#200 - Ken Burns on Country Music documentary, Willie Nelson's struggle to be an artist, Story Behind 'Walk The Line" and Garth Brooks Moving To Nashville

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Speaker 1: Welcome to episode two hundred of the Bobby Cast. I just talk to Ken Burns, who is crazy famous documentary maker, and I was gonna bring Eddie in on this, but Eddie wasn't able to get here in time. Wait, I'm sorry you miss it because it's really good and I'm a big fan of ken Burns. Like, that's so cool. We were talking about it because we were on the road this weekend. What else have you seen of his I've seen the World War two one that he did. How many hours is that one? Oh? They're all long. I mean, gosh, I never saw I think I saw it when it was airing on PBS, so it was it felt like a month long. And I saw the Civil War one and I saw the Baseball one. You watch all them in their entirety. They're really cool, man, I mean, there's no shortage of information on his documentaries. I was reading a story about ken Burns, who is coming up in just second where Apple named like like an app after him or was it my the effect? The ken Burns effect? Okay, so they and he was like, I don't want to hop on with the product because I don't know do endorsements. But then Steve Jobs said, Okay, we'll make you a deal. Let's we'll have it the ken Burns effect, but we'll donate all this equipment to like a school or some project, right and Apple, and he agreed to do it. Oh cool, So he didn't take any money, but they but in. But the effect is that he zooms in and out of pictures. I didn't know that to Edie was telling me about it, because Edie, how far are you into the documentary? UM? On our five? Okay, so I just finished our sixteen behind you and it gets so good. And I hate to call it a sixty hour documentary because it's mostly a series. It's like it's like a docuseries. It'd be like watching Netflix and I make the thing here to talk to Kim. I was like, hey, at first, I was like six hours, but then I've been shows more than that. Um. It starts if you're hearing this, it comes we're putting this out on Sunday. It starts tonight, So if you're hearing this, it's out, go to PBS dot org and you can also watch it on the app, or you can watch it on PBS. But it's called country music and you like it. Oh, I love it so far. I just I love every minute of it, so so much good information. I mean, it's it's the pictures are so cool to see, and yeah, it's great and it gets better as it goes. I talked to Ken coming up about cry. I cry in the final episode. Wow, I've got something they showed and do you tell him this? I do, He's so smart. Here we go. This is kin Burns episode two. Eddie, I'm excited for you to hear this. You haven't heard it yet. H Exactly, you should not listen back to you finish it, Eddie. Everybody else should listen and then hopefully it makes you go watch it because it's so good. Here's the episode two hundred. Kin Burns talking about his documentary Country Music here on the Bobycast. Hey Ken, Hey, Hey, how are you good. I'm great. How are you doing? Hey, I'm really good. It's been Uh. I feel like we've been missing each other, Like you would come around and do some press and I will be gone and I will be here, and so it's a it's a real pleasure to talk to you, and it's my pleasure. I really wanted to finish the whole thing. Before I talk to you too, and I did, like I finished, I've been on the road, have been touring the last few days. Maybe that's what the whole thing was about. I just finished, like the hour I finished the last one, and it was I'm gonna be honest. I thought, that's such a daunting sixteen documentary. But then I thought, I've binge the dumbest shows that are over sixteen hours sometimes, So I just kind of looked as and I loved it. I mean, it was it was so good. I'm so happy. I'm so happy. Thank you. Well, then let me just start because I made so many notes because I love country music. I'm from Arkansas, and so you know, I grew up with with nineties country being my things. The last episodes really were like speaking to my childhood a lot, and so I may kind of balance around a little bit. If you're okay with that, I'm totally okay with that. Kidding. Yeah, that's great. Well, then let's start with because something that I didn't know is where the term hillbilly came from as far as hillbilly music, because being called to hillbilly myself for most of my life, it had always been something that and I think Dolly said it in the documentary that whenever other Hillbillies called you that it wasn't an insult, but when people who weren't called you that, it was an insult. Yeah, but he'll building talk about that for a second. And how the I think the original thing is originally kind of like there's a one or in the nineties, if there's a market for this old time kill country music, right, which they and that point Southern Appalachian string band music, you know. And at one point they were struggling for a name that was a little bit less than a mouthful, and one of the performers, that's just call us Hillbillies because that's all we are. And it was self named. But of course you're exactly right, not dissimilar to not exactly like, but not dissimilar to the the N word. Uh. It cannot really be used by outsiders because them's fighting words, but it's it's used in some ways as a badge of respect, you know, because the story of country