The Rub (Beginnings - 1933)

One day I was in college and the lecturer must have been bored and did not feel like teaching. He invited some random friend along who turned up with a guitar and he started talking about Country music, Folk, Blues and Rock n Roll. I mean I was not even studying music, far from it. It was totally unrelated to the subject I was studying.

However I did learn how these various genres of music came about and its historical roots.

The first episode of Ken Burns Country Music documentary reminded me of that afternoon several decades ago.

Folk music, the fiddle from the British Isles, the banjo from Africa, elements of the blues, yodelling led to Hillbilly music. It started out as people migrated from the rural south to work in factories in the big cities. Folk and Hillbilly music was popular as it reminded them of the music they listened to back home.

Eventually they bought records of these popular old songs and new radio stations created playlists of fiddle music that had a popular audience. One radio station was created to sell insurance. Medicine shows used hillbilly acts to attract an audience.

Ken Burns uses old phonographs, old photos to concentrate on two people in this first episode. AP Carter and the Carter family who recorded some songs for RCA Victor in Bristol, Tennessee. Then there was Jimmie Rodgers. Both were given copyright credit as their musical arrangements for old established songs were deemed to be sufficiently different.

Hillbilly music was born but the black roots of that music was already being erased.

As always Burns presents this documentary in a fascinating way. The episode opened with a talking head talking about a painted picture that she used to show in a museum she worked in. It perfectly demonstrated the melting pot of Country music.

This first episode takes us into the foundations of country music, which premiered in the early 20th Century. We are show the influence of the minstrel shows, the voice of religion, and a sort of post Civil War south. It rose from the poor who were able to embrace this music as part of daily life. The main focus, however, is on Jimmy Rodgers and the Carter family. The former was sort of an anything-for-the-music drive, including his self destruction. The Carters were the down-home, reserved figures. It was interesting to see that the popular record industry really took off. Rodgers spoke to the country during the depression because he was the everyman to the poor. I look forward to the next episode.

Not a fan of Ken Burns (particularly his "Jazz" series which I found quite superficial) or country & western music, I was nonetheless impressed with the results of painstaking research in this launch episode, which is so highly informative on the roots of the various genres now classified as Country.

I hope Burns keeps up the level of quality in future episodes, though I expect (as with "Jazz") that his reliance on current self-appointed experts and fans will yield more hyperbole than light on the subject.