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“Hillbilly music” reaches new audiences through phonographs and radio on COUNTRY MUSIC “The Rub (Beginnings – 1933)” from Ken Burns – Thursday, July 6 at 9 pm


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Ken Burns “Country Music”

Thursday nights at 9 pm on WOUB

 

The Original Carter Family, from left: AP, Maybelle and Sara Carter c 1930
The Original Carter Family, from left: AP, Maybelle and Sara Carter c 1930

Explore the history of a uniquely American art form: country music. From its deep and tangled roots in ballads, blues and hymns performed in small settings, to its worldwide popularity, learn how country music evolved over the course of the 20th century, as it eventually emerged to become America’s music. Country Music features never-before-seen footage and photographs, plus interviews with more than 80 country music artists. The eight-part 16-hour series is directed and produced by Ken Burns; written and produced by Dayton Duncan; and produced by Julie Dunfey.

Country Music explores questions — such as “What is country music?” and “Where did it come from?“ — while focusing on the biographies of the fascinating characters who created and shaped it — from the Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers and Bob Wills to Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Loretta Lynn, Charley Pride, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Emmylou Harris, Garth Brooks and many more — as well as the times in which they lived. Much like the music itself, the film tells unforgettable stories of hardships and joys shared by everyday people.

No one has told the story this way before.

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Thursday, July 6 at 9 pm

Episode One |  “The Rub” (Beginnings – 1933)

After centuries of percolating in America’s immigrant and racial mix, particularly in the American South, what was first called “hillbilly music” begins reaching more people through the new technologies of phonographs and radio. The Carter Family, with their ballads and old hymns, and Jimmie Rodgers, with his combination of blues and yodeling, become its first big stars. Rodgers’s career ends when he dies young from tuberculosis.