music is the story of the downtrodden. It's the story of the people who work hard for a living and understand that the playing field isn't always level. This is black and white. It's the people who built America. Then they're the combination and of their common music. You know, the banjo comes from Africa and the settle from the British Isles in Europe. Their common music is country music. Their common music is rhythm and blues, the blues, jazz, all of these different utterly American forms. Country Um So Are Our series is an attempt to sort of help tell the stories of the people who often feel like their stories aren't being told. And that's at the heart of country music and in a way, at the heart of essentially derogatory name hillbilly is that that is also a badge of honor for those who wear it. You know, he's absolutely right. Yeah, it's interesting that the music was called hillbilly music for such a long time, meaning it was just the genre of music before it flipped and it was country and western. It was the genre was literally hillbilly. I had no idea. And you know something that I found fascinating was it goes from hillbilly to country and western right around the time race music goes to rhythm and blues. Right. It was like a chart switch, right, that's right. It's a little bit earlier for rhythm and blues. But but but essentially at the same time. And what you've got is the the assumption, and I don't know why it happens, is the presumption that only black people listen to rhythm and blues and only white people listen to country music. Never was the case, And there's lots of cross uh pollenization, cross fertilization between it. You know, country music is not an island nation where you need a passport or a visa to get in. It's a budding jazz, it's a budding blues, it's abudding rhythm and blues. It's a budding country, I mean folk, and and it is one of the parents with R and B of rock, and of course it's still a budding pop and even wrap and and and classical. So you've got it's it's always connected to all the other forums in the borders are porous and it's seeking to be lots of different So after it starts off with the Carter family and Jimmy Rodgers, who themselves are different from one another and within themselves an amalgam of different influences, it goes after cowboy music. It has Western swing, it has bluegrass, It has a Nashville sound, it has the Baker's Field sound and reaction to the Nashville sound, and has country politan, It has the Outlaws, it has you know, every single thing. So not only was it never one thing, but it's constantly added new things to its story to make it omnivorous and and a big, mighty flowing river with lots of tributaries. You know, as the music is classified, first it's hillbilly, then it's country and Western, and then the CMA comes in, And if I'm right, they asked to take the western off of country and Western and just make it country music. What was behind that? But I think it was an attempt to simplify and to say that in many ways, the Western swing craze that was itself a reaction to the big band swing which was born in Harlem with Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong and Chick Web and Fletcher Henderson and others, and the cowboy craze were long gone. And so while there's Western tendencies, the Bakersfield sound is more related to kind of the hard driving honky talk of the earlier era of Hank Williams and others. Um, it was time to just sort of simplify to end that confusion. Is very funny because I've had lots of friends and people who alter the eight and half years of production. They would say, you know, how how's it going on that country and Western thing? And I'd say country and they go yeah, And then the next sentence they'd say your country and Western And it's okay because it is so many different genres. It helps, you know, convenience and commerce wants to categorize everything. You know, we live in a huge world with a tsunami of information breaking like a tidal wave over our heads, and you know, to organize stuff, to categorize stuff seems good. But what happens when you do that is more often than not, you're left with a kind of superficial definition of its total Country music, you know, not not as important as these other important musical forms. No country music is just about good old boys and pickup trucks and hound dogs and six packs of beer. And and there are a lot of songs that are like that, and it's an honorable part of the country music tradition. But most of what country music is is addressing really universal human emotions and it's doing it elegantly. I mean, Harlan Howards had three chords in the truth. He was saying, you know, it isn't as sophisticated as classical. It isn't as complicated as classical. In some forms of jazz. You can hear the lyrics, but that truth part, it's right, it's kind of right straight to the heart. You know, um things like categories, like two further words that we have hard time dealing with love and loss. That's what this is about. You know, you hear that lonesome whipper will he sounds too blue to fly. The midnight Train is wine and low. I'm so lonesome, I can cry. I mean, there's nobody on the planet that doesn't hasn't at least experienced for one second, exactly what Hank Williams was talking about. The silence of a falling star lights up a purple squaw sky and as I wonder where you are, I'm so lonesome I could cry. Now