It takes a rub to spark a flame.
On the debut episode of 16-hour PBS documentary epic “Country Music,” Ken Burns tackles “The Rub” that ignited an American musical flame.
The story begins nearly 100 years ago, with Burns and film writer Dayton Duncan welcoming viewers to an America before the genre’s “Big Bang” in Bristol, Tennessee; before the Grand Ole Opry debuted as an insurance-selling barn dance on AM airwaves; and before music of the American South would be marketed as that of “hillbillies.”
Yes, it covers all of that (the filmmakers conducted 101 interviews and collected roughly 100,000 photos before editing “Country Music”), but first introduces the friction used to spark a sound: A banjo, brought to America by African slaves, and a fiddle, passed down from Irish and Scottish descent into working class Appalachia.
“It’s these different cultures rubbing and different instruments coming together that really is the genesis for this great art form,” Duncan told the USA TODAY Network – Tennessee. “It’s an image and it’s a moment in the film where you’re really starting to feel things in a different way.”
Black and white culture intertwined in the American South, birthing music that captured stories later recorded and commercialized for the early 20th century working class.
“Friction is a good way to look at the music,” said Ketch Secor of Old Crow Medicine Show. “Because of this rub between white and black. Country music comes from the South because this is where slavery happened.”
The idea offers a through line for Episode 1 and much of what comes in “Country Music.”
In documenting the rise of the Carter Family — one of country music’s most formative stars — “Country Music” highlights the importance of Lesley Riddle. An African-American blues singer and slide guitar player, he traveled with A.P. Carter, searching Appalachian hollers for songs the family could perform.
Riddle introduced the Carters to “When the World’s on Fire,” which would be be reused for family song “Little Darling Pal of Mine” and, a few years later, Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land.”
“That’s America,” said renowned old-time musician Rhiannon Giddens. “It came from this black church and ended up as this folk anthem. … It’s not like, ‘Oh we can’t use that because it’s black.’ It’s like, ‘Oh! I love that.’ That’s the beautiful part of American music.”
The film reminds viewers that, in his short life, a railroad worker named Jimmie Rodgers crafted a confluence of blues spirit and country idealism with his “Blue Yodel.”
“His delivery was totally unheard of,” Merle Haggard said. “It came out of the black blues and mixed in with his yodelin’.”
The episode chronicles the Grand Ole Opry’s origin in 1925 (and subsequent displeasure from Nashville’s upper class for popularizing “hillbilly” personas) and details the importance of radio barn dances throughout Southern cities and the small-town Midwest.
It outlines the importance of the 1927 Bristol Sessions — led by producer Ralph Peer — that would create bona fide country stars in Rodgers and the Carter Family.
“It was the beginning of the building blocks for the rest of us,” said Rosanne Cash. “Those first recordings and those songs, they were captured, rather than written. They were in the hills, like rock formations.”
Still, it’s “The Rub” that resonates most from the film’s first two hours.
“Country music is the music of the working class,” Giddens said in one segment. “It’s the music of people who don’t have a lot of power. We talk about the founding fathers a lot, but the people who built this country?”
“That’s the people where country and blues come from. And we don’t have America without them.”
Ken Burns’ “Country Music” continues Monday on PBS with Episode 2, “Hard Times” (8 EDT, check local listings). Check back with Tennessean.com and USATODAY.com throughout the documentary debut for historical photos, archived stories and “Country Music” episode recaps.
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