Ken Burns'new documentary on country music will premiere on PBS on September 15th. It will be in 8 parts, each part 2 hours long, a total of 16 hours. Should be really good! No one does better documentaries than Ken Burns! Hopefully, Jim will get the recognition he truly deserves...
Thank you for sharing the information on the forthcoming documentary Mike. This for sure I will be looking forward to. I will be setting my DVR, making sure I will miss nothing.
I looked for some additional info and found a bit more that some may find interesting. The program was six years in the making. It will be narrated by Peter Coyote who voices most of the Ken Burns programming. There will be 56 separate interviews with 500 songs (partial). It will cover the years from 1923 with a fiddler named John Carson and end with the passing of Bill Munroe in 1996. There will be footage from "Heartworm Highways". I had to look this up because I was not familiar with this title. It is an account by James Szaslapski covering the 'Outlaw Country' movement in Texas and Tennessee from late 1975 to early 1976.
I will be waiting with baited breath to find what Ken has to present on Jim Reeves. Surely with 16 hours of material, he will give Jim his fair share of air time. We will have to wait and see, but I have hope....
Thanks again Mike for letting us know about this...
Don't get your hopes up for them to cover Jim Reeves accurately. MICHAEL STREISSGUTH, author of the horribly inaccurate and vile book on Jim, accusing him of even being a wife beater, has been a CONSULTANT TO KEN BURNS for several years as Burns has worked on this series.
I imagine Streissguth will be appearing on camera as the "expert" on Reeves, (even though his book bombed and Ed Gregory was approached by the publisher to ask if he wanted to buy skids of unsold books for a few cents on the dollar).
I can only imagine how the segment on Jim will turn out. As I warned Ken, what he broadcasts is treated like Moses handing down the Ten Commandments. So whatever inaccuracies or distortions may appear in the broadcast in re Jim (or anybody else) will forever become part of country music history.
As a writer, I can tell you that there is a little cadre of hacks out there whose only talent seems to be self-promotion. They turn up here and there and are inaccurately described as "experts" when they are definitely NOT.
They churn out one book after another and one female author I know of even tried to blackmail a source to get her to talk about the sex life she shared with a famous singer (not Jim). When my friend wouldn't cooperate, she ended up being lied about in the book. Yet unsuspecting fans pick up these poorly researched tomes and believe what's printed in them.
I admire Ken Burns as a documentarian but his series on country music (which has been finished for awhile now, as PBS does scheduling well in advance of broadcast), had better be right about Jim Reeves or it will sully his reputation as a filmmaker.
I've been personally assured I will like how Jim is portrayed but of course they are keeping the lid on the actual video until the air dates.
Larry, did you actually warn Ken Burns about the inaccurate way Jim is portrayed in the Streisguth book? I hope so. If so, hopefully he did his research from your book instead...
It was announced today Ken Burns' Country Music soundtrack. Jim don't rate!!! Cash and his daughter rate 3 songs, a rock 'n' roller Townes Van Zant rates 1 and Willie Nelson get 2! What a ripe off!! Almost makes me not want to see the show!!!
By the time I found out about it, filming had already wrapped up on the documentary, but I have been in touch with Mr. Burns, et al anyway and, in fact, know that have my book and also listened to the 2-CD documentary I produced on Jim a few years ago. I'm told I will like the Jim Reeves segment but as I see it, there are only two possibilities: (1) Either Streissguth will repeat his lies about Jim or; (2) he will tell the truth by taking info out of my book that he was too lazy to discover for himself and claim credit for the research. The amazing thing is, I understand this documentary has been in the works since 2012.
on April 5, 2019, 6:13 am