you don't need any translation for that. You know, you talk about Hank Williams, and he was a big part of the series. And I'm gonna ask you to somewhat quantify when it comes to who do you think has been country music's biggest star? Now, I know you compare in generations, and just like in baseball, it's hard to compare, you know, Barry Bonds to Mickey man All because well, I mean, if you if you were going to say biggest star, you would say at least in the period that we do coming up to the end of the millennium. You know, we've got we sort of stopped in nineties six with the height of garth popularity and Bill Monroe's death, and then in our last chapter ago and kind of put a periodic period on things by following the last years, the productively surprisingly productive last years of Johnny Cash. So you would have to say, in terms of album sales and things like that, Garth Brooks, but he'd be the first to say that he stands on the shoulders of giants, and those giants would be Kenny Rogers, and I mean Kenny, I'm sorry, Jimmy Rodgers and Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Louretta, Lynn, Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, you know, Chris Christoffers and people who have just had a stunning, stunning career as singer songwriters. I really thought Marty Stewart was a real star of the entire series. He is, and and and you're your various to catch that um and the reason is very simple. He loves this Nobody loves this music better than Marty, and nobody in a way knows it better than Marty. You know, he's He's comes up as a little boy as a prodigy with Earl Scruggs, and he plays with Johnny Cash. He's basically, as he says, the only two employers I had. And he's been on his own, but he's always been keenly aware of the history of it. So he's saved everything. He's got that telegram announcing the death of Jimmy Rodgers, that way too young an age in a hotel room in New York City from tuberculosis. He's got um this jacket and that piece of sheet music, and that photograph, and that that uniform, that costume, and and he loves the music. And he's also one of the greatest mandolin players ever. Uh. He's right up there with Bill Monroe for his picking ability. And he loves the music. And you know, as often happens as as a as an art from grows it's always trying to expand and go in new places. And as it does that, there people say, wait, wait, wait, you're getting too far from our tradition. And then there are people saying, if you stay in your tradition too long, you get stuck and you get formulaic. So that tension is wonderful artistic tension. But sometimes you find people who are absolutely certain that the Nashville Sound is terrible. Well, the Nashville Sound also produced Crazy You Know, which is the number one jukebox tune of all time. The country Politans produced he Stopped Loving Her Today, which many people believe is the greatest country song of all time by George Jones or sung by George Jones. And yet they're going to hold on to some tradition, which is super important too. Marty's able to straddle both, and he does it with good humor and generosity, so that the tendency for us to start turf wars in any art form certainly true in jazz, certainly true, and rhythm and blues certainly true. In country, he just they melt away in the face of his generosity and his love for all the manifestations of country music, and that makes him the great ambaid Earth, the great sort of historian of of the genre. You know, when we started off, we presumed, as we do in so many other films, we're gonna have lots of historians and lots of critics and things like that. We have a hundred and one interviews. There's one historian, and that's Bill Malone, who you think has got to be playing in an instrument, has got going to break into song at any moment. And everybody else are are from the country, not just Marty but Roseanne Cash, not just Roseanne and Marty, but catch se Cora and Rhiannon Giddons and and Merle Haggard, who we were so fortunate enough to get to film before he passed away, you know, first insisting before he tells his story that he wants us to understand how important Jimmy Rodgers are, or how important the Maddox brothers and Rose are. And the same with Willie, Willie saying, yeah, I'll talk to you, but you need to actually care deeply about Ernest Tubb, and you need to follow this, and you need to follow that gene autry, whatever it might be. And so what you have is a lot of young people like Catching and Rhianna, and a lot of older titans like Willie's still alive, but also Merle who understand the history. And then you've got Rosanne and Marty who lived it all. You know, she's the daughter of of of arguably the greatest of them all, the person who stands out more than anyone else. Johnny Cash, you know, you bring up Willie. I'm such a big Willie Nelson fan. When I was doing you know, pop and hip hop at Willie Nelson on my show, I was always bringing country artist into even that show before I came over, and you know, kind of set in in the country spot full time. And you know, Willie early Willie, because I don't know Willie other than being old, you know, I was. I was born in the eighties, So I don't know this turtleneck Willie. I don't know that Willie that came to That guy to me is so foreign and I'm watching and in his his beginnings are are so interesting because he moved to Nashville basically as a songwriter