Clinton, South Carolina, Tuesday, October 1, 1:10 p.m.

I had to write about Ken Burns’ Country Music series of documentaries, which ran their course last week. I just haven’t had the time until now.

I love them all, but Country Music is right down Broadway, the one in Nashville where I have spent many hours.

Most of the songs I knew. I enjoyed the rare stories that I didn’t already know. For instance, I knew of the Maddox Brothers and Rose, but I didn’t know much. It’s impossible to put together a comprehensive series without slighting someone. In my view, the most notable omission was Don Williams. I’d have liked to see more about Jim Reeves, and Robert Earl Keen, and at least a little Vern Gosdin and Billy Joe Shaver.

But I was wanting it customized for me, and the documentary was crafted for everyone.

I’ve always considered Connie Smith to be the most underrated woman singer. One of the great stories was about how Marty Stuart, as a teen, saw Smith in concert, had his picture taken with her, and vowed on the way home that he was going to marry her. He did so 25 years later.

That right there is a country song, just like the life of George Jones.

I think journalism is a combination of providing what people want and what they need. The world needs to know of Connie Smith and Marty Stuart.

I love Charley Pride, Tom T. Hall, Emmylou Harris, Gram Parsons, Loretta Lynn, Roger Miller, Buck Owens, Townes Van Zandt. and Guy Clark. Jerry Jeff Walker was only mentioned briefly, but his photo, usually sitting around with other outlaws, popped up repeatedly. Every time I hear Patsy Cline’s voice, I get chills. Yesterday, I was driving from Waterloo back home and heard “Shoes.” It was like cold water ran down my back.

I often think of the Jimmy Buffett lines: With a head full of feeling higher / And an ear full of Patsy Cline / There is just no one who can touch her / Hell, I hang on every line.

The fourth episode made me emotional. I knew Cline’s plane was going to crash. I didn’t know Miller was going to find the wreckage. My favorite Cline song has always been “I Fall to Pieces.”

Buffett was unmentioned, but he’s a country music hybrid who may have his own genre, somewhere out past Kenny Chesney and Larry Joe Taylor.

The joys far outnumbered the disappointments. More got their due than didn’t.

My favorite observation was that rock ’n’ roll was the blues’s child, but the daddy was a hillbilly.

Just as a songwriter deserves credit for a great song that someone else recorded, Dayton Duncan masterfully wrote the scripts that Burns directed. The episodes took the story along its way, but each was a coherent yarn of its own. Elements that seemed disparate came together at the ends.

Moe Bandy, himself overlooked, had a song, written by Paul Craft, also overlooked, titled “Hank Williams, You Wrote My Life.” With their lives, Jones and Van Zandt wrote it another way.

It could have been the name of the whole series. It was the middle ground between “The Wild Side of Life” and “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels.”

Jimmie, Johnny, Carters, Merle, George, Monroe, Waylon, Willie, Kris, Acuff, Hank, Hank Jr., Garth … I didn’t even mind that the story ended 20 years ago.

History requires a bit of perspective, and perspective gets lost in the present.

 

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