Is anybody watching the Country Music series by Ken Burns on PBS this week? There are a lot of great stories on there.
Don’t have TV or PBS, but do have computer and YouTube. Thanks for the heads up, I’ll have to keep an eye out to see if its available.
There’s also PBS Passport. I found out the hard way that they don’t keep things on there forever, but it makes it much easier to watch hours of documentary when you can dial it up as you please.
One thing I found interesting was learning that it wasn’t called “Country and Western” music until the 1950’s. Before that it was called “old-timey” music or “hillbilly” music, or just “folk” music. About the same time that the term “Country and Western” came into vogue, the music industry also started using the term “Rhythm and Blues”. Up until then they had simply called that style “Black” music or “Race” music. Honestly. That’s what they called it! The music industry took it for granted that white people wouldn’t want to listen to it any more than black people would want to listen to white music. Meanwhile the early country music legends were learning to perform from black street corner musicians and borrowing their styles.
Must be about the time the suits figured out that by owning musicians and their music they (the suits) could get rich.
Thanks for the tip Lausten.