and just he didn't make it here. He was trying. He made it as a songwriter. I mean, he was broke and he's sometimes sold. Um, you know, mistake can le his the rights to his songs for a couple hundred bucks, and they go on and sell thirty million copies. And finally Farren Young said, stop, you know, I'll lend you the money you need, but do not sell this. And then, of course, when Willie starts receiving these great checks, he he goes down to Tootsie's or finds out where Farren isn't playing some a big wet one on the on the on the lips, and and Farren Young said, that's the best I've ever been killed kissed in my life. But no, he comes from a tradition in which his phrasing is more jazz than it is what we'd call country, and it's, uh, it's pretty interesting that he struggles for a long time. He can write Crazy and it's a big hit for Passy Kline. In fact, it's the number one jukebox single of all time. But he's going to struggle, and at one point, drunk it took his He goes out in the middle of Broadway and lies down expecting to be run over by a car. Wakes up nobody's run over him, and uh, you know, eventually packs his bag and heads back to Austin where he can be himself and who we are. You know who he is and who we know he is, and and that's it's a great thing. But some you know, and he says to Whalon, don't go. It's gonna rob your soul. He got, Whalon goes and he said, I'm going to do this on my own terms. And that's where the whole Outlaw movement happens. And he does change the way things are done in Nashville. From where you can record, what kind of control you have to naming of the musicians, musicians in your in your album, I mean, it's just a phenomenal story of unbelievable individuals, most of whom came out of stultifying poverty. And because they had these traumas and these privations of their youth, they were able to rise through them and dream and make music that helps the rest of us dream, even if the rest of us can't necessarily get to the heights that they've gotten to, because they're still expressing these essential human things about the jewel, your birth, the sadness at death, of broken heart, anger, jealousy. You know, look what my old lady did to me. Look what I did to my old lady getting right with God. These are all the lists of things that went to Marcela's The Jazz Grade says, country music addresses so perfectly. It's all about human stories. This documentary is so good A can At times, as I'm just watching it, because I am just such a country music like lifetime fan, I start to pull on my phone before I knew we were going to talk, and I would just jot down things talk about on my radio show or to my friends. And I have some of these notes, and I would just like to bring him up to you and and kind of hear you know your thoughts on this. And I'll start with Johnny Cash. When I walked the line was about staying straight to his wife. Yeah, and and to me, I thought that was so interesting, And I'll talk about why on the other side. But I'm talking about that for a second. I walked the line was about I'm literally gonna walk the line because I'm on the road. So we think about Johnny's personal life. We think about his love affair with June Carter and then her insisting that he gets straight from his pill and alcohol addictions. Before she'll marry him, and then he does, and she marries him and they live happily ever after. But we forget that Johnny Cash had a first wife. We've discovered, you know, rare and never before seen home movies. Um, he had daughters, including Rosanne and this first wife, Vivian. They were so in love, as you can see from this footage. And then, of course, the life of the road has its many temptations, um, not just women, but of course how do you stay up to drive from here to there and put on three concerts and then drive from there to hear um? And the answer is alcohol, and the answer his pills, and and that becomes a great demon, but at the same time is an unfaithfulness. So while he was singing, I walked the line for Vivian. Eventually he wasn't and particularly with h June Carter, the middle daughter of Maybelle Carter, you know, And we talked about June and Ring of Fire, which June's sister wrote the June's background vocals on, and Johnny Cash's current wife hated that song because June was on it. Yeah, that's exactly right, and and it didn't really do anywell. Go anywhere until Johnny sang it. And a lot of it has to do with how perfect the lyrics are. Not just to the story you and I are discussing, but I think to his extraordinary voice and unforgettable voice, and and the and the sincerity that inhabits the story, the anguish that inhabits the story. I mean, that's sort of like George Jones or or Patsy Klein. You sort of feel when they're singing a song, as Tricia Yearwood says in our film about Patsy Kline, is crazy, like she's in the room with you, and that you've married the perfect song with the perfect voice, and something magical happens. And I think our history here filled with dozens and dozens of biographies and you meet even more people. UM is really about the magic of those stories because they combine the magic of music. UM in the beginning In the opening of the film, Merl Haggard says, it's about things we believe in and can't see, like dreams and songs and souls. And I can't think of the better response, you know. Winton Marcellist later on in the film says that music is the art