Ken Burns Explores Country Music’s Origins in New PBS Series

(Bloomberg) -- Before Blake Shelton, Carrie Underwood and arena shows there was a humbler side to country music, arguably the most uniquely American art form. Filmmaker Ken Burns explores that history over 16 hours in a PBS series starting on Sunday.

In the eight-part documentary, Emmy-award winning Burns examines country music through the decades from its hillbilly roots in Scotch-Irish ballads, hymns and blues to mainstream acceptance, perennial debates about what is or isn’t “authentic,” and today’s vast popularity and big business.

“Country music had always been sort-of on that big huge list of 1,000 things that you wanted to do,” said Burns, 66. “It’s phenomenally great music, about people who felt their stories weren’t being told. I think that’s utterly American.”

Among the legends whose work is explored are pioneers like the Carter Family and Bob Wills, along with icons Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson, as well as performers including Garth Brooks who helped country cross into the mainstream. Burns and his team interviewed more than 100 people for the project including several, like Merle Haggard, who died during the course of production.

“You can dance to it, you can make love to it, you can play it at a funeral,” said Dolly Parton, the multiple Grammy-award winning singer and songwriter who emerged from the Smoky Mountains of eastern Tennessee to become one of country’s most enduring talents. “It has something in it for everybody.”

Burns is the creator behind PBS series including “Baseball,” “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea” and “The Civil War,” the highest-rated series in the network’s history. He directed “Country Music” alongside producer and writer Dayton Duncan and producer Julie Dunfey, both long-time collaborators.

The series will delve into such topics as the prevalence of strong women performers, and the influence of blues, dominated by black Americans.

“The songs are just life,” said Loretta Lynn, 87, a coal miner’s daughter and sometime resident of “Fist City.” “I sing it, or I’ve lived it.” Lynn was briefly shunned by country music radio after penning “The Pill” in 1975, celebrating birth control.

The first episode of “Country Music” -- focused on how homespun music reached a wider audience via radio and phonographs, creating the genre’s first stars -- airs on Sunday at 8pm EDT on PBS and on the PBS video app.

To contact the reporter on this story: Ros Krasny in Washington at rkrasny1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: James Ludden at jludden@bloomberg.net, Virginia Van Natta, Ian Fisher

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