![]() ![]() I sat down and wrote him and Dayton a fan letter, because I was always a fan of their work. “A few years ago, my wife, Connie, said she heard Ken Burns say he was thinking about doing something on country music. “Ken and his team really understand how to educate and entertain at the same time,” Stuart, 60, said in another interview. Veteran songwriter, singer and multi-instrumentalist Stuart, who got his start as a teenage prodigy hired by bluegrass pioneer Lester Flatt, is well-known in country circles as an obsessive historian, collector and cataloger of country’s history. For our storytelling, we’ve got the material we need from these people, and that gives it a little different flavor.” We decided we don’t really have to necessarily find a lot of historians. “So are Vince Gill, Ricky Skaggs, Emmylou Harris and many others. “Rosanne Cash also knows a lot about it, is passionate and articulate about it and also is able to see the big picture,” adds Duncan. Marty Stuart, for instance, figures prominently, as, in the words of Duncan, “we discovered we didn’t need to go to historians who were an arm’s length away to bring this story to life.” While producer Duncan notes that they interviewed Bill Malone, who Duncan calls “the patriarch of country music historians,” the series puts a heavy emphasis on artist insights. They reflect on music that has roots reaching back hundreds of years to antecedents in Europe and Africa, illustrating the genre’s evolution up through the predetermined historical cutoff point of 1996. In this case, as with his 10-part, 19-hour “Jazz” series in 2001, “Country Music” also incorporates dozens of musical performances plus archival and new interviews with key musical figures. In many respects, the new series will reflect the signature Burns style: slow pans across, in and out of historical photos, vintage film and video footage, on-camera interviews, exhaustive historical research and even-handed narration by actor Peter Coyote. ![]() That concert, for which Burns and Dayton worked closely with Sally Williams, SVP and GM of the Ryman and the Grand Ole Opry, will be filmed and broadcast in the fall in conjunction with the film series itself. Many of the contemporary musicians interviewed for the project will take part in an all-star concert March 27 at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, widely known as the “Mother Church of Country Music” it’s also the longtime home of the influential Grand Ole Opry revues and radio broadcasts. We just proceed working with our films and trying to master the story, but it never surprises me when we look up and find that they are speaking to the moment.” “It’s the Mark Twain school of history - that idea attributed to him that ‘history doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes,’” Burns said. He’s referring to the groundswell of Americans disenchanted with the political process, as reflected in the results of the 20 elections, and how that feeling is mirrored in the story of country music, which was born as an expression of people and subjects largely ignored by other styles popular in urban areas.
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