of the invisible and you think about it. It's the only art form that you can't be but it works so quickly. And when you do have that perfect song, when you do have that perfect lyric man, it's you know, as Charlie Pride says in the instro, I believe there's a country song for every mood you're in. It might make you cry, but it will make you feel better for crying. So I just think that's that's what the whole thing is about, the things that we believe in and can't see, like dreams and souls. You know, I cried today as I was watching the very last EPO so when Vince gil is singing at George jones funeral, can't get through it and he can't get through it, and I I had tears running down my face, is sitting on my couch, you know, on a Sunday watching a documentaries I'm trying to learn. I mean, it's a really touching moment. It is a perfect country moment. And I think there's at least one or two in every episode, and certainly an episode eight, there's probably five or six of those moments where you just have to succumb to the human drama. Here is Vince who has written this beautiful song, but it's taken him a long time to write it. Is first inspired by the death of his friend Keith Whitley to alcoholism at a way too young age. I mean, everybody dies young if it's alcohol related. And and then when his own brother dies, he picks up the film, picks up the tune again and starts um writing it again, and and it becomes this great standard Go rest high on that mountain. And then of course Vince one of the great human beings of old time in this business, in a business filled with great human beings, he might stand out as as one of the best of that crop. Um. He's beloved by everybody. George Jones calls him sweet Peak. And when George dies at his memorial service at the opery Um can't get through it. He's overcome with the emotion and padity level us is there trying to help him. Everybody in the audience is weeping. And it's a telling, telling moment because I think this is the proof that it exposes essential human emotions that we all feel. And a good country song, as Charlie Pride says, you know, might make you cry, but you'll feel better for crying. In fact, a woman came up to me who had seen the whole thing. I guess she'd gotten a press screen or something. She said, I had four good cries in episode eight. I was totally cleansed. And it's cheaper than therapy. In fact, it's free. I just thought, Okay, you know, maybe we all need a good cry, and I, you know, so one else says in the film, we're all in this together. And I realized that I've spent my professional life operating in this space between the two letter lower case plural pronoun us uh and it's capitalized version the US. And then all of my films exist there, and none exists more intimately than I think the country music story does. Not the Civil War and not Vietnam, not World War two, not the National Parks, not the Roosevelt's, not the smaller biographies and films on Prohibition and the dust Bowl and things like that. But it's this one because it's going after exactly that element of human emotion. None of us get out of here alive, and so we need this music. We need these songs to say it's okay, you can get through this. Uh. It's going to be all right. It's it's going to be all right. And thank God we have all this stuff, you know, the fact that that none of this music, any of it, is ever thing. It's always a mixture. Jimmy Rodgers a mixture of the blues that he hears from the black railroad cruise that he's a water boy for in southern Mississippi. But he's added to the blues, he's added a yodel. He knows killed billy so called hillbilly music, he knows gospel, and over on the other side of the divide, he's definitely Saturday night, the Sunday morning, or the Carter family, and they know, you know, they're they're talking about the church and mother and home and family. And yet in addition to their Appalachian string band tradition, they've got a black song catcher, Leslie Riddle, who travels with a people Carter catching songs. And there's a great old African American gospel stomp called when the World's on Fire, which the Carter family loves that that melody, and they turn it into they keep the melody, lose the lyrics, and they turn it into their big hit little Darlin pala Mine when he got through Here's that keeps the melody and writes, this land is your land. So everything is an alloy. And remember an alloy is is a combination of elements that is stronger by virtue of it, the fact that it's a combination. And so, you know, we're so deeply divided today, and right there in country music, right there in the in the great art of country music, is the reminder that there's no them, there's only us in that US and US equation where because we're all nine point nine the same and the differences don't imagine much. And it's a two way street. You know, not only did A. P. Carter have an African American mentor that, so did Bill Monroe, and so did um Hank Williams. He said that Rufus t Tot Payne taught it had gave him all the musical education he needed. And Johnny Cash, of course had Gus Cannon. But but when Ray Charles was given creative control of an album for the very first time in his career, he shocked his own people by coming out with modern sounds in country and Western music and the number one hit, the joyous number one hit of the Summer of nine two was I Can't Stop Loving You. Don Gibson song, that