Re: Ken Burns Country Music Documentary
I am aware of Ken Burns' attempt to preempt criticism of his series by predicting ahead of time some fans would be disappointed, but that time constraints prevented him from covering everybody. That's b.s. Good writing and editing -- whether it be for print or broadcast -- can cover a lot of ground. ALL of the preeminent country music people could and should have been mentioned. ALL of them. But they weren't. Because Burns and his associates became infatuated with a few of the stars and decided to take side trips and get off on tangents. To on the one hand promote this series as being a definitive account of the history of country music, and on the other to EXEMPT major, major stars from attention -- is self-righteously disingenuous. Take, for instance, Jim Reeves, who was the progenitor of the Nashville Sound, had simultaneous hits in many foreign countries, and had crossover hits that scored in the pop and even jazz charts. LEFTY FRIZZELL got more attention than Reeves and guess who sold more millions of recordings. Jim. He had an epic career and was in a league with a Bing Crosby or Frank Sinatra...except in the country realm. (If Burns were to do a history of pop music one could easily imagine him leaving out Bing Crosby). So many Opry stars, talented musicians and songwriters were omitted it was not only absurd, it is offensive to their legacies. Also, Burns always acts like he's Moses handing down pronouncements from on high. He does this in his numerous media interviews and acts like until he came along, the subject he has covered has never been thoroughly explored. He presents himself cockily as an expert (as he did during his appearance on the POLITICAL show "The 11th Hour with Brian Williams" Wednesday night) and unfortunately he has conned influential people and they applaud him. But the minute Ken opens his mouth it's clear he doesn't know half of what he's talking about. He repeats cliches as if they are fresh discoveries, uncovers very little new territory, gets historical events out of sequence, and utterly fails to properly contextualize what he reports. People on Facebook today have been praising Burns' work and saying how much they've loved watching his documentary. Oh how gullible they are...
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