PBSprogrammingchiefPerrySimonadds,“Aswithsomanyoftheir
films,KenandDaytonguideusonajourneythroughhistorythateducates
andentertains,providing an intimate look into the creative lives of those
women and men who came together to develop an authentic American art
form.”
Not surprisingly, Burns reports that he is busy on many new fronts:
working on biographies of Ernest Hemingway, Muhammad Ali and Benjamin
Franklin, as well as a “biography of an animal, the buffalo,” and histories of the
United States and the Holocaust, the American Revolution and more.M
eanwhile, back at the honky-tonk, it’s no surprise that Johnny Cash
receives the most attention, appearing in five of the eight episodes.
Country Music profiles his every major move, from the early days as a
Sun Records rockabilly maverick to his status as the grand old man of country
when he died in 2003. As record producer Tony Brown says, “Johnny Cash was
more than an artist — he was a way of life for America.”
Cash embodies everything that Burns, Duncan and Dunfey find appealingabout country music: not only was he constantly creative and consistently
faithful to his musical ideas, but he served as the greater conscience of the
music. He championed the underdog and the downtrodden, always fighting
for social justice.
In fact, the Cash story provides a compelling template for country
greatness: his rise from sharecropping in Arkansas to the top of the Billboard
charts, his subsequent fall into despair and drug abuse, and his eventual
redemption and resurrection as country’s uncrowned king. Then, after thirty
years at Columbia Records, he was ignominiously dropped from the label,
which inspired a wave of mourning across the country world.
Yet he came back to make a series of well-received albums with
influential rap and rock producer Rick Rubin, which helped end his career on
a high note. Cash’s triumphs and tribulations are lovingly detailed in the last
episode of Country Music.
For all that, he may have reached his most transcendent moment in- That’s when Cash, a spiritual heir to such ramblers as Jimmie Rodgers
and Hank Williams, formed a personal and musical union with June Carter of
the Carter Family — thus merging Saturday night and Sunday morning... for
a while.
Johnny Cash at home in California, 1960