country song and you go listen to that. It's definitely a soul singer, definitely an R and B singer, but he's singing country and he's got Hey, Hank Williams, Hey good looking in there too. It's it's a wonderful, wonderful album, and it just shows you that it's a it's a two way street. And now we're talking about Little nas X and you know, there's there's it's so wide open and it's so welcoming and it's so colorful that it just invites participation. And I hope that people who look at it begin to realize that it's only politicians that turn it us against them. There is no them, there's only us. You know, we only have a few minutes left. A few things that I really wanted to bring up was I didn't know that Randy Travis story where like the club manager that was like vouched for him, was like, let's I'm gonna kep him out of trouble and handon Nashville with them. Yeah, um, lib Hatcher, It's I think you bring up something that I don't think I've talked about at all on the road promoting this thing. And that's the kindness between people. You know, mel Tillis had a stutter, but he didn't stutter when he sang, So his teachers took him around to the other grades and let him sing and give him confidence. Uh. You know, Brenda Lee was a child prodigy, and her teacher's let her put her head down on the desk and sleep when she needed to. Um, there's there's always somebody who's willing to do that favor, to buy that song, to lend you that money, to give you that break, to let you sit on and on the session, to do something to lend you a song. That you begin to realize this is a family story, a big, big American family story of which we're all involved. When you think about, uh, the friendship of Charlie Pride and Fair and Young, there was no reason why Farren Young, who was considered um, pretty tough and HAPs racists, who has this lifelong friendship with Charlie Pride and helps Charlie Pride negotiate even in the sixties, that decade dedicated to change what must have been a difficult passage for an African American trying to bring a break into country music despite his superb voice. You know, he ends up with twenty nine number one signals. He singles, he's the first person of any color to win the c m A Artist of the Year award two years in running. And and he goes into the Hall of Fame with farre and Young. To me, this is the story one, This is the story of our better angels. As Abraham like going to say, that ought to be what we focus on today and not the divisions and how much we can label the other, you know, whether it's red, stay blue, stay young, old rich, poor, north Stouth, whatever kind of divisions we're doing, we just don't. We don't need that. We're the same, Our aspirations are the same. And Hank Williams or or Johnny Cash's song I still miss someone gets us. You know. At my door, the leaves are falling, A cold, wild wind will come, sweethearts walk by together, but I still miss someone. I go out on a party to look for a little fun, but I find a darkened corner because I still miss someone, you know. I mean, it's just this is so elemental and yet it's basic, straight to your heart. Doesn't matter where you're from, doesn't matter what you believe, and doesn't matter who you voted for. It doesn't matter. We are connected by this art form. And in fact, at one point when Marcella says in the film, we all have an ethnic carriage heritage, but we have a human heritage that's much more important. And art tells the tale of us coming together, and in this case without um, without any exception the artist country music. I've got a few final questions, and we'll do these kind of in a speed round, because I just I could do two hours with you, can I'll be honest with you? So okay, Porter Wagner and Dolly's really relationship did not sound wonderful, like how can how can you kind of clarify that? And and well, I think it. I think it was wonderful, and I think she'd say it was wonderful. But at the same time, as his star was fading, hers was rising, he tried to hang on to her. And you know, when you find out why, she wrote, I will always love you. It's a declaration of independence, and it's a really, really beautiful moment in the history of country music. And though Um Whitney Houston's version is considered the big breakout one. I don't think you'll ever hear Dolly's the same again. She's spectacular to me, not taking anything away from Whitney Houston. Hers just shoots right to the top, and it's it's you know, it tells you that even in these conflicts, love can reconcile everything. Is there a cooler country star ever than Dwight Yoakum. No, Dwaite is pretty great. We I interviewed him in the Capitol Record studios where Buck Owens and Maddox Brothers and Rose I think, and and certainly uh Merle Haggard recorded and Dwight did too. And he was so knowledgeable, and he was so direct, and and yet he breaks down and cries trying to get through a Merle Haggard song. He he just would would start singing when he could sell, he could express something better. I think people are gonna their appreciation of Dwight Yoakum is just gonna soar. He's an amazing human being. I got two more. Who do you say is the most reluctant country star? Really wasn't in it to be a star, and but you just almost they were undeniable and became a star anyway. Well, you know, it's all the way through. I mean, you could even look at Garth, right, who's got these mega shows and you