CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: SONY MUSIC ARCHIVES; HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES; PBS32 | Rolling Stone | August 2019
K
EN BURNS was in Dallas
some years ago visiting a
good friend, philanthro-
pist Cappy McGarr. The
filmmaker was working on his 2012
Depression-era miniseries, The Dust
Bowl, and as usual for a work aholic
who often has six or seven films brew-
ing, Burns was turning over ideas
for his next project. When McGarr
suggested tackling country music, “it
just exploded in my brain — like, of
course,” Burns says. “And as we got
into it, we saw that it was as real, im-
portant, and emotionally compelling
as any film we’ve made.”
Country Music (which premieres on
PBS on September 15th) is Burns’ first
major release since 2017’s unsettling,
highly acclaimed The Vietnam War, and
his second deep dive into American
music, following 2001’s Jazz. It’s scarce-
ly less exhaustive: At 16.5 hours spread
across eight episodes, Country Music
distills 101 interviews, more than 700
hours of archival clips, and 100,000
still photos into a story as complex and
multifaceted as the nation it mirrors. It
takes a sweepingly broad view of the
genre, from so-called hillbilly songs (in
truth a stew of Anglo-American folk,
African American blues, and multicul-
tural spirituals) to Western swing and
bluegrass, cowboy and honky-tonk
tunes, countrypolitan ballads and out-
law jams. There are also detours into
the styles that country music irre-
ducibly informed: rock & roll, rock-
abilly, country rock, and Americana.
Country fans will be gobsmacked. And
those who think they have no interestin the genre will have to think again.
Country Music might well be the most
ambitious, culturally resonant music
documen tary ever made.
As the series notes, all four Beatles
were country fans; so was Charlie
Parker. Figures outside the country
ecosystem — Jack White, Paul Simon,
Wynton Marsalis — supply perspec-
tive, along with an estimable historian
(Bill Malone, author of the recently up-
dated 1968 cornerstone Country Music
USA). But mostly the story is told by
the music’s own stars and side people,
many of whom are passionate histori-
ans themselves. “We went in assuming
we’d have a more substantial represen-
tation from ‘experts,’ and from outside
of country,” says Burns. “We didn’t
need them. [The country people]
know their story really, really well.”
That story begins with the music’s
so-called big bang: The Carter Family
and Jimmie Rodgers recording at the
legendary Bristol Sessions in Tennesseein 1927. Their stories weave through the
series — part via the Carter-Cash dynas-
ty, beginning when Johnny Cash falls in
love with June Carter; part via Rodgers
acolyte Merle Haggard, whose own
life intersects with Cash’s when Hag-
gard sees him perform at San Quen-
tin State Prison while Haggard is an
inmate there. That was a life-chang-
ing encounter, spurring Haggard on a
path to become one of America’s great-
est songwriters, and his account of it
is one of the series’ many wrenching
moments. “Merle is in virtually every
episode,” notes writer Dayton Duncan,
the series’ co-producer with Burns and
Julie Dunfey. A longtime Burns collab-
orator, Duncan spent several hours
with Haggard, who served, in some of
the final interviews of his life, as both
subject and ad hoc history consultant.
Rosanne Cash was also among the
first artists Burns and his team ap-
proached. She had initial reservations
about how the music’s story would beKen Burns’
Country Epic
The filmmaker’s 16-hour
documentary is a
journey into the nation’s
rowdy, sentimental,
multicultural soul
By WILL HERMES
FILMDolly Parton
with writer-
producer
Dayton
Duncan
and BurnsJohnny Cash at home
in California, 1960Loretta
Lynn at the
Grand Ole
Opry in the
SixtiesThe Mix