Country Music: A Film by Ken Burns…
Episode four: Ready to chalk up previous detachment from country music to this episode’s message: it’s all about business. Plus stars. And probably pretense for the commoner’s story. Feels 85% of first four episodes has been entirely new awareness about a cloaked landscape. It is “radio” America to someone with lifelong habit of tuning out radio. Who is the 20th century American who hasn’t paid attention to radio? All of country music begins with radio.
Episode five: Dwight Yoakam at 1:21:35 talks about his favorite of Merle Haggard’s, “Holding Things Together,” and the father who is left to raise the kids. Now it’s no longer radio America, now it’s LPs in younger brother’s room and reverential tone when lauding Merle. Now it’s Yoakam’s birthplace near Route 23 near a place called Raccoon and near where early 19th century ancestor from Virginia married a Kentucky daughter. Now it’s learning about the shame of being called Okie and the SoCal grandmother who stretched truths: her age and saying she was from Missouri, not born in Okmulgee. And now it’s television memory, and about Ray Charles, Charley Pride, Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton, and young girl memory of Barbara Mandrell. And finally it’s stepping away from stars and considering session musicians like Charlie McCoy who plays the train sounds in Orange Blossom Special on two harmonicas at 0:29:08.
Tuesday, August 25th, local, 10:18 CDT:
Mercury 10° 39′ Virgo trine Uranus Rx Taurus
Saturday, August 29th, local, 8:28 CDT:
Mercury 17° 44′ Virgo trine Jupiter Rx Capricorn
Image: Issued May 28, 1998. Copyright United States Postal Service. All rights reserved.