I am a country fan, though I've always thought of myself as more of a fan of specific artists than of the genre as a whole. I've been a longtime fan of Buck Owens and Chet Atkins (Chet is my guitar god - I can play dozens of his songs at about half the speed!), but I know next to nothing about Waylon Jennings and Merle Haggard. But this series gave me a great education on them, and many others. And I loved that they spent so much time interviewing people like Rosanne Cash and Marty Stuart who are steeped in the music's history and can discuss it with great insight.
I tried to watch it during the first run, but after a few nights I knew I wouldn't have the time. Fortunately, one of the stations in my area was running one episode a week on Saturday afternoons, so after a couple months I caught up. I saw the final episode last weekend, which was a month after my dad died suddenly. The last episode had a segment on the Kathy Mattea ballad "Where've You Been," which I've heard hundreds of times but never made me cry before. Then the very next segment was on ANOTHER weeper about death, Vince Gill's "Go Rest High on That Mountain." So it was a real double whammy! But stuff like that is what country does so well that no other genre can do. And Burns' documentary examined that well without wallowing in it. On Saturday, November 16, 2019 at 1:26:24 PM UTC-5, PGage wrote: > > I binged the Doc last weekend, and was surprised by how much I liked it, > given that I knew little about the genre, and liked little of what I knew. > I am wondering if my positive reaction was a function of my ignorance; I > know more about Jazz, and a lot more about baseball, and had more issues > with those docs (I am re-watching Jazz now to remember more clearly what > those were). I am wondering what real country music fans thought of the > show? I found it to be interesting pop history, but it did not really make > me want to listen to more Country Music, aside from those on the margins > that I already listen to. > > It helped me that so much of the show was built around the Carter-Cash > Family, and Hank Williams, since Williams and Cash are two of the few > country acts I know and like. I was also pleased to see the emphasis in the > later episodes on acts that I think of as only quasi Country, and are among > my favorites (e.g. Willy Nelson and Emmylou Harris). > > The show shed some light on the seeming authenticity fetish in country > music (here my main information comes from Blake Shelton on The Voice). I > have been wondering for some years why he makes such a big deal about being > “real country blah blah blah” but now I gather this is more a counter to > the pop crossover pressure than an attack on non-country artists. But it > raised another question - Shelton seems to often use Patsy Cline and > Loretta Lyn as hallmarks of the classic country music sound when evaluating > female country singers on the show, yet the Burn’s doc seems to tell us > that Cline and Lyn are products of the “Nashville Sound”, which I > understood to be a more orchestrated pop crossover sound than original, > twangy Country. Shouldn’t that make Cline (whose voice I actually love) and > Lyn *less* authentic? > > My main disappointment with the show was how Burns seemed to soft peddle > the racial, and often, racist, associations in Country Music. The main > thesis of the show is that Country Music is about nostalgia; left unsaid is > that much of that nostalgia in the 1920s and 30s was for the antebellum > South, and since the 1960s for a pre Civil Rights era when the South could > be what it wanted to be without interference from the federal government. > I’m not saying Country Music is racist, or that most fans of Country Music > are racist, but I do think part of its roots are in this racist soil, and > Burns only lightly and infrequently touches on it. > -- > Sent from Gmail Mobile > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/533597fd-d418-4b38-b98e-96eeca601ffa%40googlegroups.com.