know, soaring through the air on wires like Peter Pan. But if you think about it, he's just his kid from Oklahoma, and he hears music on the radio and he says, I want to do that. He fixes his his his sights on Nashville. He goes there. He's turned down by every record label and ends up you know, basic Lee with no options. And he's at the Bluebird Cafe and he's playing and one of the record executives who turned him down that week says, the reaction of the crowd here is pretty good. Maybe I'll give this kid a chance. And as he's starting out um, his producer Alan Reynolds reminds him that he can't be anybody else, he can't imitate anybody else. There's only one Garth Brooks. You need to be that. And Garth is thinking, okay, you know who. The tendency is to want to fit into whatever the current commercial success is. But you're right, if I'd rather go down being myself than being trying to be somebody else, And of course he has been resolutely himself, being able to write those rollicking good time songs, but also really terrier guts apart with the beautiful ballad, a beautiful love song, hurt song, whatever it is. I'm not sure he's reluctant. I think he had his eyes on the prize. But it's so interesting how humble. Almost all the but I've met are in country music. Our last episode is called don't get above your raisin, that old Southern phrase, don't get too big for your bridges, don't forget where you've come from. And I don't think anybody I've met in country music has forgotten where they come from and their obligation to the fans. Unlike any other genre of music, you don't go up to Make Jagger and say, hey, great second set, Nick. You don't get a chance to see Mick Jagger. But you do get a chance to see Garth Brooks because he goes to a fan fair he wasn't even invited to and stays there and signs for twenty hours. One of the best scenes in the film. One final question this is it has there always been a battle for what is quote unquote real country of course, and and that's a good healthy thing. You know. It's like what's America's true soul about? You know, and people say, oh, it's this, and no, it's that. Is there should always be a battle. That's creativity. If it if it gets stuck and we know what it is, then you know, the record skipping and then you know it's just stuck in one place, and there'll always be an argument over the definition. What we wanted to say in this film is it already starts out being many one things had no given moment. Can you say, well, this is just country and that is not country? Sure? Did it straight over the line and become more pop? Yeah? It did that? Did it? You know? Was it at one time more country? I mean more yeah, more folks, excuse me, Yeah, it's it's done that. But it doesn't really matter because it's struggling, like all art forms, to push the boundaries and to expand the art form. And at the end of the day, as as Vince Gill said, all I've ever wanted out of music is to be moved, and that's what it's about. Tolstoy, the great Russian writer said, art is the transfer of emotion from one person to another, and I don't know an art throne that does it better and quicker than country music. Well, let me tell you, my friend, I thoroughly enjoyed it and I love your work. It's it's a real honor to be able to talk to you. Um. As we mentioned earlier, the eight part sixteen series, and I'll be honest with I wish you was like twenty five hours. I wanted to Yeah, I was like, there's no way I'm gonna take in sixteen hours. By the end of it, I was like, I need another episode, Like I need more of this. So the eight part sixteen hour series, directed and produced by Ken Burns. Um we're recording this actually starts tonight, so when you hear this, it'll be rolling. You can uh stream it on the PBS or PPS dot org or the app or episodes one through four on Sundays eighteen and five three. And I just, uh, a lot of people are gonna hear this, and I'm super excited to get you because for me, this was a soul filler. I loved it, I needed it, and I appreciate it. Again. Well, Bobby, I'm happy that I got you I think you offer us the most legitimizing microphone I could think of, and and that's a big thing. And I think when you say to your legions of fans and listeners that this is something worthwhile, and then our hearts rejoice. We humbly thank you for for helping um moost our our introduction of country music. And you're right. You can stream it from PBS dot org. You can get the first four episodes right now, and next Sunday you can get all eight episodes at once. There's a companion book out, We've got unbelievable CD set from Sony, and Spotify has got an incredible, credible playlist right now. So you know, there's lots of ways to get it. But I'd start with the stories that are in the film, because, like I said, it isn't just dollies. I will always love you, But once you learn how she wrote it, it's going to change your relationship to that song. Whether you've never heard it before, which might be two or three people in the universe, or you've heard it ten thousand times, it's still going to make it a different experience. When you come to town, Ken, I'd love to take you to dinner. Love to to chop it up sometime and and learn a whole lot more. So thank you for I love that, But I'm buying. Alright, alright, fair enough, all right, Ken is going to see you, can't talk to you, are going to talk to you, Talk to you soon, My pleasure,